BG Reads | News You Need to Know (August 19, 2022)
[BG PODCAST]
Episode 162: Discussing Austin Entrepreneurship and the Black Leaders Collective with Terry P. Mitchell
Today's (162) episode features Austin community leader and serial entrepreneur, Terry P. Mitchell.
She and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss her path into the business world, and the founding of the Black Leaders Collective-> EPISODE LINK
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[CITY HALL MOVES]
John Lawler has been name Chief of Staff to Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison (District 1). Lawler most recently served in several program coordinating roles with Travis County, including mobile vaccine distribution and census outreach. Prior to that he served as campaign manager for the $250 million 2018 Affordable Housing Bond (Austin’s largest ever), and before that served as Policy Director to then Council Member Greg Casar (District 4).
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin passes record $5 billion budget including $20 living wage for staff and 40% increase in council salaries (Community Impact)
On Aug. 18, Austin City Council approved a $5 billion budget for fiscal year 2022-23 in a 10-1 vote.
The budget included dozens of amendments from city council members, most notably a $20 living wage for city employees and 40% increase in city council members.
Council Member Mackenzie Kelly was the only “no” vote on the overall budget… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin health officials report 93 confirmed monkeypox cases (KVUE)
The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) confirmed Thursday that Texas is set to receive its third round of monkeypox vaccines, with an estimated 12,550 doses for Texas and an additional 5,050 for the City of Houston alone.
"The federal government allocates vaccine to the state and a separate allocation is made directly to Houston," a spokesperson for the DSHS told KVUE on Thursday. "A shipment of 16,340 vials (approximately 81,700 doses) allocated to the state arrived at local health departments late last week and early this week." … (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Pay increase on the horizon for city workers – and for Council members themselves (Austin Monitor)
As City Council finalizes next year’s budget, city workers – including Council members themselves – are in for a pay raise.
Council is set to increase the minimum wage for city workers to $20 per hour after nine members in an informal vote Thursday showed support, with only Council Member Mackenzie Kelly opposed. Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison was off the dais but expressed support in a tweet.
Originally, the minimum wage was set to rise to $18 per hour, per City Manager Spencer Cronk’s proposed budget. But following a push by labor activists and Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, that number rose, first to $22 per hour before settling on $20 per hour.
The pay raise is funded by an unexpected increase in sales tax revenue, leaving the city with an extra $20 million as it hashes out the budget. The raise will cost an estimated $7 million per year.
Around 4,100 workers, roughly a quarter of the city’s workforce, stand to benefit. Those currently making right around $20 per hour will also see their pay increase out of fairness. Council members’ staffers will get raises as well.
In the coming years, the minimum wage for city employees could rise further, up to $27 per hour, if the city follows through on a resolution from June of this year… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Stream plans to make East Sixth Street a ‘safe haven’ for art and music (Austin Business Journal)
Plans to transform Austin’s East Sixth Street are centered on the long-term goal of bolstering the city’s identity as a center of arts and music, according to the project’s developers.
As owners of more than 40 properties on the famed downtown strip between Brazos Street and I-35, Stream Realty Partners LP aims to elevate the three-block area that has a reputation for late-night drunken revelry into a central location that will continue to uphold and preserve the city’s identity as a haven for musicians and artists — with an emphasis on local business and organizations already operating in Austin.
Stream Realty Senior Vice President Caitlyn Ryan told the Austin Arts Commission Aug. 15 that the firm felt a responsibility to improve the street located in the heart of the Central Business District.
“As local Austinites, we thought is was our duty to come here and really create something special,” said Ryan, who is based out of the firm's Austin office at the corner of Congress Avenue and Sixth Street… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Cap Metro struggles to recruit and retain more bus operators (Austin Monitor)
Late last year, Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority raised the starting hourly wage for bus drivers to $22/hour and kicked in a $5,000 signing bonus for qualified candidates with a commercial driver’s license. But despite these perks, the transit organization is having trouble hiring enough bus drivers to fill all available positions.
