BG Reads | News You Need to Know (July 19, 2022)
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FUNDRAISER FOR KIRK WATSON
Join Bingham Group CEO A.J. and co-hosts at Native Hostel this Thursday (5:30PM to 7:30PM) for a fundraiser in support of Austin mayoral candidate Kirk Watson.
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[AUSTIN METRO]
Historic Preservation Office aims to replace 40-year-old preservation plan by next fall, with a focus on equity (Austin Monitor)
Austin’s Historic Preservation Office has taken on a new project to tackle equity issues, with ambitions to overhaul the city’s preservation plan for the first time since 1981.
In a briefing to the Historic Landmark Commission, staff reported that the Equity-Based Historic Preservation Plan is halfway through its two-year development period. To complete its second phase, the team is requesting $300,000 in funding from City Council.
The new plan will formalize a number of policy directives to address implicit biases in the historic zoning process that exclude marginalized communities. It will also address challenges wrought by Austin’s rapid growth, proposing economic incentive policies staff members hope could level the playing field against the speculative real estate market.
“We want the preservation plan to be equity based and community focused and really dig into some essential questions,” said project manager Cara Bertron. “How can we better recognize, preserve, and share important places and stories? How can preservation policies address issues like affordability, displacement and sustainability?”
Discriminatory zoning practices date back nearly a century, with the 1928 City Master Plan’s delineation of a negro district that would go on to suffer decades of severe underfunding. Between their exclusion from the housing market via redlining and subjection to industrial zoning and urban “renewal” projects, many black and Latino communities were denied the financial security needed to establish roots. At times the displacement was quite literal, as in the case of Interstate 35 and MoPac Expressway, both of which tore down large swaths of historic neighborhoods to accommodate growing traffic… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin-area housing inventory tops 2 months (Austin Business Journal)
Austin's housing market has more inventory than it has had since November 2019 — a welcome sign in a city struggling to keep up with demand.
The Austin area's housing inventory reached 2.1 months in June, according to the Austin Board of Realtors' June 2022 Central Texas Housing Market Report. The inventory is the result of an increase in active listings combined with dipping home sales.
“These numbers are a breath of fresh air for a housing market that has been holding its breath,” ABOR President Cord Shiflet stated in an an announcement. “The trajectory of our market over the last two years was unsustainable and it was in no way going to last. The resurgence of activity after the Covid-19 pandemic, historically low interest rates and massive job growth created record-high housing demand in our market. We are now seeing a move more towards pre-pandemic sales activity and inventory.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Planning Commission postpones decision on parkland fees for commercial development (Austin Monitor)
Should new commercial developments contribute land and/or money for new parks? If so, how? These were the questions the Planning Commission considered last Tuesday related to a proposed rule that would make would make offices, retail, hotels and industrial buildings include on-site park space or pay a fee to fund new parks nearby.
The push for commercial parkland dedication builds on the city’s existing parkland dedication ordinance for residential development. The commercial version works in a similar way, using a formula to estimate increased demand for parks resulting from development:
The commercial requirement would use the current formula of 9.4 acres of parkland per 1,000 new users of the parks system. The commercial uses would be calculated based on the number of employees per square foot, discounted by hours of operation, occupancy rate, and commuter percentage rates.
The idea for commercial parkland dedication first came from the Parks and Recreation Board. The board voted in 2020 and again in 2022 to recommend City Council adopt the policy. In April, Council began the process to put the policy into city code.
The fee-in-lieu is tied to the cost of land for new parks and is updated every year as land values change. Last year, skyrocketing land prices caused the residential fee to double, drawing criticism from housing affordability advocates who argued that the fee would increase the cost of building and, therefore, the price of new homes.
While commercial fees wouldn’t be passed on to renters and homebuyers in the same way, they still came under criticism Tuesday for increasing the cost of building.
“This study just came out showing that Austin has the highest fees in the state by far when it comes to residential construction,” Commissioner Greg Anderson said. “It looks like we’re trying to do the same to commercial, office with the same broken formula… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin to end contracts with homeless services nonprofit that runs ARCH shelter (KXAN)
The city of Austin will end its contracts with Front Steps, a homeless services nonprofit that manages the city’s Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, or ARCH, in downtown Austin, a spokesperson confirmed Monday.
A city spokesperson said Austin Public Health made this decision after city staff met with Front Steps’ board of directors about “organizational challenges faced by the nonprofit.” A third-party consultant helped guide this decision.
“After much discussion, the Board has identified a need for an intensive strategy and reimagining of the organization to better prepare its staff and leaders to provide Homeless services in the wake of the pandemic. While Front Steps redefines its operations, the City has determined that all Front Steps contracts will be discontinued no later than September 30, 2022,” a city statement read… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Community Development Commission pushes for affordability at Statesman project site (Austin Monitor)
The Community Development Commission has asked City Council to require significant affordable housing be located on-site for the planned unit development for the former Austin American-Statesman property that is being led by Endeavor Real Estate Group.
