BG Reads | News You Need to Know (September 1, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
Mayor Adler's State of the City Address - FULL SPEECH HERE
Austin Council Regular Session - Thursday, 10AM - AGENDA
COVID-19: Press Q & A Virtual News Conference - Friday, 10:30AM
[BINGHAM GROUP]
OUT NOW - BG PODCAST EP. 145: Talking Austin's FY22 Budget and Beyond
The team discuss the City of Austin's recent FY22 budget season, and challenges ahead in FY23 and on.
Featuring Bingham Group CEO A.J., and Jimmy Flannigan, Bingham Group Advisory Board Member and former Austin Council Member.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
COVID cases and hospitalizations in Austin are going down, but health officials say it's too early to relax (KUT)
New coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in the Austin area seem to be leveling off, but the city's medical director says more time is needed to determine how school reopenings will affect virus spread in the community.
Dr. Desmar Walkes told a joint meeting of Travis County commissioners and Austin City Council members Tuesday that Austin Public Health is “cautiously optimistic” about the area’s COVID-19 data trends.
She said new hospital admissions decreased slightly, as did the number of patients in ICUs and on ventilators.
“We’re seeing a plateau in our seven-day moving average [for daily admissions], which we’re happy about,” Walkes said. “However, we do know that our case numbers in schools have gone up tremendously over this past week.”
APH reported 67 COVID clusters in Travis County school districts last week alone, with 817 positive cases and more than 17,000 close contacts identified.
“We have a couple of school districts that have closed entire grades, and we’re really encouraging everyone in our community to protect our children and send them to school masked,” Walkes said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Travis County reports first child to die from COVID-19 complications amid rise in pediatric cases (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin and Travis County health leaders on Tuesday reported what they believe is the county's first child to die from complications linked to COVID-19. The case just one among an increasing number of youngsters hospitalized for the disease in the past two months.
Dr. Desmar Walkes, Austin-Travis County health authority, shared the news with members of the Austin City Council and the Travis County Commissioners Court on Tuesday, saying the child died over the weekend after being on a ventilator for more than a month.
The child was vaccinated, but Walkes said they also had previous health conditions. Austin Public Health could not release the age of the child, but the patient likely was at least 12 because of vaccination status.
Austin Public Health's team of epidemiologists were working to officially confirm whether this was the first pediatric death from the disease since the start of the pandemic, but health leaders said they believed it to be.
Austin Public Health data show 108 admissions to the hospital for pediatric cases from July 1 until Sunday. Of those, 33 were admitted to intensive care units.
Walkes on Tuesday said the area also has seen a significant increase in COVID-19 cases inside of classrooms… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
I-35 plans take center stage at City Council work session (Austin Monitor)
With plans on the table to build a 20-lane road through the heart of the city, Austin City Council took some time during its Tuesday work session to address TxDOT’s vision for the future of Interstate 35.
In his presentation to Council, TxDOT district engineer Tucker Ferguson stressed the need to increase capacity on the road, but pushed back against the idea that it was all about adding lanes.
Addressing concerns from the community about the plan to expand the footprint and impact of I-35 through downtown, Ferguson said that the transportation authority had looked at alternative plans proposed by community groups and had them evaluated by the Texas Transportation Institute. He said Reconnect Austin’s proposal to cap the freeway from Cesar Chavez Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and Rethink 35’s plan to turn the road into a boulevard through the city’s core, would both push an unacceptable amount of traffic onto nearby surface streets.
“Interstate traffic needs to stay on the interstate,” he said. “Pushing it into the neighborhoods … it’s simply not the right thing to do.”
That said, Ferguson told Council that TxDOT had incorporated some of the concepts forwarded by Rethink 35 and Reconnect Austin. Current plans call for the highway to be sunk below grade downtown and include public art, buffers, shared-use paths, and bypass lanes on the frontage road that will allow drivers to skip traffic lights… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Country’s first series of 3D printed homes unveiled in east Austin (KXAN)
After partnering to build North America’s largest 3D-printed military barracks outside Bastrop, Austin-based construction company ICON is part of the country’s first series of homes made using the same process.
