BG Reads | News You Need to Know (December 6, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
Austin City Council Regular Session Agenda (Thursday at 10AM)
NOTE: This will be the final Regular Session of 2021.
[BINGHAM GROUP]
In sports news, A.J.’s Demon Deacons (Wake ‘04) will take on the Aggies on December 31.
Wake Forest to battle Texas A&M in Gator Bowl on Dec. 31 in Jacksonville (Winston-Salem Journal)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Land use commissions worry move from City Hall will hurt public participation (Austin Monitor)
In a rare joint meeting, three land use commissions frustrated by an unwelcome move from City Hall grilled city staff last Monday about why meetings will soon be held in the new Permitting and Development Center. The staffers, after hearing a litany of questions and concerns, did not budge.
“This was an administrative decision going back approximately six years when the building was designed,” Assistant City Manager Rodney Gonzales said. Space constraints at City Hall and the idea of the PDC as a “one-stop shop” for development prompted the move, he said. Unless City Council allows them to stay, the Planning Commission, Zoning and Platting Commission, Board of Adjustment and several other bodies must move.
“I’m highly disappointed in this,” ZAP Commissioner David King said. “It seems like this decision is not about serving the public; it’s about serving a particular internal interest of the city staff.”
Commissioners argue the move will decrease public participation since City Hall, they say, is easier to get to than the PDC, which is located in the Highland Mall redevelopment. City Hall, they point out, is better served by transit.
Citizens from South Austin echoed these concerns. “I cannot imagine what it’s going to take for us to get all the way north in the middle of rush hour,” said Ana Aguirre, a community organizer. “It is effectively disengaging an entire South Austin community.”
After public comment, Gonzales, planted behind a podium, took questions for over two hours. Though it was clear early on that city staff had made their decision, over a dozen board and commission members shared concerns and asked questions.
Safety is another salient concern, since the Highland area is less active at night, when meetings are held, than downtown. The PDC also does not have a metal detector at the entrance, unlike City Hall. “We piss people off,” Board of Adjustment Member Brooke Bailey said. “I want a metal detector.”
Commissioners are also worried that their inclusion in the “one-stop shop” implies that they serve developers, not the public. Planning Commission Chair Todd Shaw said that City Hall should host the important civic conversations that take place at meetings. “It’s the public’s house,” he said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Council approves creation of civil rights office (Austin Monitor)
The city has created an office to handle civil rights issues tied to existing ordinances covering fair chance hiring, sexual harassment and protections against discrimination.City Council voted unanimously Thursday to create the Office of Civil Rights, with Council Member Mackenzie Kelly abstaining from the vote. The office will have broad options to investigate and take action on civil rights violations and cooperate with other authorities involved in civil rights issues. The ordinance spells out the many considerations and steps involved in making complaints, conducting investigations and resolving cases where violations are found.
Council began the push to create the office in 2018, asking the city manager to assess the city’s ordinances tied to civil rights and recommend how best to enforce and educate the public on civil rights issues. City staff, including the Equity Office, recommended the creation of a central office of civil rights that could handle enforcement of existing ordinances and give direction on new ordinances to provide new protections.
Council Member Greg Casar, who helped lead the effort to create the office, praised recent work by state lawmakers, including Sen. Judith Zaffirini, to extend the timeline to file sexual harassment complaints against employers, and to lower the minimum number of employees for a workplace to fall under laws to prevent sexual harassment.
While giving direction to Carol Johnson, who was recently named as civil rights officer for the city, Casar said, “It goes to show that previously our ordinances only protected someone from sexual harassment if you were in a business with 15 employees or more, and if you were in a business with only 14 you didn’t have that protection. This asks the manager, your office and the community to come together and look for where there are gaps.”
“This doesn’t say how the ordinances should be written or at what thresholds things make sense, but this asks for you all to come back with recommendations for how to stamp out racism in all forms in all places,” he continued. “The ability of having a local office has always given us needed authority … us continuing to lead in that way allows other places to follow.”
The ordinance also removes the handling of civil rights complaints from the purview of the city’s Human Rights Commission… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Huston-Tillotson University President Colette Pierce Burnette will retire in June (KUT)
Huston-Tillotson University President Colette Pierce Burnette has decided to retire this coming summer, she announced in a letter to the campus community Friday.
Burnette was named president of Austin’s only historically black university in 2015. She was the first female president of the university since the merger of Tillotson College and Samuel Huston College. Her last day is June 30.
“My greatest hopes for the University’s future are to maintain forward momentum, continue to radiate as a jewel in the violet crown of Austin and continue transforming the lives of thousands of students and their families as they steadfastly persist towards the great equalizer – their education – earning their degree,” Burnette said in the letter.
