BG Reads | News You Need to Know (July 5, 2022)
[AUSTIN METRO]
EMS meeting its response time goals amid staffing ‘crisis’ (Community Impact)
Austin-Travis County EMS is facing a staffing “crisis,” according to Austin EMS Association President Selena Xie.
More than 22% of sworn emergency management services positions were unfilled as of late May, including more than 27% of field medic and clinical specialist spots. Over 17% of civilian staff positions are also vacant.
In 2021, more than 120 vacancies were recorded and 65 cadets hired. Acknowledging those trends, ATCEMS Chief Robert Luckritz also said the department remains “the best EMS system in the country” and said his office remains focused on retention and progressive changes to attract new medics.A national shortage of people seeking to become EMS workers, pandemic-related burnout affecting all sides of the medical field and Austin’s own spiking cost of living all play into the EMS department’s staffing struggles, he said.
In an April update Luckritz said the department will look to change several aspects of recruitment in order to fill its ranks, including removing a staggered application period to allow interested medics to apply anytime, cutting experience requirements for potential new hires and working on an improved promotion process.
Luckritz also requested that the city budget for dozens of additional sworn employee slots annually through fiscal year 2025-26.
ATCEMS is currently budgeted for up to 665 sworn positions with around 150 vacant as of late May. Luckritz said bumping that total up to 761 budgeted spots could result in the elimination of all vacancies over a four-year period.
“How do we drive people to want to join this profession? What we want to do is do outreach to individuals in the community who might not have the same educational opportunities ... and recruit them to become EMS professionals,” Luckritz said.
Despite its current shortfall, ATCEMS data shows the department’s medics have been able to meet their response time goals in Austin for well over 90% of calls for service they receive. However, the department is seeing less success in Travis County outside of the city with a less than 86% response time success rate in April. Xie also said the shortage is affecting specialized work including responses to mental health calls.
“People want emergency services, and they are not getting it right now,” she said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
A limited supply of monkeypox vaccines and tests is heading to Travis County after case confirmed (KUT)
Austin Public Health is requesting testing supplies and vaccines from the federal government to help address the potential spread of monkeypox in the area.
The rare disease is caused by the monkeypox virus. Symptoms include fever, aches, chills and a rash of pimples or blisters. It can spread when someone comes in contact with an infected person’s rash or bodily fluids — for example through clothes or bedding, from prolonged face-to-face contact or from a pregnant person to a fetus.
There are 12 confirmed cases in Texas, including one in Travis County. Austin Public Health officials said five more people are presumed positive based on symptoms, but they are awaiting test results.
The first lab-confirmed case of monkeypox in the U.S. this year was in Massachusetts on May 18. In just a month and a half, the number of cases across the U.S jumped to 460, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
APH requested 1,000 additional testing swabs, which it expects to receive by mid-July. According to a department spokesperson, the limited number of tests “will be used for persons meeting the CDC case definition with risk-factors and symptoms of monkeypox.” The CDC expanded its case definition so “anyone suspected of having monkeypox can be tested.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin traffic now exceeds pre-pandemic levels of gridlock (Austin American-Statesman)
The start of the pandemic brought a sight not often seen in Austin — highways and city streets largely empty of traffic.
But anybody driving around Austin these days knows this is no longer the case.
The number of vehicles on major highways is back above pre-pandemic levels, although the traffic on Austin's surface streets, while recovering, remains below what it was before the pandemic.
Increasing congestion, caused by people returning to the office and an influx of new residents to Central Texas, is leading to longer commute times for some workers. This means more money spent on gas, more pollution and less time at home. City surface streets, meanwhile, are seeing different traffic patterns from those before COVID-19, and some experts chalk that up to people who work from home running errands at unusual times.
Overall, people in Central Texas can expect to sit in a lot more traffic than they did last year — and data trends suggest the congestion will get worse… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Hotel Ella to quadruple in size, add high-end amenities in $100M-plus renovation plan (Austin Business Journal)
Rex LLC plans a massive expansion of the historic Hotel Ella in Central Austin that will quadruple the number of guest rooms and add a flurry of amenities.
The real estate and technology company plans to add an anchor fine dining restaurant of "Paris-level quality," a cigar and scotch bar and a basement wine bar, according to founder and CEO Peter Rex. He aims to deliver a high-end environment where Austinites can "scratch a different kind of itch."
A rooftop garden and substantial underground parking could also be added. Rex estimated the cost of the expansion will exceed $100 million. An exact timeline for when the renovations might start was not revealed although Rex said he hopes to start "as soon as possible."Rex also hopes to make it one of the most high-tech hotels in the world, with features such as voice recognition systems built into the rooms and an in-room, artificial intelligence concierge.
But the tech features don't step at the guest experience — they extend all the way to the hotel's ownership.
