BG Reads | News You Need to Know (June 16, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
The Austin City Council will next meet for regular business on Thursday, July 22 to receive public comment on the city’s proposed 2022 budget.
Wednesday, 9:30AM: Audit and Finance Committee Regular Meeting
Thursday, 3PM: Parks and Recreation Board - Finance Committee
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Tesla launches training program with Austin Community College for rising gigafactory (Austin Business Journal)
As Tesla Inc. anticipates opening its factory in Travis County later this year, the electric vehicle manufacturer is preparing to launch a student training program with Austin Community College District.
The 14-week course, called Tesla START Manufacturing at ACC, will have students working in paid positions at Tesla's manufacturing facility while participating in hands-on learning in specialized labs at ACC's Riverside Campus, according to the college's website. Participants will be eligible for full-time jobs once they complete the program.
CEO Elon Musk has said the company will need 10,000 people at Tesla's rising factory in Travis County by the end of next year. That's left many to wonder how the metro will supply the talent pool without losing too many jobs to people outside the area or starving smaller local manufacturing companies out of their existing workforces. Central Texas' manufacturing talent pool has been strained as companies rush to the metro and the desire among young people narrows to pursue trades… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin says arrests at homeless camps will not be 'typical' as police ramp up enforcement of ban (KUT)
Austin leaders on Tuesday addressed the arrests of people experiencing homelessness as police and city staff cleared dozens of encampments around City Hall on Monday. The arrests were for interfering with public duties and failure to obey a lawful order — not for violating the camping ban Austin voters reinstated in May — police said. People began camping near City Hall in protest of the ban's reinstatement. On Monday morning, the Austin Police Department and city staff moved people camped on private property and encampments in the way of a project to build out bike and pedestrian lanes. Scores of Austinites at the encampments Monday told KUT they hadn't been told to move. The tense scene came as the city and APD begin to more actively enforce the ban on public encampments.
While officers are empowered to ticket and arrest people as of Sunday, they're being encouraged to use criminal penalties as a last resort. Homeless Strategy Officer Dianna Grey said Tuesday that the arrests were not for violating the city ordinance banning camping, and that she hoped the confusion and arrests wouldn't be par for the course going forward. "The actions that happened yesterday were not what would be typical under the rollout of the new camping ordinance," she said. Interim Police Chief Joseph Chacon said he hopes officers will continue outreach in lieu of ticketing. The city's staggered approach has emphasized outreach since the ordinance went into effect May 11. Since then, Chacon said, officers have given 390 warnings and visited 70 camps to tell folks they are violating Austin's ban on public camping. Still, he admitted, officers don't yet have a clear answer where people can go for shelter… (LINK TO STORY)
Q2 Stadium double dip marks historic week of soccer in Austin (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin trades burnt orange and white for verde and black in a soccer-filled week that starts Wednesday when the U.S. women’s national team hosts Nigeria in an Olympic warmup that doubles as the historic first match at Q2 Stadium. Austin FC, the permanent residents of Q2 Stadium, face the San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday after starting the 2021 Major League Soccer season on an eight-match road trip.
The Live Music Capital of the World gets serenaded by soccer chants for at least two nights this week, and those songs will be heard for miles because there are no capacity restrictions for the 20,500-seat stadium located at McKalla Place near The Domain.
“This will be a week of appreciation, validation and the celebration of milestones,” Austin FC president Andy Loughnane told the American-Statesman. “The opening of Q2 Stadium is a community accomplishment of the highest magnitude, given the steps and risks that were taken to be ready for these types of milestone moments.”… (LINK TO STORY)
Allow ‘diversity of housing types,’ ABoR tells Council (Austin Monitor)
Representatives from the Austin Board of Realtors offered policy recommendations to City Council for ways to slow down the drastic increase in housing prices since the beginning of the pandemic.
The latest housing market statistics are “dramatic,” as Jeni Williams, ABoR’s deputy director of government affairs, put it at Tuesday’s Housing and Planning Committee meeting. Housing prices in Austin have increased 35 percent since last May, and the median sales price of a home has gone up $111,000 since this January to a record $566,500. There was only a 15-day inventory of housing over the last month in the city.
