BG Reads | News You Need to Know (October 1, 2021)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Joseph Chacon confirmed as Austin police chief (Community Impact)
Austin Police Department veteran Joseph Chacon was confirmed as the city's next police chief in a 9-2 City Council vote Sept. 30, following a marathon hearing before city officials.Council's affirmation of Chacon's appointment by City Manager Spencer Cronk came one week after the then-interim chief was tapped to permanently take over as Austin's top cop.
The final vote came after an extended council deliberation in closed session followed by more than two hours of public questioning running late into the evening, during which officials grilled Chacon on his management of the department, policing reforms, staffing and training, violence in the city, and community trust.
Heading into the Thursday council meeting several members stated their minds had yet to be made up on which way to vote. In the end, district 6 Council Member Mackenzie Kelly—who had announced her stance against Chacon's appointment last week—and District 10 Council Member Alison Alter were the dissenting votes on the dais.
Chacon takes charge of a department under scrutiny by many in the community through a year-plus process of "reimagining" public safety, including the pause and reboot of the city's cadet training process. The approval of a record police budget, concern over officers' handling of last year's protests, and APD's response to non-emergency calls are among other issues recently highlighted during Chacon's interim tenure and referenced by council members Thursday night… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Waterloo Park gets permission to sell alcohol (Austin Monitor)
Vendors will now be able to serve alcohol at Waterloo Park on a day-to-day basis following a decision Tuesday by the Planning Commission to approve a conditional use alcohol sales permit.
“Waterloo Greenway looks forward to hosting many Austin community events and concerts that will offer food and beverage concessions,” said Melissa Ayala with Waterloo Greenway, the park’s nonprofit conservancy.
Since the park’s reopening in August, alcohol has been served during concerts at Moody Amphitheater but only with temporary permits. Now, licensed food trucks and event vendors can sell alcohol without the need for a temporary permit.
Ayala said the park has two spaces for resident local food trucks and that these vendors could sell alcohol “on a daily basis if ancillary to public programming and recreational use.”
The park plans to limit alcohol consumption to three areas: the Moody Amphitheater and the Great Lawn, where large concerts and other events take place; Lebermann Plaza, a smaller amphitheater-style event space; and the food truck plaza and deck area. Ayala said that the park will enforce these rules using “architectural barriers, signage and staffing.”
Per city code, park visitors are not allowed to bring or consume their own alcoholic beverages in city parks.
The Parks and Recreation Board also reviewed the park’s request to serve alcohol, voting 7-1 to recommend approval of the conditional use permit.
The straightforward approval of alcohol sales at Waterloo Park stands in contrast to the parks board’s repeated rejection of alcohol sales at Zilker Cafe, whose proximity to Barton Springs made commissioners wary of offering alcohol there. The Planning Commission will get the final say on that case on either Oct. 12 or 26… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
John Mackey to retire as Whole Foods CEO (Austin Business Journal)
Whole Foods Market Inc. co-founder and CEO John Mackey will retire next year, he announced Sept. 30.
Mackey, who co-founded Whole Foods in 1980 and led the company through its $13.7 billion acquisition by Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) in 2017, will step down on Sept. 1, 2022.
Whole Foods Chief Operating Officer Jason Buechel will take over as CEO after Mackey's departure, according to the announcement.
"I’ve often explained my relationship to the company with a parent-child metaphor. As a parent, I have always loved Whole Foods with all my heart. I have done my best to instill strong values, a clear sense of higher purpose beyond profits, and a loving culture that allows the company and all our interdependent stakeholders to flourish," Mackey wrote. "All parents reach a time when they must let go and trust that the values imparted will live on within their children. That time has nearly come for me and for Whole Foods."
It’s a major change for a company that was a pioneer in organic and natural food and has had a huge impact on the Austin business scene, from investing in startups to catapulting countless food businesses to national recognition. It has more than 500 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Whole Foods is one of the largest employers in Austin, with more than 3,000 local employees at last check, according to Austin Business Journal research.
Mackey personally selected Buechel to serve as his successor, he wrote. The COO has also served as Whole Foods' global vice president, chief information officer and executive vice president. Mackey described Buechel as "extraordinarily intelligent with unusually high integrity."