The commission voted unanimously last week to resend its December 2021 resolution to Council, which called for the project to have 20 percent of its housing units priced at affordable levels. In ongoing talks for the project, which received a unanimous first reading approval from Council in April, Endeavor has asked to make fee-in-lieu payments that would allow for it to provide equivalent to 4 percent of the units at affordable prices, with those units constructed off-site at a to-be-determined location.
Commissioner Karen Paup, who also sits on the South Central Waterfront Advisory Board, said those changes from the 20 percent goals established for the project early on would make the area accessible almost exclusively to wealthy residents.
“The developer has presented the idea of not providing the housing on-site but giving the city money, which would indicate the city could use it to provide housing elsewhere since the city wouldn’t be able to buy into the private developers’ property,” she said. “The developer is talking about giving something that is 4 percent or maybe a little less than that. So it’s low on the number of units and then instead of fulfilling the promise the the South Central Waterfront has made that it’s a place for everybody and would include some low-cost housing … the units would be all off-site.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas power plants are running nonstop amid record-breaking heat (Bloomberg)
As searing Texas heat drives power demand to record highs, the state’s grid operator is ordering plants to run at a historic pace, often forcing them to put off maintenance to keep cranking out electricity. That’s helped keep the lights on, for now, but the short-term focus is putting even more stress on a system that’s already stretched near the limit. Twice in the past week, officials have called on Texans to limit electricity use during scorching afternoons as demand inched perilously close to overwhelming supply. Now, there are growing concerns over how long power plants can maintain the grueling pace as they run nonstop, according to Michele Richmond, executive director of Texas Competitive Power Advocates, a generator industry group. “Things are going to break,” she said. “We have an aging fleet that’s being run harder than it’s ever been run.”
To meet the surge in power demand, ERCOT, the grid operator, is leaning heavily on a mechanism called reliability unit commitments to ensure there’s enough supply. Plants are being regularly ordered to go into service, or remain in operation, and skip any scheduled maintenance. The measure also overrides shutdowns for economic factors or any other issues. And ERCOT is using the rule more than ever before as the state battles bout after bout of extreme weather. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, as the operator is formally known, called for 2,890 hours of reliability unit commitments system-wide in the first half of this year. That’s more than triple the 801 hours in the first half of 2021, according to data from ERCOT’s independent market monitor provided by Richmond. For all of 2020, there were 224 commitments hours. The problem is that deferring repairs now will likely come back to haunt power-plant owners, Richmond said. “If you put off preventative maintenance because it’s needed for reliability, it increases the chances you’ll need a more comprehensive outage” later on as plants start to malfunction, she said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas state police launch internal review of Uvalde response (Associated Press)
The Texas Department of Public Safety announced Monday an internal review into the actions of state police who had dozens of troopers and agents on the scene during a slow and chaotic response to the Uvalde elementary school massacre. The review comes as a damning new 80-page report released over the weekend by the Texas House revealed wide failures by all levels of law enforcement. The findings put more than 90 state troopers at Robb Elementary School during the May 24 tragedy. It is the first time Texas DPS has said it would examine the actions of its own officers in the two months since the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. Texas DPS said in a statement the review would "determine if any violations of policy, law, or doctrine occurred" during the response to the attack that killed 19 children and two teachers in a fourth-grade classroom. It said the review was launched last week.
Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw has previously called the law enforcement response to the shooting an "abject failure." He has put much of the blame on the school district’s police chief for not breaching the classroom sooner. The findings of an investigative committee released Sunday were the first to criticize both state and federal law enforcement, and not just local authorities in the South Texas city for the bewildering inaction by heavily armed officers as a gunman fired inside two adjoining fourth-grade classrooms. Footage from city police officers’ body cameras made public hours later only further emphasized the failures — and fueled the anger and frustration of relatives of the victims. "It’s disgusting. Disgusting," said Michael Brown, whose 9-year-old son was in the school’s cafeteria on the day of the shooting and survived. "They’re cowards." Nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to the school, but "egregiously poor decision making" resulted in more than an hour of chaos before the gunman was finally confronted and killed, according to the report written by an investigative committee from the Texas House of Representatives. Together, the report and more than three hours of newly released body camera footage from the May 24 tragedy amounted to the fullest account to date of one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[BG PODCAST]
Episode 160: Talking Public Relations, Career advice, and Austin with Kristin Marcum, CEO of ECPR
Today's special weekend episode (160) features Kristin Marcum, owner and CEO of ECPR, Austin's preeminent public relations firm.
Kristin and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss her path into PR and her career leading to the C-suite and ownership of the firm.-> EPISODE LINK
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