Kansas City-based developer 3Strands partnered with ICON to build four houses in east Austin using 3D printing technology, specifically ICON’s proprietary Vulcan construction system. The homes were designed by Logan Architecture, and two of them have already sold with two more that just hit the market.
Austin real estate company Den Property Group has the listings for both homes on East 17th Street. One of the homes is 1,928 square feet with four bedrooms and four bathrooms and is listed at $795,000. The other measures 1,521 square feet with four bedrooms and three bathrooms and is listed at $745,000.
3Strands CEO Gary O’Dell said the company brought in “the best design names Austin has to offer” to pull off the job. O’Dell said Claire Zinnecker, an Austin-based designer, did the interior design.
“We really wanted to set out to get 3D printing technology out of the lab and into the field,” O’Dell said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Conduct of meetings is going to change – and change again (Austin Monitor)
Just as Austin’s most civically engaged citizens – including some new to the process – have gotten used to phoning in their comments on the City Council agenda, the rules are changing. In addition, Council will be considering new rules for participation once it learns what options are available.
In March 2020, Gov. Greg Abbott suspended some rules of the Texas Open Meetings Act to help slow the spread of Covid-19. Now Abbott has lifted that order, reinstating all the rules of the law, as of today.
Council and other governmental bodies will not be allowed to continue to meet on an entirely virtual basis and most who wish to speak will be required to show up in person. Assistant City Attorney Caroline Webster told Council that members of the public would be able to speak through videoconference, but not on the phone.
The mayor, at least, must sit on the dais, and if he is to have a break from presiding over the meeting, the mayor pro tem or another Council member will need to be physically present.
Generally speaking, citizens wishing to speak to Council will need to register at the City Hall kiosk at least 15 minutes before Council meets. Since Abbott issued his order on the open meetings law, those wishing to speak have been able to register online. That has created an extra burden for City Clerk Jannette Goodall. She told Council at Tuesday’s work session that she has spent about 15 hours before each Council meeting cleaning up the online registration – and that doesn’t count all the hours her staff works to integrate the names into the city’s regular signup system. That can’t continue, she said.
“Online registration – it may be working for you all, but I can tell you it is not working for us. Because it is a nightmare, compiling that data.”
Goodall said she had reached out to the city’s information technology people and learned that they would need additional resources to integrate the online system into the city’s kiosk system. The IT people have concerns about such a project, mainly from a security standpoint, she said.
Pending any special called meetings before then, there won’t be new rules before the next regularly called meeting on Sept. 30.
Information Technology Manager Kory Ellis told Council that the city’s libraries would most likely be able to allow public video testimony from a Webex link. Council Member Greg Casar and Mayor Steve Adler both said they would like members of the public to be able to testify using their cell phones. But that could create security issues for the city.
Ellis also suggested that a vendor that has been working with the city may be working on a program that would allow videoconferencing. However, he was not sure how long it would take before such a program would be available… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
The shy sisters behind Austin’s breakout breakfast tacos (New York Times)
It was early morning in the lobby of the Line Hotel, and everyone was eating migas.
The migas, from a restaurant called Veracruz All Natural, have long been a fixation for the breakfast-taco-obsessed populace of Austin: scrambled eggs flecked with pico de gallo and freshly made tortilla chips that hang onto their crunch, then topped messily with Monterey Jack cheese, cilantro and a sliver of avocado. The whole thing is nestled into a tortilla and wrapped tightly in foil like a present.
“When I go out of town, that is the meal I have before I leave, and when I come back into town, that is the meal I have,” said Nadia Chaudhury, the editor of Eater Austin. “Theirs is by far the best example of Austin’s tacos.”
But if the migas, sold in the hotel and five other locations, are attention-grabbers, their creators are quite the opposite. Reyna and Maritza Vazquez, the owners of Veracruz All Natural, are shy and laid back, often clad in jeans and sneakers.