"Many people can go their entire lives without ever discovering their higher purpose, but I was lucky enough to discover mine back in 1976 when I was living in a vegetarian co-op named Prana House in Austin – two years before we first opened Safer Way," Mackey wrote, referencing the Safer Way grocery store that served as the precursor to Whole Foods. "My food consciousness was first awakened at Prana and I began to discover what I was called to do in this life. How fortunate I have been to live in such a fulfilling way.
Mackey's retirement follows the 2016 departure of former co-CEO Walter Rabb, who has since formed investment group Stonewall Robb Advisors and remains an active investor in Austin… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
How to get to the 2021 Austin City Limits Music Festival (KUT)
You have proof of being fully vaccinated or testing negative for COVID-19 within the last 72 hours, and you're ready to converge on Zilker Park with thousands of others determined to enjoy the first Austin City Limits Music Festival since the pandemic.
Now you just need to get there. Possibly in the rain.
Roads around Zilker Park will be closed. Traffic will be heavy, especially in the evenings. Some Capital Metro routes will be detoured.
The city says no parking will be allowed at Zilker Park or the surrounding neighborhoods, so here are some other ways to get to the festival grounds… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas nursing homes turn to state for help with staffing woes as vaccine mandate looms (Texas Tribune)
Texas nursing homes, crippled by a pandemic that ravaged their residents and decimated their workforce, are asking the state for $400 million in federal coronavirus relief to address a staffing crisis in the system that cares for the state’s oldest and most fragile residents.
Adding to the urgency is the fact that 40% of the state’s 100,000 nursing home employees aren’t vaccinated against COVID-19 and they could face a federal ultimatum to do so later this month.
Industry advocates fear the federal vaccination mandate could mean the potential exodus of tens of thousands of workers from facilities across the state before Halloween.
“We know we are going to lose additional staff when that vaccine mandate comes out,” said Becky Anderson, head of clinical operations for Focused Post Acute Care Partners, which runs 31 nursing homes and employs about 2,500 workers in Texas. “We just have some staff that are very adamant that they will not get the vaccine.’”
The federal rule comes at a time when the industry is already struggling with a shrinking workforce due to burnout, low pay, increased expenses related to the pandemic, and competition from other health care providers, administrators say.
Gov. Greg Abbott has vowed to fight any vaccine mandates in Texas.
According to recent surveys by the Texas Health Care Association and LeadingAge Texas, two nursing home industry groups in Texas, facilities across the state have seen a 12% decrease in their workforce in the last year. At least one-third of survey respondents are turning away new admissions due to staffing shortages, the survey says… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
GOP lawmakers swear new Texas redistricting maps are 'race blind,' as they did a decade ago (Houston Chronicle)
Over the past week, Democrats have peppered state Sen. Joan Huffman with questions about the racial and ethnic composition of newly drawn political districts. The Houston Republican, the chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee, did not have answers — but that was on purpose. “We drew these maps race blind,” Huffman said, making an argument she is likely to repeat multiple times over the coming weeks. “We have not looked at any racial data as we drew these maps.” Still, there are clear racial implications in the proposed maps, which have so far been released for the 38 Texas congressional districts, the Texas House and Senate, and the state Board of Education. The congressional and Senate maps have drawn the most attention for their changes, as advocates accused lawmakers of intentionally packing Black and Hispanic voters into already-Democratic districts to shore up Republican districts elsewhere.
Texas’ 4 million-person population growth over the past decade has been driven almost entirely by people of color, especially Latinos, but the proposed maps for the state Senate and Congress do not create any new districts where those voters are a majority. The state Senate’s draft redistricting map takes one away. The result: While Texas has roughly equal proportions of Latino and Anglo residents, there are twice as many majority-Anglo congressional districts in the state (19) as Hispanic -majority districts (9) in the Republican-proposed maps — a disparity that grows wider in the new map, according to an analysis by the Texas Hearst Data Visualization Team. “The people that are in power know where the Anglo voters are,” said Renea Hicks, an Austin attorney who represented Democrats in the last redistricting court battle.
