BG Reads | News You Need to Know (November 25, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
***NEW*** BG Podcast Episode 114: Discussing Austin's Code Department with Director José Roig
On today’s episode we speak with José Roig, Director of Austin’s Code Department.
José and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss his background leading to the directorship; the mission and role of the Austin Code Department; COVID-19's impact operations; and his priorities going into 2021.
Joining the City of Austin in 2007, José was most recently Interim Director of the department. His position was made on permanent Friday, November, 13th (Read the City’s press release here).
Pre-filed bills for the 87th Texas Legislature:
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin Health Officials plead with residents to stay home for Thanksgiving (KUT)
Local health officials are hoping people heed the warnings about gatherings outside the household this week to avoid a repeat of what happened after other holidays this year.
Most coronavirus numbers are still moving in the wrong direction in Austin and Travis County. There appears to be some improvement in recent days in the percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus, but the average remains above 5% and well above the target of 3%.
Austin Public Health Deputy Medical Director Dr. Jason Pickett had a stark warning at Tuesday's briefing for the Travis County Commissioners Court.
"We've seen families that were devastated by gatherings after Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and we don't want to see that same thing happen after Thanksgiving as well," he said.
Pickett said if people are going to gather outside their households or hold gatherings themselves, he hopes they will, at least, take some precautions.
"Can you stagger people who are visiting so that you don't have 20, 30 people all together in the same room at the same time? Can we gather outside instead of inside? Can we wear masks when we're together?" he said. "All these things can help prevent the spread of the virus."
Austin Public Health is asking that schools stick to remote learning in the week following Thanksgiving. That would allow some time to see if there are signs that the area is headed into a worsening spike in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths… (LINK TO STORY)
Huston-Tillotson looks ahead after a semester of virtual learning amid the pandemic (Austin American-Statesman)
When students at Huston-Tillotson University left the East Austin campus for spring break in March, it was unclear when they would be able to return.
Coronavirus cases were starting to climb across the country, and the first cases were cropping up in Texas. In Austin, the South by Southwest festival was canceled over fears of people bringing the virus from early hot spots like Seattle and New York, and local health officials were debating safety measures for other large gatherings.
At Huston-Tillotson, like at other colleges in Texas and across the country, classes moved entirely online for the remainder of the semester. Residence halls were closed until further notice and May’s commencement ceremony was postponed indefinitely.
“The students were angry,” said university President Colette Pierce Burnette. “There was a lot of emotion and they were mad. It was a very trying moment.”
Burnette saw the decision to move courses online as a precaution: a temporary solution that would keep employees and students safe and allow for in-person instruction to resume in the fall.
But the Huston-Tillotson campus would not reopen come August.
Instead, facing a surging pandemic with mounting cases and fatalities disproportionately affecting Black and brown communities in Texas and across the country, the 145-year-old historically black university would not reopen classrooms and continue to operate virtually for the fall semester — one of the only higher education institutions in Texas to do so.
Faculty members spent the summer building more robust online courses than those they pulled together for the spring semester, testing new technologies and brainstorming strategies for keeping students engaged in a virtual learning environment. The university sent laptops to each student and internet hotspots to those who didn’t have other means of getting online.
“Higher ed is like an ocean liner: we don’t make hard right turns,” Burnette said. “We do things very slowly. We analyze, we overanalyze, we overthink. We don’t make hard right turns. The virus forced us into a storm we didn’t see coming. And it forced us to make up to take this ocean liner and make a hard right turn.”… (LINK TO STORY)
See also:
Drive-in movie theater pegged for East Austin (Austin Business Journal)
Another Austin company is diving into the drive-in movie business during the pandemic.
After selling and renting equipment to display movies outdoors for 13 years, Ultimate Outdoor Entertainment announced Nov. 24 a plan to build a drive-in movie theater in East Austin at 1600 S. Pleasant Valley Road.
The theater is pegged to open in April. Construction is expected to start in January, according to the announcement.