Williams told the committee that while the rest of the country has experienced similar supply crunches and price spikes, Austin’s housing market is exceptional. “Our increases are even higher than everywhere else,” she said.
The Austin Board of Realtors publishes housing market statistics monthly. Infographic courtesy of ABoR.
ABoR CEO Emily Chenevert said that the market fundamentals have not changed much in several years, but the pandemic has thrown an already out-of-control market into further chaos. In order to calm things down, she said, changes are needed. “This is really the same market we were in and it’s the same market we’re gonna be in if we don’t make changes moving forward from a policy perspective.”
“What would you say is our best strategy to try to mitigate the increased rise of housing costs?” Council Member Paige Ellis asked. Williams responded: “Allowing for a diversity of housing types across the city in lots of different places.”
While acknowledging the many factors outside of Council’s control – low interest rates and labor and supply shortages, for example – Williams said diverse housing types “will allow more supply to come online,” thereby taming the rise in housing prices. She predicted that while prices are likely to keep increasing for the foreseeable future, policy could at least slow the rise.
Williams noted that a “diversity in housing types doesn’t have to mean a giant scary development that looks over a single-family home. It can look like a lot of different things.” She offered as an example the proliferation of townhomes in much of Houston.
Ellis agreed. “I do think we need that diversity of housing stock,” she said, pointing to the needs of recent college graduates and elderly people in particular who may be looking for smaller, more affordable homes but find themselves out of luck.
Mayor Steve Adler and some Council members have recently announced that amending the current Land Development Code to allow more housing is a top priority. The city’s comprehensive land use code rewrite was struck down by a judge last year, effectively ending the possibility of a new comprehensive code in the near term. Any land use policies will have to wait until later this summer or during the fall, as Council is currently on break until July 29.
Chenevert said land use planning is only part of the policy conversation. The lengthy review times for new housing projects must also change. “Operationally, we need to continue to look at the planning and development process not just in the context of the tools that are allowed in the code, but the time spent waiting on the permitting.” The drawn-out permitting and review process, she said, is “just expense added to the back end when it comes to bringing that housing unit to market.”… (LINK TO STORY)
Central Texas Juneteenth Parade and Festival returns to Austin during first year recognized as official city holiday (KVUE)
The Central Texas Juneteenth Parade and Festival is coming back to Austin this year, and it's the first year the City is recognizing Juneteenth as an official city holiday. Juneteenth commemorates the formal end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865. The parade will move down Chicon Street to Rosewood Avenue on Friday, June 19. It will end at Rosewood Park, and the following festival will take place both there and at Boggy Creek Park.
The celebration was canceled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Juneteenth represents a chance for Black Austin to come together to celebrate what makes our community special,” Juneteenth Chair with the Greater East Austin Youth Association Tami D. Johnson-Dawson said. “We’ve been organizing this parade for 18 years and we are looking forward to getting back to a tradition that has been around for so long and is one of the few things in our community that really bring us together.”
In a press release, festival organizers said after a difficult year for race relations in America, they are excited to see the community come together.
Organizers also said it is “critically important to acknowledge the fight for Black lives” this year as Black communities were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Austin Public Health will be offering free coronavirus vaccines during the event at both Rosewood and Givens Park.
“Austin’s Juneteenth celebrations have stretched across three centuries, and as long as we keep cherishing freedom for all people, they’ll keep stretching for centuries to come,” Austin Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison said. “After a very tough 15 months, I absolutely cannot wait to ride in that parade, see all the joyful faces, and chunk a whole lot of candy to the kids!”or race relations in America, they are excited to see the community come together... (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
San Antonio City Council gets younger, more progressive as new council members sworn in (San Antonio Express-News)
As a slate of young progressives took their seats on San Antonio City Council on Tuesday, some of the council’s old guard warned them against pursuing too ideological of an agenda. Four new council members who prevailed in the June 5 runoffs took the oath of office Tuesday — including three progressives, who could further tilt the balance of a left-leaning council. Among them are two self-identified democratic socialists — Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and Teri Castillo, who will represent the East and West sides, respectively.
