BG Reads | News You Need to Know (October 5, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Prop B: City to vote on East Austin parkland swap (Austin Monitor)
Not one City Council district met its affordable housing production goals for 2020, according to the most recent annual scorecard released by nonprofit HousingWorks Austin. The report comes as soaring rents and home prices drive the need for more affordable housing in the city.
The nonprofit, in a joint press release with the city’s Housing and Planning Department, acknowledged that the city is “progressing slowly” toward meeting its goals outlined in the Austin Strategic Housing Blueprint, a 10-year plan that sets a goal of creating 60,000 units priced for those making 80 percent of the median family income or less.
Since Council adopted the plan in 2017, 7,010 total units have been built – only 12 percent of the 10-year goal – meaning the city is nearly 11,000 units behind where it should be.
This is the third scorecard released so far. The scorecards from 2019 and 2018 can be found here. Scorecards also include data on the units produced across different levels of affordability, showing that the city is furthest behind on units affordable to those making less than 30 percent MFI.
While the city itself produces only a fraction of all affordable housing in Austin, it plays a big role in how much affordable housing can be built. Council has purview over many policies that affect affordable housing production, such as land use regulation, and various city departments implement these policies and help decide how to spend money that goes toward affordable housing.
Not everyone thinks the blueprint’s goals are reasonable. Council Member Alison Alter, who represents District 10 in West Austin, called the annual targets “aspirational” in a statement to the Austin Monitor. “I believe the goals for my district were never grounded in a reasonable assessment of the number of units we could create with our existing tools,” she said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Montopolis Bridge in East Austin could get $7 million in amenities and visual improvements (KUT)
An 83-year-old East Austin bridge with a view of the downtown skyline could get some major aesthetic upgrades under a project being considered by the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority.
The Montopolis Bridge was opened to traffic in 1938 to replace an older crossing washed away by deadly floods three years earlier.
The Montopolis Bridge served as a crossing for cars and trucks over the Colorado River until 2018 when it was converted for pedestrians and cyclists as part of the 183 South project, a $743 million plan that added three tolled lanes in each direction between U.S. 290 and Texas 71.
CTRMA already made several improvements to the bridge including a fresh coat of paint, a new bridge rail on the east side and a new layer of asphalt on the bridge deck.
Now, the CTRMA Board of Directors is considering whether to spend up to $7.1 million to add seating, lighting, shade structures, interpretive signs sharing the history of the bridge and various other improvements. The project would come with annual maintenance and inspection costs of more than $100,000 per year.
The campaign to educate voters about Proposition B can be found at GrowAustinParks.com. Here’s the gist of the argument:
“Austin’s parks are being loved to death. Many of Austin’s parks are overcrowded, especially on the weekends. With Austin’s rapid growth, and the stress it places on our existing park system, we should prioritize new parkland acquisition. A vote for Proposition B would add more parkland at once than any time in the last 65 years. We need to plan now so that future generations have public land available to enjoy as well.”
Ted Siff, who has worked on land conservation and parks issues for many years, is one of the top donors to the Grow Austin Parks political action committee. He told the Austin Monitor that the planned land swap envisioned trading the maintenance facility site for “critically important parkland that fills in the donut hole in the existing John Treviño Park.”
Oracle is offering $17 million in addition to the cost of the land, which would be used to develop a new maintenance facility and convert another maintenance facility on Festival Beach back into parkland.
Of course, anyone can bid on the nine acres, but no bidder is likely to come up with a better offer than Oracle.
According to the Oct. 1 Grow Austin Parks PAC filing, Oracle America has donated $250,000 to the campaign. Mykle Tomlinson, Prop B campaign manager, said Monday the campaign has a Facebook page with an educational film on it.
Treviño was Austin’s first Mexican American City Council member. He served from 1975-1988, including a stint as mayor in 1983 after Carole Keeton McClellan resigned to join the State Board of Insurance… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Crowds, no masks: What Austin City Limits means for COVID spread (AXIOS)
Masks were few and far between at the first weekend of Austin City Limits Music Festival, despite organizers' best efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Driving the news: But attendees may notice changes during the second weekend, an Austin Public Health official told Axios on Monday.
Austin environmental health officers were onsite during the festival and "identified additional opportunities for mask-zone education and enforcement for weekend 2," an agency spokesperson said in an email.
Those modifications could mean additional signage and announcements at stages and other crowded areas, Austin Public Health explained.
What they're saying: "We recognize the challenge and commend ACL organizers for checking for negative COVID tests and/or proof of vaccine at ALL entrances including VIP as well as proper enforcement of masking indoors," the Austin Public Health spokesperson said in an email.
"Additionally, for any issues that were identified over the weekend, we appreciate how fast ACL staff responded to concerns from Austin Public Health."
Why it matters: Austin is within the threshold for stage 3 coronavirus guidelines, but officials have held off on making the move to the loosened restrictions. It's unclear what this past weekend's crowds will mean for the city's COVID-19 cases and a return to stage 3 guidelines… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Pandemic's drain on education could become economic problem for Texas (Austin American-Statesman)
More than 1 million Texans lost jobs seemingly overnight and the state’s unemployment rate nearly quadrupled when the coronavirus pandemic first slammed the economy early last year. But a less visible impact of the pandemic — a steep decline in educational attainment by Texas students amid the crisis — might end up having even bigger negative economic consequences long term, according to the state’s top public school official. “This is the largest problem facing the state of Texas — the problem of making sure that our citizenry is educated to take advantage of the opportunities" generated by the economy in the future, said Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, speaking Monday at a Texas Association of Business policy conference in downtown Austin.