The outdoor theater will be called The Ultimate Drive-In and promises a "Texas-sized screen" and "the most powerful projection, brightest LED Screens."
A "SkyView Deck" will augment parking, and food and drinks are planned to be sold in a contactless fashion. Like at locations of Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse, a mix of iconic movies and new releases with theme nights and party packages will be marketed.
To build buzz for the new place, the company is installing a 52-foot inflatable screen atop shipping containers at the site to show off holiday movies from Nov. 27 to Jan. 3.
The vacant site where the drive-in will open has been seeking a new destiny for quite some time. Long-term, it will be built out with high-rises, but in the meantime, owner Presidium Group LLC has been looking for a tenant. It unsuccessfully tried to build a temporary home for nonprofits out of tents there in 2019.
Ultimate Outdoor Entertainment, founded by Darrell Landers, will compete against Blue Starlite Mini Urban Drive-In — which shows movies at various locations, including atop a downtown Austin parking garage — and Doc's Drive In Theatre in Buda… (LINK TO STORY)
In one year, foreign buyers spent $800M on Austin-area homes (Austin American-Statesman)
International homebuyers spent $800 million on Austin-area residential properties between April 2019 and this March, according to a new report from the Austin Board of Realtors.
This inaugural Central Texas International Homebuyers Report was based on a survey of Central Texas realtors conducted with the National Association of Realtors.
The report comes as the five-county Central Texas region continues to see sales and median home-sales prices soar, often to record levels. Spanning Georgetown to San Marcos, the Austin area increasingly has become an attractive destination for businesses, workforce talent, university students, and people from across the world looking for new opportunities and a high quality of life.
“The Central Texas region has become a magnet for homebuyers and real estate investors from around the globe,” said Romeo Manzanilla, president of the Austin Board of Realtors.
The $800 million in sales volume from foreign buyers was 5% of all residential sales volume in the Austin-Round Rock region from April 2019 to March 2020, according to the report. Nationally, the percent of sales from foreign buyers was 4%.
The median home price for foreign buyers in the Austin metro area was $381,030, compared with a median price of $326,500 for all sales. according to the survey. The median price for foreign buyers nationally was $314,500.
According to the report, 31% of foreign-born Central Texas buyers were from Mexico, followed by India (9%), China (7%), Australia (4%) and Canada (3%). International buyers were most likely to purchase property for a primary residence (62%) and in a suburban market (61%). The report also found that 35% of foreign buyers in Central Texas paid cash, compared to 39% nationally.
The report also tracked the interest of Austin-area residents in purchasing properties abroad. Among the Central Texas real estate agents surveyed, just over half (52%) reported working with a U.S.-based client to search for real estate properties abroad, compared to only 11% nationally… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
El Paso County judge says new "partial" curfew doesn't conflict with statewide coronavirus orders (Texas Tribune)
El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego late Tuesday ordered another curfew that he said is within the guidelines established by Gov. Greg Abbott’s statewide coronavirus restrictions.
The judge’s order will last through the rest of the Thanksgiving holiday week and comes after a Texas appeals court shot down his October attempt to temporarily shutter nonessential businesses and keep people inside their homes after 10 p.m. Both orders are an effort to help curb the rampant spread of COVID-19 that has been responsible for more than 800 deaths in the border area.
The judge’s order comes the same day city health officials announced El Paso is part of a pilot program to distribute a COVID-19 infusion treatment called bamlanivimab, which is used to treat COVID-19 patients before the disease progresses to the point that a person needs to be hospitalized.
Samaniego’s order mandates a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., but applies to social or recreational gatherings only. It takes effect Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. and also limits gatherings to 10 people. The new order expires Monday… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas shut down bars to slow the spread of coronavirus — but allowed thousands to open through a restaurant loophole (Texas Tribune)
Halloween this year in downtown Austin was a raucous affair. Nightclubs advertised dancing and drink specials. Thousands of people crowded 6th Street, partying shoulder to shoulder, some with masks and some without.
