BG Reads | News You Need to Know (August 2, 2021)
Leslie the Queen of Austin - Austin City Limits Festival 2008 (Jason McELweenie)
Note: A time and place in Austin history.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Developer sidesteps valid petition, drawing Council members’ ire (Austin Monitor)
Five City Council members voted against an affordable housing project in Northeast Austin after the developer skirted a valid petition by reducing the requested rezoning area. The case still passed on first reading Thursday, with six votes in favor, but those opposed sent a clear message discouraging the practice.
“I think it changes the rules in the middle of the game, and I don’t think it’s appropriate and it disturbs me greatly,” Council Member Ann Kitchen said of the tactics, which prompted her vote against the rezoning. Council members Leslie Pool and Alison Alter, who made similar statements, were joined by Council members Kathie Tovo and Mackenzie Kelly in opposition.
The rezoning at 1701 E. Anderson Lane would make way for 89 income-restricted units, all priced for those making 60 percent of the area median income. The applicant requests Community Commercial (GR-NP) from the current Limited Office (LO-CO-NP) and Rural Residential (RR-NP) zoning. Both city staffers and the Planning Commission recommended approval.
Developers occasionally use the tactic to skirt petitions, which can thwart rezonings by forcing a 9-vote supermajority of Council instead of the typical 6-vote majority. A valid petition contains the signatures of property owners representing at least 20 percent of the area within a 200-foot buffer around the tract up for rezoning.
In this case, the applicant decided to decrease the rezoning from 4.22 acres to 2.79 acres (plans remain unaffected). The move, which reduced the buffer area from 381,184 square feet to 258,415 square feet, dropped the area with signatures from 29.45 percent to 8.41 percent by cutting out some property owners entirely and reducing the impact of others.
Neighbors who signed the petition said they felt duped.
This is the height of closed-door politics,” said Lulu Francois, who lives just south of the proposed project. Francois told Council that she and others signed the petition due to four areas of concern: security and trespassing, privacy, trash and debris along Buttermilk Creek, and erosion of the creek.
The valid petition is neighbors’ primary recourse to oppose rezonings beyond public statements. The Texas Local Government Code governs petition rights… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin mayor tours nearly full hospital ICUs overwhelmed with young unvaccinated patients (CBS Austin)
Austin city leaders got an inside look at the ICU crisis happening in Austin-area hospitals. Public health officials warn the region is experiencing the lowest staffed ICU bed capacity since the pandemic started.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Travis County Judge Andy Brown shared their experience on Twitter and said they saw many people who are otherwise healthy, young, but unvaccinated patients that are now fighting coronavirus. As ICUs reach capacity, they’re urging the community to come together again to help slow the spread.
"It’s a scary situation and something that’s just so preventable if people would just get vaccines,” Adler said.
Austin-area ICUs are facing a troubling crisis as more unvaccinated people are hospitalized with COVID-19… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Report: ‘inconsistent and incorrect information’ led people to distrust Austin officials during winter storm (KXAN)
A summary of community feedback on Austin’s response to the winter storm shows Austinites, especially those who do not speak English or are disabled or elderly, were not satisfied with the city’s communications during that time.
The summary was compiled by the Winter Storm Review Task Force, which was created March 2021 and is made up of 11 members from commissions representing different demographic groups, like women, seniors, veterans and minorities. The report was released Friday in a memo sent by Assistant City Manager Rey Arellano.
The task force held five public feedback sessions between April and June and heard from 27 speakers and received 20 written testimonies, the memo said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin-area leaders further loosen eviction bans starting in September (KUT)
Austin and Travis County officials have extended a ban on evictions against many residential tenants and some commercial ones until at least Oct. 15.
But beginning in September, Austin-area renters who are three months or more behind on rent and have used up all rent help will once again be subject to eviction.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Travis County Judge Andy Brown on Friday extended the bans, which were set to expire Sunday. But they've been loosing restrictions and are no longer outright preventing evictions like they did at the beginning of the pandemic.
The two leaders signed orders in May allowing landlords to begin evicting tenants who are at least five months behind on rent payments. In cases like these, the landlord and tenant must have exhausted all rental assistance.
This most recent order, which goes into effect Monday, now removes protections for renters who owe three months or more of rent… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
With no Texans in Biden Cabinet, Lone Star clout wanes (Austin American-Statesman)
From the White House to the halls of Congress, Texas has for decades wielded heavy clout in the upper echelons of national politics — until now. For the first time since at least President Richard Nixon's tenure, no Texans are serving in the Cabinet, the top tier of presidential advisers. Considering that Nixon followed Texan Lyndon B. Johnson — who served as president, vice president and majority leader of the U.S. Senate — it's been quite a comedown to watch President Joe Biden fill his top-level bench with players from other states. At least it hasn't been a complete shutout, with Texans nominated or confirmed to leadership positions with the U.S. Census Bureau, immigration enforcement and the Air Force.
But the state also has lost clout on Capitol Hill, where only one U.S. House committee chair hails from Texas: Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, who leads the Science, Space and Technology Committee. That's down from seven committee chairmanships when the GOP controlled the House most of the past decade. Things are tough in the U.S. Senate, too, where the state's two GOP members are in the minority party and John Cornyn had to step down as whip, the No. 2 Senate Republican, at the end of 2018 because of term limits. Clout gets measured in Washington because of the results it can yield. For Texas, it has produced tax breaks for the oil and gas sector, revived sales taxes deductions on federal tax returns (helpful to residents of Texas and other states without an income tax) and built large projects such as NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing plant in Fort Worth. Lost clout has consequences as well. "Voters need to know how important it is to have Texans in power in Washington," said Ben Barnes, a former lieutenant governor who is now an Austin-based lobbyist and a top adviser to national Democrats who control the White House and both houses of Congress… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
San Antonio built a pipeline to rural Central Texas to increase its water supply. Now local landowners say their wells are running dry. (Texas Tribune)
When the water finally arrived, San Antonio’s leadership could relax. The roughly 150-mile long water pipeline to the northeast guaranteed the city’s economic future and freed residents from the stress of droughts.
