BG Reads | News You Need to Know (August 12, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
*NEW* BG Podcast Episode 102 - Episode 102: Austin FC Updates with Club President Andy Loughnane (SHOW LINK)
Note: Show also available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Sound Cloud, and Stitcher
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin ISD makes it official, hiring Stephanie Elizalde as next superintendent (Community Impact)
Stephanie Elizalde will officially take over as Austin ISD’s superintendent later this month.
The Austin ISD board of trustees approved Elizalde’s hiring Aug. 11, putting a cap on an almost six-month process to find the district’s next leader. Elizalde was named the lone finalist for the position in July.
"I just wanted to say thank you so very much," Elizalde said after the hiring. "I truly am just honored, humbled, super excited, nervous like the first day of school. I don't take this lightly. I know there are big shoes to fill, and there are huge expectations and I wouldn't want to work for a board who didn't expect excellence, so thank you so very much to all of you."
Prior to the hire, Elizalde was serving as Dallas ISD’s chief of school leadership, a role she had held since 2015. Overall, she brings 28 years of education leadership experience, with previous roles in San Antonio ISD and Southwest ISD as well.
Elizalde will take over for outgoing Superintendent Paul Cruz, who has served in that capacity since 2015 and is leaving the district to work at the University of Texas… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
How UT plans to keep its 430 acres clean during pandemic (Austin American-Statesman)
Cleaning the University of Texas is a monumental task in a normal year.
While students and alumni fondly refer to the campus as the Forty Acres, a nod to the original plot of land, the current Austin campus spreads across about 430 acres, and keeping it clean requires a small army.
“It’s a huge, huge endeavor,” said Richard Charbel, building services supervisor in Custodial Services. Charbel oversees hundreds of custodians who clean the 16.5 million square feet at the university — the equivalent of about 300 White Houses.
Later this month, Charbel and his staff will be put to the test as students and faculty return to campus for the fall semester amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Although only about 40% of courses will physically return to classrooms, preventing the spread of the coronavirus is a top priority that has required months of preparation — including rethinking classroom layouts, course schedules and basic human behavior.
“I think mentally of course, just like anyone else, people have concerns,” Charbel said. “But in our case that’s a good thing. My fear would be someone who does not have any concerns at all, because that would drive some unsafe behavior.”
Over the summer, UT leaders have been drafting plans to keep faculty, staff and students safe when classes resume Aug. 26. Classroom capacities will be limited to 40%; all students, employees and guests are required to wear face coverings; and students have been asked to self-quarantine two weeks before arriving on campus.
But much of the responsibility will fall to the 450 custodians who clean hundreds of buildings every day.
“They really understand that we’re here on a mission,” Charbel said of his staff. “And our mission is to provide a clean and safe area for the entire campus community.”
Custodians are focused on regularly cleaning high-touch areas, such as door knobs, arm rests, stair rails, light switches and elevator buttons. Signs will be placed on walls and floors to remind people to keep six feet apart. While the university hasn’t hired any additional staff to clean buildings, it has purchased additional cleaning supplies, including electrostatic sprayers to disinfect classrooms, 500 new trashcans for people to throw away paper towels outside restrooms, and more than 3,000 gallons of hand sanitizer… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
BAE Systems to build $150M, 390,000-square-foot Austin campus (Austin Business Journal)
Virginia-headquartered BAE Systems Inc. announced Aug. 11 it plans to build large corporate campus in North Austin.
The aerospace and defense contractor intends to employ more than 1,400 at a $150 million, 390,000-square-foot facility to be built in the large and growing business park known as Parmer Austin. That's twice its current local headcount.
Half of the facility will include space for manufacturing, according to the company. Construction is scheduled to begin this year and be completed in 2022. The facility will include engineering, manufacturing, laboratory and office space for work that primarily supports customers of the Department of Defense.
BAE Systems' Austin expansion demonstrates the Texas capital's increasing importance for the defense industry. Army Futures Command chose to base its headquarters here in 2018. Also here are the Applied Research Laboratories and the Army Research Laboratory South at the University of Texas at Austin, as well the Defense Innovation Unit and the Air Force’s AFWERX, both at Capital Factory… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Restaurants, bars and breweries scramble to reinvent themselves to get around Abbott's bar shutdown (Texas Tribune)
Hundreds of Texas bars and restaurants are scrambling to change how they operate, maneuvering through loopholes that will allow them to reopen after being closed by Gov. Greg Abbott’s latest shutdown targeting bars. Abbott has shut bars down twice since the coronavirus pandemic emerged in Texas. The first time bars were swept up in a total lockdown of statewide businesses. But the second time, on June 26, Abbott singled bars out while allowing virtually every other kind of business in Texas to stay open.
But other operations such as restaurants that sell a lot of booze, wineries and breweries were ensnared in the same order and also forced to close because alcohol sales exceeded 51% of total revenue, meaning they were classified as bars. “Generally everyone has a common sense understanding: ‘What is a bar? And what is a restaurant?’ I think that 51% rule is so broad that it actually picks up or encompasses businesses that we would normally think of as really being restaurants,” said State Rep. John Wray, R-Waxahachie, one of more than 65 lawmakers who signed a letter asking Abbott to update his order’s definition of a restaurant. Wray gave the example of a burger restaurant, where a patron might buy a burger and two beers. Oftentimes, the beer will cost more than the food, but that doesn’t make the restaurant a bar, he said. Emily Williams Knight, Texas Restaurant Association president, estimates that about 1,500 restaurants ranging from steak houses to coffee shops that sell wine were “inadvertently” forced to close when Abbott shut down bars, translating to about 35,000 lost jobs in the state… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
People are ditching Houston for 'green pastures' because of city's COVID surge (Houston Chronicle)
The College Station area is known for Aggie pride and small- — but not that small — town feel. There are both ranches and retail, farmland and museums. You’ll also find, in increasing numbers, expat Houstonians. Since the pandemic, one out of three calls inquiring about homes in Mission Ranch, a master-planned community on the city’s southern edge, are from Houston, according to the subdivision’s developer, Caldwell Communities. “We’ve definitely seen more interest,” said Marci Raley, the subdivision’s welcome center coordinator.