During Burnette’s time as president, the university’s endowment increased by more than 55%, the university said in a press release. The university also started a series of new degree programs under her leadership, including programs in environmental justice and STEM fields.
Burnette oversaw several other advancements, including the opening of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in East Austin, the launch of a Master of Business Administration program designed for working people, and a collaboration with Tesla on a manufacturing engineering curriculum. Burnette also helped launch the African American Male Teacher Initiative in partnership with Apple. The initiative provides students pursuing careers in education with scholarships and mentorship.
“Huston-Tillotson University (HT) has been blessed to have Dr. Burnette’s leadership for the past seven years,” Carol McDonald, chair of the university’s board of trustees, said in the press release. “Her vision and perseverance have made HT a stronger, more vibrant, and more visible institution in Austin and beyond.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin EMS Association enters second week of contract negotiations with city (KVUE)
On Monday, the Austin EMS union will be back in the negotiation room for a second week, face to face with City leaders, hoping they can agree on providing hazard pay, increase pay, and reduce mandatory overtime.
Austin EMS Association President Selena Xie said she hopes the union and the City can agree within the first few months of 2022. Their contract ends in September 2022.
Xie said historically low staffing levels and uncompetitive pay rates are hurting the department.
"We do an annual workforce survey and we found such high levels of anxiety, depression and a lot of people thinking about leaving," said Xie.
Xie said 51 medics lefts this year.
"I don't think I even remember seeing a higher number, at least in the last five years," she said.
Xie said the mandatory double-overtime they've grown accustomed to because of their staffing shortage is just one of the problems. Xie said they also do not receive hazard pay, unlike other city employees.
"We definitely have people quit over the issue," said Xie. "We've had one mom, who was a new mom, does not have any family in town and was being asked almost every other weekend to come into work. At this time, child care is actually more expensive than the amount of money she makes."
Xie said Austin-Travis County medics starting pay is $19 an hour. She said, according to their data, 30% of their medics are low-income in Austin… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
California builder buys majority of lots in Kyle community (Austin Business Journal)
A California-based volume homebuilder has scooped up the lion’s share of lots in Kyle’s Anthem Texas master-planned community, with plans to bring more than 900 single family homes to the community.
It marks the arrival of Landsea Homes Corp.(Nasdaq: LSEA) in the Austin metro. Once the purchase is finalized, Landsea Homes will own 60% of the lots in the community. Greg Balen, Texas division president for Landsea Homes, said the company plans to develop some and sell others, although details are scant this early in the process.
Balen said the company expects all of the houses to be detached, market-rate homes. He said they will have a wide range of floor plans and price points, with the smallest offerings being around 1,600 square feet and the largest reaching more than 4,000 square feet.
Landsea Homes has tapped local civil engineer Atwell LLC as its first big consultant on the project. An in-house sales team will eventually bring the homes to market.
Anthem Texas, located along FM 150 just west of I-35, is a 422-acre master planned community, which, all told, will have around 1,500 homes. It will also be home to an elementary school — within Hays Consolidated Independent School District — as well as an amenity center and a small amount of commercial space.
The community is being developed by Kyle 150 LP. Gehan Homes, Perry Homes and Scott Felder Homes have signed on as builders for the community’s first phase, building on homesites ranging from 50 to 60 feet wide.
Kyle saw its population rise by about 63% from 2010 to 2020, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Hays County, where Kyle sits, was the fastest growing Texas county over that span.
Growth in the South Austin suburb is in large part due to its prime location along the Austin-San Antonio corridor. But experts say what used to be a town where some residents settled in by default — unable or unwilling to pay higher housing prices in the bigger cities — has become an economic powerhouse in its own right… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
ERCOT takes more steps to avoid another weather disaster (Houston Chronicle)
The state’s grid manager has formed a new group to ensure that power plants are prepared for severe winter weather as the state tries to avoid a repeat of the catastrophic power failures of last February. The system planning and weatherization group is part of the effort by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, to bolster the grid against extreme weather and meet the burgeoning demand for electricity as the state’s population and economy grow. The group, led by Woody Rickerson, the vice president of planning, will conduct inspections of plants and forecast the state’s power needs and generation capacity required to meet them. Brad Jones, interim CEO of ERCOT, said the grid manager is not only responding to new laws and regulations aimed at improving the reliability of the system following the deadly February storm that knocked out power for millions of Texans, but also to an economic boom that is rapidly increasing demand for electricity.