The Vazquez sisters have done more than serve popular tacos from a food truck. They’ve changed the landscape of Austin dining, paving the way for more regional Mexican offerings in a city long defined by Tex Mex cooking, and helping other immigrants, and their families, to build restaurant groups with minimal capital… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Verbal and physical attacks on health workers surge as emotions boil during latest COVID-19 wave (Texas Tribune)
When the security guard at Methodist Hospital San Antonio met the visitor at the door of the children’s emergency room on a Saturday afternoon in early August, the officer’s request was simple: The man needed to get a temperature screening to make sure he showed no early signs of COVID-19 before entering the hospital.
The man refused, became agitated and began angrily shouting, pulling out his camera to record the guard and hospital staff.
The scene got so tense that San Antonio police were called, but the man — whose identity and reason for wanting to enter the hospital weren’t included in a police account of the incident — stormed off in anger before the officer could arrive.
It was, relatively speaking, a small blow-up, but Texas hospital workers and health care officials say incidents like it have been rising in both number and intensity this summer as tensions boil during the delta-fueled fourth surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations.
“Our staff have been cursed at, screamed at, threatened with bodily harm and even had knives pulled on them,” said Jane McCurley, chief nursing executive for Methodist Healthcare System, speaking at a press conference five days after the incident in the children’s ER. “It is escalating. … It’s just a handful at each facility who have been extremely abusive. But there is definitely an increasing number of occurrences every day.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Houston is the 11th least educated city in the U.S., researchers say (Houston Chronicle)
Houston is recognized for its many academic institutions with more than 40 colleges and universities in the region, and yet it at the bottom of the list of the most-educated large cities in the U.S., according to a study by HireAHelper. Researchers analyzed education trends across large U.S. cities with more than 100,000 people using a composite scoring system based on how many years of education a city's over-25 population had. Houston ranked 45 out of 55, making it the 11th least-educated large U.S. city.
The Bayou City fell behind a number of Texas cities, including Austin, which ranked the ninth most educated U.S. city, Arlington which came in at No. 31, Fort Worth at No. 41, and San Antonio at No. 44. Houston only beat Dallas and El Paso, which ranked as the fourth and eighth least educated U.S. cities. To identify which cities have the highest levels of education, researchers analyzed Census Bureau data and calculated a composite score (from 0 to 100) based on the average number of years of education residents completed. The study found that Massachusetts had the nation's highest level of education, followed by Colorado, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Not a single state south of Virginia ranked in the top 20. The rankings were contingent on a few categories, including the average number of education years, graduate or professional degree, Bachelor's degree only, Associate's degree only, high school diploma only, and less than a high school diploma. The average number of education years completed across Houston residents is 12.6; 13.3 percent of the city's over-25 population hold a graduate or professional degree, 20.7 percent hold a only bachelor’s degree, 6.1 percent hold only an associate’s degree, 22.9 percent hold only a high school diploma and 20 percent of the city’s over-25 population hold less than a high school diploma… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas lawmakers’ compromise could create a mask mandate option where parents can opt out (Dallas Morning News)
State lawmakers appear poised to put forward legislation that would empower local school boards to set their own policies on mask mandates -- as long as they leave room for parents to opt their child out of wearing a face covering to class. The House Public Education committee was originally set to consider two dueling pieces of legislation at their Monday night hearing: One bill that would’ve codified Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order that bans local entities, including school districts, from requiring masks and another that would’ve enabled board trustees to decide whether face coverings should be required. But the sponsors -- Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, and Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston -- said they’d spoken to each other and reached something of an agreement. The new bill language was not written at the time of the hearing. “What we ought to do in terms of masks is leave it up to the individual school districts, with the only caveat being that it ought to have a parent opt-out provision in there,” said Dutton, the chair of the committee.