The pandemic — which recently thrust Houston into the national spotlight for its surge in COVID-19 cases and strained hospital systems — is only the latest in a confluence of trends pulling people from Houston’s hustle and bustle to smaller towns an hour or two away. Terrible commutes, repeated flooding and a disconnect from nature are also driving people from the city. Many have headed to Brazos County, home of College Station. An estimated 3,800 people moved to Brazos County from Harris in 2017, the most recent year for which the Census data is available, making it the most popular destination for people moving out of Houston after Travis County, where Austin is located. “We have seen quite a bit of pick-up in buyers from Houston,” said Deborah Stepanek, a College Station real estate agent with the Houston-based brokerage CB&A. “They’re wanting to get out of the rat race of Houston.” Some families treat College Station as a sort of Houston suburb. Zac Henderson, for example, used to commute 45 minutes north from the Energy Corridor to his office off Texas 249 outside of Beltway 8. Now, he commutes an hour south from the edge of College Station closest to Houston… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Despite broad support, Mayor Turner won’t budge on Houston eviction grace period (Texas Standard)
Kamran Malik lost his job at an accounting firm in June during a round of COVID-19 layoffs. He supports his parents, who live with him. He was still waiting for his first unemployment check, so he explained the situation to his landlord.
Initially, she worked with him — lowering his rent for two months — but when Malik said he was out of savings and needed to use his security deposit to pay rent, his landlord promptly posted a notice to vacate on his door on Aug. 2.
“She’s like, ‘I don’t care, it’s your responsibility. I don’t care, your financial crisis that you have,’” Malik said. “And she’s been threatening me that she is an attorney and this is all very easy for her.”
Malik’s eviction hearing is set for two weeks from now. But if Malik lived in Austin or Dallas, Los Angeles or Chicago, his landlord wouldn’t be able to evict him — those cities have enacted emergency grace periods. And New York City renters are still protected under a state moratorium.
But in Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner won’t put forward a grace period to give renters more time to pay their rent, even as members of the city council, and the city and county’s own joint task force have pushed to put one in place… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Biden picks Harris for VP (The Hill)
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden named Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate on Tuesday, ending months of speculation over one of the most consequential decisions of his 2020 presidential bid.
Biden called Harris, a former rival in the Democratic primary, the best equipped to help him defeat President Trump and lead the nation through the coronavirus pandemic, economic downturn and racial divide.
Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, would be the first woman to be vice president if Biden is elected.
"These aren’t normal times. For the first time in our history, we’re facing three historic crises — all at the same time. We’re facing the worst pandemic in 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The most powerful calls for racial justice in a generation. And we have a president who has both failed to lead on the virus — costing lives and decimating our economy — and fanned the flames of hate and division," Biden said in an email to supporters announcing the VP pick.
"I need someone working alongside me who is smart, tough, and ready to lead. Kamala is that person," he added.
Biden lauded Harris’s accomplishments, first as attorney general of California and later as a U.S. senator from the nation’s largest state. He called her “one of the toughest and most effective Senators on two of the most important committees" in the upper chamber — the Intelligence and Judiciary committees. Harris also sits on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as well as the Budget Committee.
Biden praised Harris as a leader on criminal justice and marriage equality and said she has “focused like a laser” on racial disparities that have resulted from the pandemic…(LINK TO FULL STORY)
They saw record profits under Trump. Bankers are backing Biden anyway. (Politico)
Executives and employees at the nation’s biggest banks are giving a boost to former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign for the White House, despite economic policies under President Donald Trump that produced record profits for the industry.
Contributions from individuals affiliated with the six largest lenders total $907,216 for Biden and $293,434 for Trump, according to a POLITICO review of campaign finance data. Biden has a significant fundraising advantage at every one of the banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Pac-12 joins Big Ten in canceling fall football season, will attempt to play in spring (ESPN)
The Pac-12 has canceled the fall football season, multiple sources told Yahoo Sports. The league is scheduled to make the announcement formal on Tuesday afternoon, continuing a day of seismic news in the sport. The decision comes soon after the Big Ten announced that it was canceling its fall football season in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both leagues plan to attempt to play in the spring. The Pac-12 decision was universally expected. The league has multiple teams that would have difficulty starting practice this week because of local government restrictions. The virus has been especially impactful in California and Arizona, which houses six of the 12 schools.
Of all the major conferences, the Pac-12 was viewed as the most likely to cancel the fall. The league was building sentiment toward this decision last week, but remained wary of being the first league to head in this direction. The Big Ten decision a little over an hour earlier gave them the company they needed to head to the sidelines. The Pac-12 decision marks the fourth FBS conference to cancel college football this fall. Overall, 53 of the 130 programs in college football have canceled their seasons. The Pac-12 decision shifts the intrigue to the Big 12, which has a call Tuesday night. The Big 12 is being viewed in college circles like Ohio or Florida in an election, as it has the power to dictate the future of the sport. A high-ranking Big 12 official told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday afternoon, “There’s an increasing sentiment that we’ll play.” The decisions by the Big Ten and the Pac-12 also put an onus on the ACC and SEC, which have stated clearly this week that they’d like to attempt to navigate the start of their seasons. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey pointed out on Twitter on Monday that the SEC “has been deliberate” since March in making decisions about the virus… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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