McKee-Rodriguez unseated his former boss Jada Andrews-Sullivan for the District 2 seat. He alleged that while working for her, he experienced homophobic treatment. McKee-Rodriguez will be the first openly gay man to serve on the council. On Tuesday, he cast his victory as a milestone for the LGBTQ community and vowed to push for the establishment of a city office of civil rights — which will deal in part with enforcing the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance. “For any people who share identities, any people who don’t feel represented, I hope that in the future this opens a door for you because there are so many before me who opened this door,” McKee-Rodriguez said. Castillo beat a more moderate candidate in the open race to succeed District 5 Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales, who left because of term limits… (LINK TO STORY)
New Dallas City Council sworn in, and mayor urges them to ‘get back to basics’ (Dallas Morning News)
Four new Dallas City Council members and 10 returning elected officials were sworn in to new two-year terms Monday as Mayor Eric Johnson made a public call for city leadership to “get back to basics” after two years where he has at times been at odds with his colleagues. Johnson, who is midway through his first four-year term, said he and the new council should focus on addressing residents’ frustrations with city services while also planning for the future of Dallas. “It’s about working together to solve the common problems of our residents and our businesses and provide them with new opportunities. It’s not about what divides us,” Johnson said Monday. “It’s time to let go of the old political divisions. We can put the past behind us and move forward together, and we must.”
Joining the council on two-year terms are Jesse Moreno in District 2 representing parts of downtown, East and South Dallas; Jaynie Schultz in North Dallas’ District 11; Gay Donnell Willis in Northwest Dallas’ District 13; and Paul Ridley in District 14 representing parts of downtown, Uptown and East Dallas. Among issues the new city council will tackle: longstanding concerns over public safety, delays in monthly bulk trash pickup around the city, and the city’s building permitting process. The city also has to address issues with response to emergency and non-emergency calls. The city reports 65% of 911 calls were answered within 10 seconds as of April and 27% of 311 calls answered within 90 seconds. The goal is 75% for 311 calls and 90% for calls to 911 to be answered within those time frames. In recent months, the city council has signed off on new plans to address equity, environmental concerns and climate change, citywide transportation, and economic development with an emphasis on growth and job creation in southern Dallas. There’s also a growing number of residents experiencing homelessness or in danger of losing their homes, highlighting a need for more affordable housing and services to keep new and older homeowners in their homes. The city also has to address gaps in access to parks and internet access for residents, along with its degrading streets and sidewalks. Lingering impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic and February winter storm also remain… (LINK TO STORY)
#AbbottFailedTexas trends again, as Texans brace for potential power outages amid heat wave (Houston Chronicle)
Less than one week after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation promising to strengthen Texas' electric grid, residents were asked this week to start conserving electricity in preparation for potential "last resort" forced outages amid a relentless heat wave that has sent temperatures into the 100s and air conditioning demand soaring. In a rare early summer alert, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas warned customers on Monday to turn thermostats to 78 degrees or higher and to cut back electricity use until at least Friday.
The warning did not go over well with Texans, who were told last week by Abbott that “everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas." The hashtag #AbbottFailedTexas started trending online Monday and Tuesday, with social media users across the state saying they are fed up with the grid's apparent unreliability. Many said that facing a possible blackout during a heat wave has triggered PTSD-like feelings from the deadly February storm that left millions without power for days in below-freezing temperatures. Online reactions were mixed between lighthearted memes and more serious takes calling out lawmakers. The recently-signed legislation, Senate Bill 3, consists of weatherization mandates that call for winter preparation at power plants and some natural gas facilities and the creation of a statewide alert system - but those won't take effect until next winter. Experts said while those reforms are welcome, they still fall short of preventing another grid failure and do not address the fundamental problem of increasing power generation during extreme weather and emergency situations… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Lina Khan, critic of large tech firms, to lead Federal Trade Commission (Wall Street Journal)
Futures for July delivery ended Monday at $996.20 per thousand board feet, down 42% from the record of $1,711.20 reached in early May. Futures have declined 14 of the past 15 trading days, the last two by the most allowed by exchange rules.