“Generally, we’re gaining about 10 to 13 operators per month. We really need to be gaining about 15 to 20,” Chief Operating Officer Andrew Skabowski said at Capital Metro’s monthly operations meeting on Monday.
Skabowski told the Austin Monitor that morale issues, challenging driving schedules and salaries are generally the reasons Capital Metro has trouble recruiting and retaining bus operators.
“Pre-pandemic, you walked into a break room and people were playing dominoes and you had a pool table,” he said. “People ate and they joked around …. It was a very family atmosphere,” he said.
Then the pandemic hit. Capital Metro needed to rework the schedule to limit the number of people in the break room, and the pool table was removed. But now that Covid-19 cases are more under control, Capital Metro is working on “trying to get a little bit back to that family atmosphere,” Skabowski said. They’re also planning on bringing back the pool table… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin Trail of Lights will be back on foot for 2022 (Austin American-Statesman)
Stretch your calves and dig out your jingle bells. Austin Trail of Lights, the city’s annual holiday light path in Zilker Park, will return to its traditional format this year, organizers revealed Thursday.
When the coronavirus pandemic began, the event transitioned to a modified drive-thru version to allow for social distancing. (No carnival rides, no eating a funnel cake under the watchful eyes of 2 million little lights.) For the 58th annual edition, running Dec. 8-23 this year, Austin Trail of Lights will welcome visitors for the more familiar walkthrough experience… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
One former and one current state rep are set to get part of lucrative Houston airport contracts (Houston Chronicle)
City Council on Wednesday passed a highly lucrative contract granting food and beverage shops inside Bush Intercontinental Airport to a partnership that includes a former legislative colleague and longtime friend of Mayor Sylvester Turner. Airport concessions contracts, among the most profitable available at City Hall, typically inspire lengthy debate and often a fair dose of controversy. That hardly was the case Wednesday, when one 10-year contract was approved unanimously with almost no discussion and a vote on another was delayed for a week. The two deals, offering food, beverage and retail space inside the airport’s newly renovated Terminals D and E, would bring an estimated $116.4 million to the city’s coffers over the next decade. The operators getting the contracts would see far more gross revenue than that.
An affiliate of London-based SSP Group is leading the food and beverage contract approved Wednesday, which will include 16 store fronts. Multiplex Inc., the concessions company founded by former state Rep. Helen Giddings of Dallas, is a 6 percent junior partner in that deal. Giddings has owned the concessions company since 1989. She served for decades with Turner in the Texas House and once said they had desks, offices and Austin condos directly next to each other during their tenure there. The SSP deal also involves Karen Garcia, the wife of Roland Garcia, who chaired the city’s Hispanic Advisory Council for Turner. Garcia held the same role under then-Mayor Annise Parker. Bidding documents show he attended the conference meeting about the bid in September. Karen Garcia’s KHG Consulting LLC is a 5 percent partner in the venture. State Rep. Ana Hernandez, a Houston attorney who served for a decade with Turner before his election to City Hall in 2015, is a 10 percent partner in the retail contract now set for a vote next week, which is headlined by Paradies Lagardère… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Dallas gets $19 million to help residents hit hard by COVID and struggling to pay rent (Dallas Morning News)
Dallas renters struggling to pay their rent can apply for up to 18 months in financial relief thanks to the renewal of a city program to help low-income residents who were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. DHA, formerly called the Dallas Housing Authority, on Thursday announced having received an additional $19 million in funds from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 last month to help people who have lost jobs or income and are behind on rent. Myriam Igoufe, DHA’s chief research and innovation officer, said many residents — especially low-income households — continue to experience long-lasting effects of the pandemic. The new infusion of funds could mean “light at the end of the tunnel” for many renters, helping them gain economic resiliency and avoiding homelessness,” Igoufe said.