Morath, who made his comments during a panel discussion on the Texas workforce, said the percentage of third graders in the state who meet grade-level proficiency in reading and math has dropped precipitously since the start of the pandemic. “It is the largest decline in student knowledge in numeracy and literacy that has quite possibly ever occurred in the history of the state of Texas," Morath said. The drop “in student proficiency in mathematics and literacy is as significant as anything we have ever seen.” The link between education and issues such as job prospects and earning potential means the blow dealt to public education by the pandemic will have substantial repercussions if the declines aren't reversed, both for individual Texans and the state overall, he said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
COVID spurs 'white hot' market for land across Houston region (Houston Chronicle)
COVID-19 has kicked off a land rush in Houston driven by demand for housing and the ecommerce boom. Some 17,000 acres of tracts greater than about 250 acres have sold across the Houston area since the pandemic began in early 2020, and another 19,000 acres are under contract, said veteran land brokers Kirk Laguarta and Duane Heckman of Land Advisors Organization, a brokerage and advisory services company with 22 offices across the country, including Houston. By comparison, 6,000 acres sold in 2018. The combined acreaage would be enough to accommodate 70,000 single-family residences.
“There’s just a big land grab going on because of COVID,” Laguarta said. “The market is starting to push farther out.” Laguarta and Heckman spoke last week at Land Advisors Organization’s 2021 Land & Housing Forecast at the Westin Hotel Houston Memorial City. More than 200 people attended. Demand for land is “running white hot” and is the strongest the brokers have seen in more than 30 years, the brokers said. Builders started nearly 37,000 houses in the Houston area in 2020, a 20 percent jump from 2019, according to housing information firm Zonda. They are projected to start between 39,500 and 41,500 homes in the Houston region in 2021, according to Zonda. Next year, starts are projected to total 35,000 to 40,000. Millennials who want more space and a better life-work balance are buying houses in big numbers, the brokers said. Many who saw their parents lose home equity — if not homes — during the Great Recession of more than a decade ago are coming around to buying homes, rather than renting, Laguarta said. “They’re doing everything the baby boomers did, just about 10 years later in their life cycle,” Laguarta said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Doctors grow frustrated over COVID-19 denial, misinformation (Associated Press)
The COVID-19 patient's health was deteriorating quickly at a Michigan hospital, but he was having none of the doctor's diagnosis. Despite dangerously low oxygen levels, the unvaccinated man didn't think he was that sick and got so irate over a hospital policy forbidding his wife from being at his bedside that he threatened to walk out of the building. Dr. Matthew Trunsky didn’t hold back in his response: “You are welcome to leave, but you will be dead before you get to your car,’” he said. Such exchanges have become all-too-common for medical workers who are growing weary of COVID-19 denial and misinformation that have made it exasperating to treat unvaccinated patients during the delta-driven surge.
The Associated Press asked six doctors from across the country to describe the types of misinformation and denial they see on a daily basis and how they respond to it. They describe being aggravated at the constant requests to be prescribed the veterinary parasite drug Ivermectin, with patients lashing out at doctors when they are told that it's not a safe coronavirus treatment. An Illinois family practice doctor has patients tell him that microchips are embedded in vaccines as part of a ploy to take over people's DNA. A Louisiana doctor has resorted to showing patients a list of ingredients in Twinkies, reminding those who are skeptical about the makeup of vaccines that everyday products have lots of safe additives that no one really understands. When patients tell Dr. Vincent Shaw that they don’t want the COVID-19 vaccine because they don’t know what’s going into their bodies, he pulls up the ingredient list for a Twinkie. “Look at the back of the package,” Shaw, a family physician in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “Tell me you can pronounce everything on the back of that package. Because I have a chemistry degree, I still don’t know what that is.” He also commonly hears patients tell him they haven’t done enough research about the vaccines. Rest assured, he tells them, the vaccine developers have done their homework. Then there are the fringe explanations: “They’re putting a tracker in and it makes me magnetic.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Can a post office be a bank? New services test a progressive priority (NBC News)
The U.S. Postal Service has quietly begun offering a handful of new or expanded financial services in four cities, a potential first step toward a return to postal banking, which advocates say could help rescue the agency's finances and assist millions of people who have limited or no access to the banking system. Tatiana Roy, a spokesperson for the Postal Service, said in an email that the pilot program — a collaboration between the Postal Service and the American Postal Workers Union — began Sept. 13 and that it aligns with the goals set out in the 10-year plan the Postal Service announced in May. Postal banking was not explicitly called for in the plan, which Roy said would help the agency "achieve financial sustainability and service excellence," but it is a longtime desire of progressive politicians and advocates whose attempts to push it through Congress in recent years have been met with little success.
It would require an act of Congress to re-establish postal banking beyond the limited services the Postal Service is beginning to test, but the pilot program could act as a proof of concept. New services include check cashing, bill paying, ATM access, expanded and improved money orders and expanded wire transfers. All Postal Service locations in Washington, D.C.; Falls Church, Virginia; Baltimore; and the Bronx, New York, are participating. Mark Dimondstein, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, said the test run was "a small step in a very positive direction." “We view expanded services as a win for the people of the country, a win for the Postal Service itself, because it will bring in new revenue, and, of course, a win for the postal workers who are extremely dedicated to the mission," Dimondstein said in a phone interview. Check cashing is the biggest change in services the Postal Service provides. Customers can use payroll or business checks to buy single-use gift cards worth up to $500. Checks larger than $500 will not be accepted. Many people do not have easy access to banks, but most can find a post office. Sixty-nine percent of U.S. census tracts with post office retail locations — representing 60 million people — do not have community bank branches, according to a study published in May by the University of Michigan… (LINK TO FULL STORY)