Hotel Ella will be tokenized on a blockchain, meaning accredited investors can buy fractional equity in the property… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas can enforce 1925 abortion ban, state Supreme Court says (Texas Tribune)
Texas can enforce its abortion ban from 1925, the state Supreme Court ruled late Friday evening, a decision that exposes abortion providers to lawsuits and financial penalties if they continue to perform the procedure.
The court overruled a district judge in Houston, who on Tuesday had temporarily blocked the state’s old abortion law from going into effect. That law made performing an abortion, by any method, punishable by two to 10 years in prison.
Friday’s decision does not permit prosecutors to bring criminal cases against abortion providers, but it exposes anyone who assists in the procurement of an abortion to fines and lawsuits.
The federal Supreme Court on June 24 overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that asserted that access to abortion is protected under the constitution. The Texas Legislature last year passed a “trigger law” that would automatically ban abortion from the moment of fertilization 30 days after a judgment from the Supreme Court, which typically comes about a month after the initial opinion… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Could abortion ban tarnish Texas' business-friendly image? (Austin American-Statesman)
The Texas economy has fueled strong job growth and investment in recent years even as businesses in the state have increasingly found themselves embroiled in culture war issues ranging from vaccine policies to when sports teams must play the national anthem. But the politics surrounding abortion could challenge that resilience. Texas has banned most abortions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the nationwide right to the procedure — the opposite position of some states from which it has been attracting steady streams of corporate relocations and new workers, such as California, Illinois and New York. In addition, a number of socially conservative Republican lawmakers in Texas have said they plan to mount efforts during next year's session of the Legislature to punish companies that help their employees obtain out-of-state abortions.
Possible measures include barring "corporations from doing business in the state of Texas if they pay for (out-of-state) elective abortions or reimburse abortion-related expenses" — as state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, and 13 other state House members outlined in a May letter to ride-hailing service Lyft — to making such companies ineligible for state contracts or publicly funded financial incentives. It's unclear if any of those efforts will gain sufficient political traction to become law or withstand legal challenges if they do so. But the state's anti-abortion stance already has put it at odds with many private-sector employers. Dozens of corporations nationwide have announced they back abortion rights and intend to support workers who want to obtain the procedure. Austin-based companies that have done so include electric automaker Tesla, job search firm Indeed.com and dating app company Bumble. Others with big operations statewide include Facebook parent Meta and Dallas-based AT&T, as well as Lyft and fellow ride-hailing service Uber. "We are committed to supporting our employees in their own decisions about their health," Indeed said in a written statement. "Not only will employees be reimbursed for travel expenses for covered medical procedures that are unavailable where they live, but we are also covering their dependents."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Embattled Arredondo quits Uvalde council (San Antonio Express-News)
Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the school police chief in charge of the botched law enforcement response to the May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, won a City Council seat two and a half weeks before the massacre. Many Uvalde residents turned against Arredondo in the weeks following the killing of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, with some calling for his ouster from council. Arredondo quietly resigned on Saturday, bowing to the pressure. Not that he’s had much of a presence at City Hall. He was sworn in as the District 3 councilman during a private ceremony a week after the shooting, and hasn’t attended a single meeting since then. As the weekend began, residents were stunned, learning of his resignation from the Uvalde Leader-News. In a letter sent Saturday afternoon to the city secretary, Arredondo said the mayor, council members and city staff “must continue to move forward to unite our community, once again.”
“It is in the best interest of the community to step down as a member of the City Council for District 3 to minimize further distractions,” he wrote. Mayor Donald McLaughlin Jr. said he first learned that Arredondo was leaving the council in a text message containing a link to the Leader-News story. He later was given a copy of the resignation letter Arredondo had written Friday and sent via email. Arredondo, 50, could not be reached for comment on Saturday. But he spoke earlier with the local newspaper. “After much consideration, I regret to inform those who voted for me that I have decided to step down as a member of the city council for District 3,” he said. “I feel this is the best decision for Uvalde.” Neither McLaughlin nor Councilman Ernest “Chip” King III were aware of his decision until the story broke. It also wasn’t clear when Arredondo’s resignation would become effective. His letter didn’t address the timing of his exit. The mayor said Arredondo’s departure would give families and citizens “a sense of relief.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Biden plan could allow new offshore drilling in Gulf of Mexico (Texas Tribune)
This week, the Biden administration took two of its biggest steps yet to open public lands to fossil fuel development, holding its first onshore lease sales and releasing a proposed plan for offshore drilling that could open parts of the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Cook Inlet to leasing through 2028.
The moves run counter to President Biden’s campaign pledge to halt new oil and gas development on federal lands and waters, and come as the president is under mounting political pressure to address high energy prices.
Biden faces a range of conflicting interests on climate change, energy and the economy as he tries to lower gasoline prices and increase energy exports to counter Russia’s dominance of western European energy, all without abandoning the ambitious climate agenda he brought to the White House. On Thursday, the Supreme Court dealt another blow to that agenda with a 6-3 decision that restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to curb climate pollution from the power sector… (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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