“We know that sometimes six months of [rental] assistance is just not enough because of the financial trade-offs and sacrifices that folks have made to be able to keep their head above water.” The first installment of $18 million in federal funds, in 2020, helped about 1,200 renters in three months, Igoufe said. In the last two weeks, DHA has already committed $2.5 million from this second round of funds. Renters who are accepted into the program should expect to get relief within up to a week, Igoufe said. Applications are being taken at dallasrentrelief.com. The program doesn’t cap how much rent relief an applicant can receive each month, but it does limit the number of months a person can receive help. A renter doesn’t have to be delinquent on rent to apply; a self-assessment of one’s risk of homelessness is sufficient, Igoufe said. However, renters must also have a current lease to apply, which means people experiencing homelessness are not eligible. Renters who received money from the program’s first installment in 2020 and 2021 can apply again; however, applicants can only receive a cumulative 18 months of aid. If an applicant already received six months of assistance, they’re eligible for 12 months of support in 2022-23… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
San Antonio’s industrial market is expanding. One example: A $230 million project in China Grove (San Antonio Express News)
San Antonio’s industrial real estate market has long paled in comparison with major Texas distribution hubs such as Houston and Dallas, with relatively little construction of new space. That’s begun changing as the city attracts businesses, its population swells and more manufacturing, warehouse and distribution space is built. “We are becoming a more looked-at market,” said Michael Kent, executive vice president at Stream Realty Partners. “We’ve had a lot of space get built here, and that does tend to help tenants as they’re looking around Texas.” One example: A developer is breaking ground this summer on a sprawling $230 million industrial park in China Grove.
NorthPoint Development’s Foster Commerce Center will include six buildings spanning more than 2.2 million square feet off South Foster Road south of Joe Louis Drive. The Kansas City, Mo.-based company said the project will create more than 1,000 permanent jobs and over $35 million in annual wages, as well as 950 temporary construction jobs. Stream Realty Partners, which is leasing Foster Commerce Center, is expecting interest from food and automotive manufacturers and distributors, Vice President Kevin Cosgrove said. H-E-B operates a distribution center across the road. Stream tracks properties for lease that are owned by investors. In 2012, it tallied 31 million square feet of such space with a vacancy rate of 10 percent. Today, the inventory is up to 55 million square feet while vacancy has fallen to less than 6 percent… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas cattle industry faces existential crisis from historic drought (The Hill)
The megadrought in the Western U.S., the region’s worst in 1,200 years, is threatening America’s cattle heartland: withering pastures, wrecking feed harvests and endangering a quintessential way of life. The drought is forcing ranchers here in Texas and across the Southern plains to make an agonizing decision: Sell early now for less money than they planned on — or hold on, pray for rain and risk losing everything. “We’ll keep selling cows till it rains,” Texas High Plains rancher Jim Ferguson told Amarillo station KAMR, which collaborated with The Hill on this story.
For now, Ferguson is just selling his oldest calves, for which he’ll be able to get the best price. But with no rain in the forecast, and therefore no prospect of lush winter pastures for his herds to eat, “it won’t be long before we start getting into the younger ones.” The drought is echoing through beef supply chains, resulting in higher prices for consumers for at least the next two years — and likely serving as the final blow to many small, family-run cattle herds that represent a key part of the industry. “The lack of water in general, it’s hurting us all the way around. Any way you can think of,” cattle buyer Josh Sturgeon told KAMR, which is owned by The Hill’s parent company, Nexstar Media. Sturgeon had come to auction in search of deals from ranchers such as Ferguson, forced to liquidate their herds for lack of water to grow cattle feeds — or the money to buy them… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Louie Gohmert leaves Congress having passed one law and spread countless falsehoods (Texas Tribune)
In 2010, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert warned the nation from the floor of the House of Representatives about a looming threat: terrorist babies. He described — without providing evidence — a diabolical and far-fetched scheme in which foreign enemies were sending pregnant women to the U.S. to birth babies that would emerge decades later as terrorists.
He found out about it, he said, from a conversation with a retired FBI agent on a flight, even as the FBI said it had no information about any such plot.
He would go on to fight with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper in an interview that went viral as he for nearly 10 minutes refused to answer questions or provide evidence of the claim, while yelling at Cooper for “attacking the messenger.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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