“We have water security for decades to come,” said Robert Puente, president and CEO of the San Antonio Water System. The project, what Puente called the “biggest achievement in our lifetimes” to secure water for the city, helped conserve the sensitive Edwards Aquifer, upon which San Antonio has historically depended for water.
But less than a year after the pipeline began to suck water from a different aquifer in Central Texas for delivery to 1.8 million people, some residents in that rural area turned on their taps only to be greeted by air.
“All so that the people in the city of San Antonio can water their lawns,” said Bob Scouras, 72, a landowner in Lee County… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas health systems feeling crunch of latest COVID surge (Associated Press)
The resurgence of COVID-19 in Texas has put some cities' health systems in dire circumstances, as intensive care unit beds fill up, officials say. In Austin, the health department said there were only nine ICU beds available on Friday in the 11-county trauma service region that includes the city and serves 2.3 million people. “We are running out of time and our community must act now,” said Dr. Desmar Walkes, Austin's medical director/health authority. “Our ICU capacity is reaching a critical point where the level of risk to the entire community has significantly increased, and not just to those who are needing treatment for COVID. If we fail to come together as a community now, we jeopardize the lives of loved ones who might need critical care.”
In a joint statement, three hospital systems that serve the Austin area — Ascension Seton, Baylor Scott & White and St. David’s Healthcare — said the latest COVID-19 spike “is putting extraordinary pressure on our hospitals, emergency departments and healthcare professionals, and it has further challenged hospital staffing due to a longstanding nursing shortage.” San Antonio is also facing a nursing shortage caused by an increase of coronavirus patients. City leaders had hoped the state would help fill the shortage, but in a letter sent Thursday to city and county leaders across Texas, the state directed local governments to instead make their own plans to increase hospital staffs before asking the state for help, the San Antonio Express-News reported. The state previously hired staffing companies to send traveling nurses, doctors and respiratory therapists to help hospitals cope with COVID-19 surges. In San Antonio, COVID-19 hospitalizations on Saturday were up by 430% since the start of July, the newspaper reported. “We have patients waiting in the lobby; we have patients in the hallway,” said Tommye Austin, the chief nurse executive for University Health, one of the largest hospitals in San Antonio. “Every nook and cranny in this organization has a patient.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Senators introduce bipartisan infrastructure bill in rare Sunday session (The Hill)
Senators unveiled a $1.2 trillion, eight-year infrastructure bill during a rare Sunday session after negotiators worked through the weekend.
The 2,702-page bill, spearheaded by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and a larger group of roughly two dozen negotiators, is substantially narrower than the multitrillion-dollar plan envisioned by President Biden earlier this year but includes a wide range of funding for roads, bridges, transit, broadband and water.
"We are proud this evening to announce this legislation, and we look forward very much to working with our colleagues in a collaborative and open way over the coming days to work through this historic investment in infrastructure," said Sinema from the Senate floor with the other negotiators.
Portman touted the bill, saying that the group is "getting it right tonight for the American people, for our economy and for the future of our great country."
Supporters of the bill are hopeful that they can pass the measure by the end of the week, though opponents could use the Senate's rulebook to drag it out if they want to.
Though the bill, named the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, costs an estimated $1.2 trillion over eight years, it includes only $550 billion in new spending. That, according to the White House, includes the largest investment ever by the federal government in public transit and the largest investment ever in clean drinking water and wastewater… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Succession Drama Grips Scholastic: CEO’s Sudden Death, an Office Romance and a Surprise Will (Wall Street Journal)
The longtime head of Scholastic Corp., M. Richard Robinson Jr., died suddenly in June on a walk in Martha’s Vineyard. He left behind a surprising succession plan.
He didn’t give control of the $1.2 billion publisher to either of his two sons, or his siblings, or his ex-wife, with whom he had rekindled a friendship during the pandemic. Instead, control went to Iole Lucchese, Scholastic’s chief strategy officer. She also inherited all his personal possessions.
In the 2018 will, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Robinson described Ms. Lucchese, a 30-year company veteran, as “my partner and closest friend.” Ms. Lucchese and Mr. Robinson had been longtime romantic partners, according to interviews with family members and former employees.
Ms. Lucchese’s sudden emergence as Scholastic’s heir has set in motion a family succession drama at the century-old company—it is one of the world’s largest publishers of children’s books, from the “Harry Potter” novels to the “Magic School Bus” series—and raised questions about its future as an independent concern.
Some family members are unhappy and are reviewing their legal options, people close to the situation said, with concerns running the gamut from wanting to maintain Scholastic’s independence to rawness about an outsider having control of Mr. Robinson’s personal possessions. One possibility is to reach an agreement with Ms. Lucchese to transfer some voting shares to family members or to ensure they get a greater share of the estate, one person said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
The robot apocalypse is hard to find in America's small and mid-sized factories (Reuters)
When researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology visited Rich Gent's machine shop here to see how automation was spreading to America's small and medium-sized factories, they expected to find robots.
They did not.
"In big factories - when you're making the same thing over and over, day after day, robots make total sense," said Gent, who with his brother runs Gent Machine Co, a 55-employee company founded by his great-grandfather, "but not for us."
Even as some analysts warn that robots are about to displace millions of blue-collar jobs in the U.S. industrial heartland, the reality at smaller operations like Gent is far different… (LINK TO FULL STORY)