Leach said he believes in local control, “but not at the expense of the family.” “The state policy should be that -- whatever those policies may be at the local level -- we’re going to at the state-level recognize, protect and empower the rights of parents to make those decisions,” he said. The two lawmakers said they would “get together” to talk about next steps and specific bill language in the waning days of the special session. Plano ISD, in Leach’s district, has already taken this approach. The trustees voted last week to temporarily require masks -- though they allowed parents to request exemptions for their children based on philosophical, religious or medical reasons. The parents of about 3,800 students, roughly 8% of Plano ISD’s enrollment, asked for an exemption. Some lawmakers and speakers at Monday’s meeting questioned the reasoning behind allowing for mask exemptions. They said that the purpose of a person wearing a mask is to protect the people around them, and vice versa. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal masking inside schools. But the fight over masks has become highly politicized, with Republicans in several states attempting to ban mandates. Abbott’s executive order is tied up in both state and federal lawsuits, giving some school districts an opening to require masks, at least temporarily. Until Monday’s legislative hearing, the fight over mask mandates was largely contained to the courts… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
New 'constitutional carry' law expected to help push Texas gun sales even higher (Houston Chronicle)
Gun ownership exploded last year amid the pandemic, civil unrest and a divisive political environment. The state’s new permitless carry policy could trigger even more interest. Once Texas’s “constitutional carry” law takes effect Wednesday, adults over 21 without criminal backgrounds can legally carry a gun in public without a permit, except in spaces where property owners forbid it. The bill passed earlier this year. About 21 million people nationwide bought guns last year, up from 13.2 million in 2019, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. More than one third of last year’s buyers — 8 million — bought guns for the first time, it said. The organization hasn’t released sales data for this year, but federal data on firearm background checks for the first half of the year in Texas are down 8 percent from the same period last year, when gun ownership surged to new heights.
Now, as the state’s regulations are relaxed, retailers are projecting another bump in business. Kyle Harrison, general manager of the Top Gun Range, said he expected to see more people coming into his West Houston shop to buy guns and practice once they don’t have to wait six weeks, sometimes more, for a permit to carry. For some who come in with immediate safety concerns, he said, the permit process deters them from buying a handgun for their purse or holster. “I do anticipate it’s going to have a positive impact for the number of shooters,” he said, “because we’re removing that barrier to entry.” The soaring demand for guns and ammunition over the last year has ravaged the supply chain, forcing those in search of ammunition to line up outside of stores such as Academy Sports and Outdoors on delivery days to get it before they sold out. Business has not let up, Harrison said, which also sells gun and ammo. “We got super busy during COVID and then we got super, super busy during the civil unrest,” he said. “It just hasn’t gone back down. It has not stopped being busy.” Mark Oliva, director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said the 18-month span of surging gun sale volumes amounts to “uncharted territory” for the industry. Consumers keep coming, he said, and it suggests there’s still untapped demand… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
A new report says the COVID recession has pushed Social Security insolvency up a year (NPR)
The sharp shock of the coronavirus recession pushed Social Security a year closer to insolvency but left Medicare's exhaustion date unchanged, the government reported Tuesday in a counterintuitive assessment that deepens the uncertainty around the nation's bedrock retirement programs.
The new projections in the annual Social Security and Medicare trustees reports indicate that Social Security's massive trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits in 2034 instead of last year's estimated exhaustion date of 2035. For the first time in 39 years the cost of delivering benefits will exceed the program's total income from payroll tax collections and interest during this year. From here on, Social Security will be tapping its savings to pay full benefits.
The depletion date for Medicare's trust fund for inpatient care remained unchanged from last year, estimated in 2026… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
In Ida’s aftermath, no quick relief in sight for Louisiana (Associated Press)
Louisiana residents still reeling from flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Ida scrambled for food, gas, water and relief from the sweltering heat as thousands of line workers toiled to restore electricity and officials vowed to set up more sites where people could get free meals and cool off.
Power and water outages affected hundreds of thousands of people, many of them with no way to get immediate relief.
“I don’t have a car. I don’t have no choice but to stay,” said Charles Harris, 58, as he looked for a place to eat Tuesday in a New Orleans’ neighborhood where Ida snapped utility poles and brought down power lines two days earlier.
Harris had no access to a generator and said the heat was starting to wear him down. New Orleans and the rest of the region were under a heat advisory, with forecasters saying the combination of high temperatures and humidity could make it feel like 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) on Wednesday.
New Orleans officials announced seven places around the city where people could get a meal and sit in air conditioning. The city was also using 70 transit buses as cooling sites and will have drive-thru food, water and ice distribution locations set up on Wednesday, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said state officials also were working to set up distribution locations in other areas around the state… (LINK TO FULL STORY)