BG Reads | News You Need to Know (August 30, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors Meeting, Today @Noon -AGENDA
Approval of a resolution authorizing the establishment of the CapitalMetro Transit Police Department
Mayor Adler's State of the City Address - Today @4PM (WATCH ON ATXN)
Austin Council Work Session - Tuesday, 9AM - AGENDA
Joint Meeting of the Austin Council and Travis County Commissioners Court - Tuesday, 9AM - AGENDA
Austin Council Regular Session - Thursday, 10AM - AGENDA
COVID-19: Press Q & A Virtual News Conference - Friday, 10:30AM
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin tightens permitting rules for special events as delta variant spreads (Community Impact)
The Austin Center for Events announced Aug. 27 updated health and safety rules for events permitted through the city, requiring negative COVID-19 tests and more tightened measures developed in coordination with Austin Public Health.
The city first implemented a COVID-19 health and safety form as part of its event permitting process in April with its "Bringing Events Back" guide, requiring a coronavirus safety plan for large events of 1,000 or more people indoors or 2,500-plus people outdoors. Starting Aug. 30, those requirements will be heightened to mandate guests to provide a negative COVID-19 tests taken with 72 hours at the event entrance. Additionally, event coordinators must present strategies for maintaining at least 6 feet of social distancing and set up "mask zones" in areas of outdoor venues where social distancing is not possible.
“The challenge is that we are in an ever-evolving situation. The Austin Center for Events and APH teams are committed to working with event organizers to provide as much information as available to help inform event planning efforts to keep our community safe," said Beth Culver, assistant director of the Austin Development Services Department, in a statement.
Other considerations when evaluating event permits will include whether the event is determined to have an outsize impact on the city's available emergency medical resources. The city recently set a precedent for denying permits for such a reason, alerting the organizers of BatFest that their permit application had been rejected days before the Aug. 28 event was set to take place.
"We do not want to choose between having an event and ... [having] an [intensive care unit] bed available for someone that needs intensive care," said Dr. Desmar Walkes, the Austin-Travis County health authority, at an Aug. 27 news conference… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Council approves co-living project in northwest downtown (Austin Monitor)
City Council said yes to more density in the northwest corner of downtown by voting unanimously Thursday to approve Downtown Mixed-Use (DMU) zoning with a 90-foot height limit for Shoal Cycle, a 210-bed co-living project at 812 W. 11th St.
“I think we all agree that downtown is where density is appropriate,” Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison said. “It’s one of our most – if not the most – walkable, bikeable, transit-friendly parts of town.”
Shoal Cycle is a local example of a nationwide co-living trend in which developers, catering to young urban professionals, offer apartments that are meant to be shared with roommates. Developer Jen Weaver has touted Shoal Cycle as “workforce housing” with a standard rent of $1,400 a month per bedroom. The building itself will offer sustainability features such as solar panels and more parking for bikes than for cars.
Most neighbors who spoke at the meeting supported the project and said it will liven up the neighborhood. “One of the big things that we lack in this little part of downtown is residents,” neighbor Dan Keshet said. “I am surrounded by buildings that were built as houses but are now law firms and professional associations.”
The Old West Austin Neighborhood Association also supported the project. “The board has voted to support this project at the requested height of 90 feet mainly because it’ll advance the longtime neighborhood goals of bringing residents back to the neighborhood,” said Chris Riley, a neighborhood association board member.
The Planning Commission recommended the 90-foot height, while city staffers recommended capping the height at 60 feet – but only because they felt beholden to the decade-old Downtown Austin Plan, which recommends height limits for some areas of downtown… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
After two Austin Police officers die from COVID, department can only guess how many members are vaccinated (KUT)
Two Austin police officers died this week from COVID-19, the first members of the department to die because of the disease. Another three dozen officers have tested positive for the virus.
“While many have had the blessing to be able to work from home, our employees continue to come into the workplace and go out in our community answering emergency calls for service and placing themselves in harms’ way for the benefit of our citizens,” APD Interim Police Chief Joseph Chacon said in a virtual news conference Friday.
Chacon would not say whether the officers who died this week, Senior Officer Randy Boyd and Sgt. Steve Urias, had been vaccinated.