Power-hunger businesses are moving to Texas, including Tesla’s $1.1 billion automotive factory in Austin, and Samsung’s $17 billion semiconductor factory just outside of Austin. “Texas (power demand) is growing at an extraordinary rate at just under 2 percent annually,” Jones said. “That doesn't sound like much, but it’s an extraordinary amount. Across the nation, there's no other region growing at that rate.” The February storm knocked out about half of the state’s generating capacity, leaving millions of Texans without electricity for days and causing about 200 deaths. In October, the Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT, approved a new rule mandating that power plants weatherize their operations and ERCOT inspect them. If the generators fail to meet the new rules, they face fines of up to $1 million per day per incident. The inspections run from late November through the end of December. ERCOT’s new group, which began hiring staff in the fall, expects to complete the more than 300 inspections of natural gas, nuclear, coal, wind and solar generation by year-end at a cost of around $10 million. “The weatherization program is the cornerstone of the response to (the February) winter storm,” Jones said. “How we improve the grid relies upon how well we can get our generation weatherized. That's why we put such a focus on this effort.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Rep. Dade Phelan trade shots over state response to power grid failure (Houston Chronicle)
Two of the top elected Republicans in Texas traded shots Friday over the state’s response to the February power grid failure, rekindling a feud from earlier this year when House lawmakers rejected a Senate proposal to retroactively lower electricity prices charged during the storm. The bill, a priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, would have required state regulators to reprice billions of dollars in charges racked up by power companies and other retail electric providers during the storm, when regulators raised the cap on wholesale electricity prices. Though the change was aimed at incentivizing generators to funnel more power into the grid, an independent market monitor found that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, had left the higher cap in place for more than two days after the worst period of power outages had passed. Patrick, who slammed the House in March after the bill died, renewed his criticism in a statement published Friday by the Texas Tribune.
“With broad bipartisan support, the Texas Senate passed legislation to require a repricing to return money to ratepayers,” Patrick said. “House leadership refused to allow their members to vote on these issues.” House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican from Beaumont, responded with his own criticism of Patrick. “Lt. Gov Patrick has held his post since 2015 without making the grid a priority, but in only my second month as Speaker it was the House that first demanded action and accountability after the fatal grid collapse,” Phelan said. “The House's approach to grid reform was about saving lives in the future while the motivation behind and who benefits from the Senate's approach remains unclear.” In March, Phelan defended the pricing decisions by ERCOT, the nonprofit that manages the state’s electricity market, arguing that they “were made based on ensuring the reliability of the grid” and “may have saved lives.” He warned that the Senate’s repricing plan was “an extraordinary government intervention into the free market, which may have major consequences for both residential and commercial consumers going forward.” State regulators argued in the spring that the state may not have the authority to reverse the charges, and said providers likely would not pass the savings from repricing down to customers… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
After Texas Democrats’ woeful performance last year, the 2022 race to chair the party is already heating up (Texas Tribune)
The race to chair the Texas Democratic Party is heating up early as the state's Democrats contemplate their future after a disappointing 2020 election — and ahead of a challenging 2022 election.
The current state party leader is Gilberto Hinojosa, who has held the job since 2012 and has indicated he is not going anywhere. But that has not stopped early interest in the race, which will be determined by delegates to the state party's biennial convention next summer.
Kim Olson, the former candidate for agriculture commissioner and Congress, announced Sunday she is running to lead the party, saying the "promise of a Blue Texas has so far fallen short of expectations." Meanwhile, Carroll G. Robinson, chair of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats, is considering a campaign for the job and plans to make an announcement in January. And other names have been discussed as potential candidates with still several months to go before the election.
The stakes are considerable. Texas Democrats have been regrouping after a 2020 election during which they thought they were poised for their biggest breakthrough in recent memory, but they came up woefully short. As they have been licking their wounds, they have had to stare down a daunting 2022 election, with a national environment that is not in their favor and state Republicans using the redistricting process to cement GOP majorities in Austin and Washington, D.C… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Pfizer and Merck Covid-19 pills are coming soon in the U.S., but other countries will have to wait (Wall Street Journal)
Promising Covid-19 treatment pills are likely to take longer to reach patients in low- and middle-income countries than in rich ones because of manufacturing and pricing obstacles, despite efforts by drugmakers to make them more available, drug-access advocates and public-health experts say.
The pills promise to keep people who get infected from developing severe disease that requires hospitalization. They are already in use in the U.K. and nearing regulatory clearance in the U.S.
The medicines are set to play a central role in the world’s fight against Covid-19 and could become even more important if, as some scientists fear, vaccines turn out to be less effective against the new Omicron variant. Researchers say the pills are likely to be less affected by Omicron’s mutations than most leading Covid-19 vaccines.
Yet drug-access advocates and public-health experts express concern that the pills will arrive months later in poor countries and delay treating people, similar to the way the world’s vaccination campaign has left many in poor countries unvaccinated after wealthy governments bought much of the early supply… (LINK TO FULL STORY)