Cash lumber prices are also crashing. Pricing service Random Lengths said Friday that its framing composite index, which tracks on-the-spot sales, dropped $122 to $1,324, its biggest ever weekly decline. The pullback came just six weeks after the index rose $124 during the first week of May, its most on record. Random Lengths described a chaotic rout in which sawmill managers struggled to provide customers with price quotes.
Economists and investors have wondered if sky-high prices for wood products would doom the booming housing market. Builders raised home prices and many stopped selling houses before the studs were installed, lest they misjudge costs and sell too cheaply. Lumber became central to the inflation debate: whether a period of runaway inflation was afoot or high prices were temporary shocks that would ease as the economy moved further from lockdown.
The rapid decline suggests a bubble that has burst and the question now is how low lumber prices will fall. Even after tumbling, lumber futures remain nearly three times what is typical for this time of year. Lumber producers and traders expect that prices will remain relatively high due to the strong housing market, but that the supply bottlenecks and frenzied buying that characterized the economy’s reopening and sent prices to multiples of the old all-time highs are winding down.
During the run up, wood was hoarded by builders, retailers and others worried about running out of material during a construction season set into overdrive by historically low mortgage rates and federal stimulus payments… (LINK TO STORY)
‘It was exhaustion, it was sadness, it was fatigue’: America’s mayors call it quits (Politico)
Covid-19 changed the calculus for mayors mulling reelection, but the public health crisis was only a fraction of a much larger equation. The associated economic downturn “decimated” city budgets, leading to months of fiscal headaches before federal aid helped ease the problem. George Floyd’s killing last May sparked protests that grew into a national reckoning on racism and policing that’s still ongoing. And all of that kindling turned an already fiery presidential election into an inferno.
Many city leaders did not want to stick around to stamp out the flames.
Not unlike the current exodus from Congress, mayors across the country are stepping down en masse following years and even decades of public service. Their reasons range from personal to professional, but many share common threads spun from a year of unparalleled tumult and a recognition that what might be best for their city’s future might not be what they envisioned for their own.
“It is time to pass the baton,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said last month when she announced she wouldn’t seek a second term, a surprising move for one of the Democratic Party’s biggest rising stars.
In an interview, Lance Bottoms said the last year had drained her and left her wanting to move on to something else. What, exactly, she does not yet know.
The days after Floyd’s death, in particular, were a ”perfect storm of disappointment,” as people took to the streets of Atlanta and some demonstrations turned violent, Lance Bottoms said. “It was exhaustion, it was sadness, it was fatigue. I mean there’s so many words that I could use, none of them probably strong enough to really capture the last 18 months. But it was, I can say personally, it felt like a very low point.”
Michelle De La Isla, the Democratic mayor of Topeka, Kan., felt those emotions twice over — as her city’s leader and as a congressional candidate running a campaign she began pre-Covid.
“It was ugly,” De La Isla said. “It was very ugly.”
Four months after losing her bid for Congress, De La Isla, Topeka’s first Latina and single-mother mayor, announced she wouldn’t seek a second term.
“Covid had a big impact in my decision to not run for mayor again,” De La Isla said. “You really cannot wholeheartedly focus on recovery while you’re running for office. You have to be fully present and make sure that your head is in the game.”
What is raising eyebrows, though, is the number of mayors citing pandemic burnout and political exhaustion on their way out the door. It’s a phenomenon showing up more among Democrats, who account for nearly two-thirds of America’s mayors. Many spent the past year feuding over police reform or battling Republican governors over Covid restrictions.
“There’s no question that there’s a common thread of fatigue and frustration,” former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a past president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said in an interview.
It’s a trend that’s poised to grow as the election cycle goes on. Some big names — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser — have yet to announce their intentions. And in cities all over the country, local leaders are mulling over their own futures.
“When you look at the general population and the numbers of people that say they’re looking to leave their jobs, we’ve never seen statistics so high on kind of the movement within the workforce,” said Brooks Rainwater, senior executive and director of the National League of Cities’ Center for City Solutions. “Certainly with mayors, being in one of the most high profile and stressful jobs you can imagine during a crisis that this has just been amplified.”… (LINK TO STORY)