And while other front-line city departments told KUT they are surveying employees about vaccination status, Chacon said his department had not, so he could not accurately say how many police employees had gotten vaccinated.
“It is not mandated and we don’t track,” he said. “We’re highly encouraging all of our employees to get vaccinated.”
But Chacon did wager an estimate, suggesting 50% to 60% of the department was fully vaccinated.
“But that is an estimate,” he said. “We don’t know for sure how many of the employees are vaccinated because we don’t require that and don’t require them to report it.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas abortion law that bans procedure as early as six weeks set to go into effect after court cancels hearing, denies motions (Texas Tribune)
A Texas law that would ban abortions after as early as six weeks is poised to take effect Wednesday, after a federal appellate court's rulings stymied efforts to block the law.
On Friday night, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals canceled a hearing planned for Monday, at which more than 20 abortion providers had hoped to persuade a federal district court in Austin to block the law from taking effect.
Providers have sued to overturn the law, which they say is the nation's strictest and would create what they call a “bounty hunting scheme” in allowing members of the general public to sue those who might have violated the law. The law, Senate Bill 8, would prohibit abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected without specifying a time frame, before many women know they are pregnant… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
EV startup Rivian quietly establishes foothold across Texas as states compete for its next plant (Dallas Morning News)
As a nationwide competition for the next big electric vehicle manufacturing plant from Rivian heated up this summer, the startup was quietly kick-starting developments in major cities across Texas. Rivian will invest at least $7 million in facilities planned for Dallas, Austin and Houston, and it also plans to put charging stations in El Paso, Columbus, Houston and Waco, according to documents filed with the state dating to February. The Irvine, Calif.-based EV startup received a permit to start work on a $2.1 million, 27,500-square-foot facility in Houston that will be near a rail yard and a Toyota processing center, according to state documents. The project is described as a renovation of an existing site that will include auto service equipment for electric vehicles. It’s investing another $2.1 million to renovate a 23,000-square-foot facility at the intersection of Lamar Boulevard and Highway 183 in Austin. The site will include office and auto repair space as well as a car wash.
Rivian also received a permit to perform $2.8 million in renovations to 42,000 square feet of warehouse space near Love Field in Dallas, just across the street from a Tesla service center, according to the documents. That site will be an automotive service center and will include space for a shop, parts storage and offices. And the company is investing more than $500,000 to build charging stations at Sunland Park Mall in El Paso and on H-E-B parking lots in Columbus, Houston and Waco. “At H-E-B, we’re always looking for new, innovative ways to support the needs of our customers while being responsible stewards of our environment,” H-E-B spokeswoman Mabrie Jackson said in a statement. All of Rivian’s Texas projects are slated to be completed by the end of December. Officials at Rivian have not responded to requests to comment on the plans. The Amazon-backed startup has raised around $11 billion in funding to date and is expanding its manufacturing footprint in the U.S. Economic development teams in multiple major cities have put together massive incentive packages to lure the company’s next $5 billion production plant. The city of Fort Worth approved a $440 million tax incentive package for the manufacturer, and at least two other states are reportedly preparing their own packages for Rivian. If Rivian chooses Fort Worth, the economic development deal would be the biggest in state history — eclipsing that of Toyota North America’s corporate relocation to Plano… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
The Texas Bullion Depository, sold as a gold mine for taxpayers, could end up costing millions (Houston Chronicle)
When state lawmakers decided in 2015 that Texas needed to be the only state to have its own precious metals depository, supporters said there were plenty of reasons the project would be a gold mine. The University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Co., which handles the schools’ endowment, owned hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of gold as an investment, stored for a fee in a New York City vault. A state-owned depository “will repatriate $1 billion of gold bullion from the Federal Reserve in New York to Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott said. Citizens, too, were clamoring for an independent-minded location they could trust with their valuables. “When I first presented this, to be honest with you, we got hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the world, really, who wanted to be able to put their gold in something that has the Texas banner above it,” said Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, the bill’s author. “This doesn’t work in Wisconsin, it doesn’t work in Idaho.” Best of all, because the state would find a private partner to build and own the physical depository, it would cost taxpayers nothing. The enterprise would even reap a big profit for Texas. “We estimate that we could raise tens of millions of dollars in fees,” Capriglione testified.