“And so they created districts to advantage Anglo voters across the state. They had to have done it purposely. If you threw darts, you couldn't accidentally give that much power to Anglo voters.” The “race-blind” argument is not a new one, and a similar assertion was central to Republican lawmakers’ defense during the last redistricting battle a decade ago. In 2011, then-Deputy Attorney General David Schenck said the state would prove “race-blind voting patterns” as it fought legal challenges to the maps GOP legislators had drawn, the Texas Tribune reported at that time… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
The 2nd-largest racial group in the U.S. is 'some other race.' Most are Latino (NPR)
For Leani García Torres, none of the boxes really fit. In 2010, she answered U.S. census questions for the first time on her own as an adult. Is she of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin? That was easy. She marked, "Yes, Puerto Rican." But then came the stumper: What is her race? "Whenever that question is posed, it does raise a little bit of anxiety," García Torres explains. "I actually remember calling my dad and saying, 'What are you putting? I don't know what to put.' " The categories the once-a-decade head count uses — "White," "Black" and "American Indian or Alaska Native," plus those for Asian and Pacific Islander groups — have never resonated with her. "It's tricky," the Brooklyn, N.Y., resident by way of Tennessee says. "Both of my parents are from the island of Puerto Rico, and we're just historically pretty mixed. If you look at anyone in my family, you wouldn't really be able to guess a race. We just look vaguely tanned, I would say."
In the end, for both the 2010 and 2020 counts, García Torres settled with checking off a box called "Some other race." And last year, so did Frank Alvarez of Los Angeles, who says when people ask, he identifies as Guatemalan American. "I just identify with my ethnicity. Growing up, we were in a very traditional Guatemalan home," says Alvarez, who adds he was disappointed not to see "Hispanic" or "Guatemalan" as an option for the race question.
"I almost wanted to just skip that question, to be honest." Nationwide, some 45 million Latinos did not identify last year with any of what the federal government considers to be the major racial groups, and they were recorded as "Some other race" after either just marking that box or writing in a response that the bureau sorted into that category. In recent decades, many immigrants have also come to see "Some other race" as their preferred check box, especially people with roots in the Middle East or North Africa (whom the U.S. government categorizes as "White") or from Afro-Caribbean groups. Altogether totaling close to 50 million — or more than 1 in 7 people living in the U.S. — their numbers helped the catchall category rise through the ranks of census results. What was once the country's third-largest racial category in 2000 and 2010 outpaced "Black" last year to become the second-largest after "White" — and a major data problem that could hinder progress towards racial equity over the next 10 years… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
No deal: House delays infrastructure vote (The Hill)
House Democratic leaders late Thursday postponed a vote yet again on the bipartisan infrastructure bill amid threats from progressives to tank it as leverage for a separate, larger package to expand social safety net programs.
After a long day of meetings between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the warring centrist and progressive factions of the caucus, as well as with White House staff, Democrats opted to delay a vote planned for Thursday rather than allow an embarrassing public failure on the House floor.
A notice from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's (D-Md.) office issued shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday confirmed that there would be no further votes for the night. The House is expected to reconvene Friday morning as the negotiations continue.
Pelosi, leaving the Capitol just after midnight on Friday, suggested the infrastructure vote will take place later in the day.
"There'll be a vote today," she said. When pressed if the vote is definitive, however, she left some wiggle room: "We'll see."
Democratic leadership and the White House were hoping they could reach an agreement on a framework for the larger reconciliation bill that would convince House progressives to vote for the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill. Progressives worry that if they help pass the bipartisan bill before the reconciliation framework is agreed upon, centrists won't help them pass the reconciliation bill packed with progressive priorities.
But as the night wore on, a deal on a framework with two key Democratic centrists, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), remained elusive despite haggling with top White House staff. And progressives made clear they were still dug in.
"I don't see a deal tonight. I really don't," Manchin said as he left the meeting with top White House staff in the Capitol basement shortly before 10 p.m.
Manchin maintained that he's still pushing for a top-line spending figure of $1.5 trillion for the social benefit package — less than half the current $3.5 trillion… (LINK TO FULL STORY)