All of this happened as bars in Austin were still under a shutdown order to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Those bars and nightclubs are some of the more than 2,500 so far that have been permitted to reopen by the state on the promise that in the middle of a pandemic, they’d convert themselves into restaurants.
Shuttering Texas’ nearly 8,000 bars has been one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s most drastic safety restrictions. He most recently allowed bars to open in parts of the state where coronavirus hospitalizations are relatively low, with permission from the local officials…(LINK TO STORY)
Last whistleblower fired from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office days after suing for retaliation (Texas Tribune)
The Texas attorney general’s office has fired the last remaining whistleblower who alleged Ken Paxton broke the law in doing favors for a political donor — just days after aides had sued the agency alleging they suffered retaliation for making the report.
Deputy Attorney General for Legal Counsel Ryan Vassar — who had already been placed on paid leave — was fired Nov. 17, according to internal personnel documents obtained by The Texas Tribune, making him the fifth whistleblower to be fired from the agency in less than a month. The three others who reported Paxton to law enforcement have resigned.
On Nov. 12, Vassar and three of his former colleagues filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the Texas attorney general’s office, claiming they had suffered retaliation after they told law enforcement they believed Paxton broke the law by using the agency to serve the interests of a political donor and friend, Nate Paul… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
CDC likely to recommend shortening Coronavirus quarantine period (NPR)
Federal health officials are likely to shorten their recommendation for how long people should quarantine to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus from the current 14 days to as few as seven.
Current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations call for two weeks of isolation from the last contact with a person known to have COVID-19. However, Adm. Brett Giroir, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said Tuesday that health officials were rethinking that recommendation, citing "a preponderance of evidence that a shorter quarantine complemented by a test might be able to shorten that quarantine period."
"We are actively working on that type of guidance right now, reviewing the evidence, but we want to make absolutely sure," he said, adding that "these kind of recommendations aren't willy nilly."
The exact language of the new guidelines and when they might be announced remains unclear, but according to a federal official who asked not to be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the issue, the recommended quarantine time is likely to be just seven to 10 days for people who then test negative for the virus… (LINK TO STORY)
Biden teams to meet with Trump administration agencies (The Hill)
President-elect Joe Biden’s transition teams have scheduled about 20 meetings with the heads of federal agencies and departments in the day after the General Services Administration (GSA) formally authorized the beginning stages of a government changeover.
The GSA’s chief administrator, Emily Murphy, formally decided to allow the beginnings of a transition to proceed on Monday, almost two weeks after an election in which Biden handily defeated Trump.
The leaders of Biden’s 40 agency review teams — the beachhead groups that parachute into different departments to understand operations and prepare for a new administration to take over — all made contact with the agencies they have been assigned to oversee, a Biden transition official told The Hill… (LINK TO STORY)
Janet Yellen is back (AXIOS)
A face familiar to Wall Street is back as a central player that this time will need to steer the country out of a deep economic crisis.
Driving the news: President-elect Joe Biden is preparing to nominate former Fed chair Janet Yellen to be Treasury secretary.
If she's confirmed (as widely expected), it'll be historic: Yellen will be the first woman in U.S. history to head up Treasury — and the first ever to have held three of the most powerful economic posts in government.
Why it matters: The Treasury secretary wields enormous power in policy on regulations, taxes and the broad economy. Their actions can either reassure and spook financial markets. (Remember Mnuchin's infamous call with the big banks?)
"Investors shouldn’t worry that [Yellen] will make off-the-cuff remarks that will spur volatility. She’s the ultimate steady hand," Ian Katz, a financial policy analyst at Capital Alpha Partners, said in a note.
"While she isn’t the kind of hands-off free-marketeer that investors would prefer if they had the choice, she isn’t going to make markets nervous."
The big picture: Monetary policy has already played a big role in economic recovery efforts. The Fed is expected to continue to play an outsized part with Yellen at Treasury… (LINK TO STORY)