More than three years after the depository opened, none of those things has happened. Yet earlier this year state lawmakers quietly voted to let the state borrow millions of dollars to bail out a project created to fix a problem that didn’t exist, and which they had vowed would cost nothing. “It’s ridiculous,” said Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, one of only two senators to oppose the bill. “I don’t think the State of Texas should be in the commercial real estate business, or the gold bullion business.” The UT/A&M investment company liquidated its gold more than a year ago without moving any bullion back to Texas. A spokeswoman said the agency currently owns no precious metals and so has no need for storage. No other state entity has metal at the Texas depository. In the time since state leaders created the Texas facility, two large private competing depositories have also opened, in Shiner and Dallas. Officials said Texas Bullion Depository is currently less than 10 percent full. Taxpayers, meanwhile, have yet to see a penny from the enterprise. Worse, the state’s partner, Lone Star Tangible Assets, recently revealed it is looking to sell the new facility, placing the state at risk of losing control of the entire enterprise. In response, two months ago legislators gave Comptroller Glenn Hegar permission to borrow up to $20 million to buy it… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
1 death from Hurricane Ida and New Orleans is left without power (NPR)
Hurricane Ida knocked out power to all of New Orleans and inundated coastal Louisiana communities on a deadly path through the Gulf Coast that was still unfolding and promised more destruction.
Forecasters warned of damaging winds, heavy rainfall that could cause flash floods and life-threatening storm surge as Ida continued its rampage Monday through southeastern Louisiana and then moved into Mississippi. It made landfall on the same day 16 years earlier that Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi, and its 150-mph (230 kph) winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the mainland.
Ida was already blamed for at least one death in Louisiana. Deputies with the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office responded to a report of someone injured by a fallen tree at a home in Prairieville outside Baton Rouge and confirmed the death, the office said Sunday on Facebook. The victim was not identified.
The power outage in New Orleans, meanwhile, heightened the city's vulnerability to flooding and left hundreds of thousands of people without air conditioning and refrigeration in sweltering summer heat… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
How Larry Elder upended the California recall (NBC News)
He calls himself the “Sage from South Central.” Critics call him “the Black face of white supremacy.” And Californians may soon call him “Governor.” Larry Elder — longtime radio host, first-time candidate — is a right-wing provocateur who hasn’t run for office since the fifth grade. But he’s beating a crowded field of politicians at their own game, emerging as an unlikely Republican front-runner in California’s coming recall election. Polls show a dead heat among likely voters over whether to remove Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office on Sept. 14. And Elder, who probably could never win in liberal California under normal circumstances, is far ahead of the 45 other replacement candidates, even though only about a quarter of the electorate supports him. “I used to go on Fox News a lot,” said businessman John Cox, who was the last GOP nominee against Newsom but is now struggling for attention, even though he campaigns with a giant bear. “They haven’t had me on very much lately, because they’re supporting Larry.”
Elder, much like Donald Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries, has become the black hole at the center of the recall campaign, sucking in more established politicians and mainstream Republicans, whether they like it or not. “Elder is blocking out the sun in the way Trump did,” said Tim Miller, a former GOP strategist who worked on Jeb Bush’s ill-fated presidential campaign and now lives in California. Two other candidates, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, have called on Elder to drop out of the race over comments he has made about women and allegations of domestic abuse, which he has denied. “Larry Elder does not have the character, the judgment, the skill set or the experience to be governor,” Faulconer said Wednesday at a debate that Elder skipped. Some Republican activists have complained that Elder has skipped debates and hasn’t shown up at local events, campaigning instead mainly on the TV and radio shows of fellow conservative talkers. The man who started the effort to remove Newsom from office isn’t a fan. “He’s hoping to skate into office based on his celebrity status alone,” said the recall’s lead proponent, Orrin Heatlie. Newsom’s campaign, which since Day One has tried to portray the recall as a Trumpian takeover of California, has piled on, trying to jolt awake complacent Democratic voters and force independents who might be inclined to support a moderate like Faulconer to pick a side… (LINK TO FULL STORY)