BG Reads | News You Need to Know (June 7, 2022)
[HEARINGS]
Tuesday, 6/7
Thursday, 6/9
[AUSTIN METRO]
‘A difficult 2 years’: ATCEMS leaders address department burnout (KXAN)
Austin-Travis County EMS officials addressed longstanding burnout among EMS personnel that has contributed to some of the department’s increased vacancies during a public safety commission meeting Monday.
ATCEMS Asst. Chief Teresa Gardner said there are 163 department vacancies. Some of the factors contributing to this figure include increases in ATCEMS’ vacancy rates, limited recruitment staff availability and EMT application requirements in place.However, Gardner added there has been significant burnout impacting staffing volumes.
“It’s been a difficult two years. We’ve had the pandemic, we’ve had Uri, we’ve had a number of significant events in the field that have led to people changing careers,” she said. “We’ve had a number of retirements that have happened over the past year, and it has been a difficult time for folks to maintain their careers here.”
As a result, she said several former employees have left the department for positions in other healthcare roles, as well as those leaving the field entirely… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
1 Hotels is set to join 74-story tower development in Downtown's Rainey district (Austin American-Statesman)
A 74-story tower planned for downtown Austin's Rainey district has landed a luxury hotel brand for the project.
1 Hotels, which bills itself a sustainably focused luxury brand, will join the mixed-use development at 98 Red River St., along Waller Creek. The project's plans call for 352 apartments, 686,000 square feet of office space and a 251-room hotel.
The tower — which will be the tallest building in Austin if completed as planned — has not officially been named and 1 Hotels did not say when the location is expected to open. Augustine Verrengia, civil market leader with WGI, the project's civil engineering firm, said earlier this year that 98 Red River will be more than 1,000 feet tall.
1 Hotel Austin will include a pool on the 16th floor of the tower and will have spanning views of Austin and the Waller Creek greenway below, the company said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Additional details revealed about location, size of Linde's proposed Taylor project (Austin Business Journal)
Additional details have emerged regarding Linde PLC's massive project in the Austin suburbs after the supplier for Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. was approved to pursue Chapter 313 incentives in the school district in Taylor.
The Taylor Independent School District on May 31 discussed the application from Linde Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of United Kingdom-based Linde PLC (Nasdaq: LIN), the largest industrial gas company in the world by market share and revenue.
While a livestream of the meeting wasn't available, Taylor ISD Superintendent Devin Padavil said in an email to the ABJ that the application was accepted, and that the development would be located on the same plot of land owned by Samsung near the former intersection of County Roads 401 and 404 as the electronics giant ramps up work on its $17 billion next-generation chipmaking facility – and potentially more.
Padavil added that he's unsure of the job totals for the Linde project, but that the capital investment is in the neighborhood of $300 million. He said that "Linde has expressed a commitment to contributing to the overall benefits of Taylor ISD."
The Linde application will now head to the Texas comptroller's office for review before returning to the board for further approval. Even if the application is approved, it does not guarantee Linde will move forward with any project.
A representative for Linde declined to comment.
Should Linde choose to expand in Taylor, it would result in another seismic shift for the small town's economy. Its population is about 16,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Samsung has reportedly begun construction on the Taylor site, but is also negotiation for an additional 11 applications through Chapter 313, suggesting it could build nine additional fabrication plants in Taylor, and two at its long-time site in North Austin.
Chapter 313 of the Texas tax code allows school districts to cap the taxable value of a property for a portion of school taxes at up to $100 million for up to 10 years. The cap only applies to school taxes for maintenance and operations, not debt payments. The incentives program was not reauthorized by the 2021 Texas Legislature, meaning it is set to expire at the end of this year… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Staffing issues cause slow rollout of arts, historic preservation programs (Austin Monitor)
The Economic Development Department plans to wait until fall to begin spinning up three programs for music, arts and historic preservation that are funded by proceeds from the city’s Hotel Occupancy Tax. Portions of those programs aren’t slated to become active until mid-to-late 2023, with some contracts not expected to begin until the 2024 fiscal year.
The prolonged timelines are caused in large part because ongoing job openings at EDD are creating large workloads for existing staff.
In a memo released last month, EDD Director Sylnovia Holt-Rabb updated City Council on the progress in restructuring some of the programs, some of which began in 2018 but were paused due to the need to create 11 new Covid-19 pandemic relief programs. The memo noted that the three hotel-tax-funded program launches are being staggered to allow EDD staff to effectively handle each launch.
She wrote, “EDD is currently experiencing a 27.4 percent staff vacancy rate, or the equivalent of 20 full-time positions. EDD is actively recruiting for vacant positions; however, the current vacancies are creating impacts to program development and implementation, purchasing processes and controls, administrative support, and communications outreach.”
The Live Music Fund is expected to launch in the summer of 2023, after the city enters into a contract with a third party that will manage the program, which was designed to provide grants to musicians and promoters interested in organizing live music events throughout the community… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
In battered Uvalde, where a police chief is in hiding, grief gives way to calls for accountability (Texas Tribune)
Everyone in town is waiting to hear from Pete Arredondo.
As chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department, it was his call to wait more than an hour for backup instead of ordering officers on scene to immediately charge the shooter who killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. The chief of the state police later said this was the “wrong decision, period.”
Now, Arredondo is a man in hiding, as calls for answers and accountability grow louder each day.
In the week since state police singled him out for blame, Arredondo has hardly been seen.
Police officers stand guard outside his home. He has declined to explain his actions, telling a television crew that staked out his office he would not do so until after the victims’ funerals. City officials, too, have assisted in the vanishing act. They canceled a previously scheduled public ceremony Tuesday and instead swore in Arredondo in secret for his latest role on the City Council.
Even state police complained this week that Arredondo has remained elusive to them, accusing him of not cooperating with a Texas Department of Public Safety investigation into the shooting, a claim Arredondo refuted. The New York Times reported Friday that the chief arrived on scene without a radio, hampering his ability to organize the response.
Residents here remain in mourning. Each day repeats a cycle of at least two funerals followed by processions to the cemetery on the west edge of town. Their grief, however, is giving way to frustration about how local officials have responded to the tragedy and conversations about how to hold them accountable… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
After Uvalde massacre Cruz digs in on gun rights, Cornyn mulls modest changes (Dallas Morning News)
Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz both cast themselves as staunch Second Amendment supporters. Both enjoy A+ ratings from the NRA. But as they’ve done after other mass shootings, the Texas Republicans have taken on dramatically different roles since the Uvalde school rampage. Cruz has come out swinging, deflecting calls for gun control after mass murder at an elementary school by demanding fewer doors at schools, and more locks, bulletproof glass and armed police. “Their real goal is disarming America,” he asserted to the NRA three days after an 18-year-old with an AR-15 killed 19 children and two teachers at a Uvalde elementary school. “Their so-called solutions wouldn’t have stopped these mass murders and they know this. … That son of a bitch passed a background check.” Cornyn, as always, has been less of a pugilist but no less adamant that curbing access to firearms for law-abiding Americans is a nonstarter. After other mass shootings, he’s helped to craft narrow but broadly palatable measures, like addressing flaws in the database used to stop felons from buying guns. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell entrusted him to be his eyes and ears in a small bipartisan group seeking common ground – confident that Cornyn will block any significant rollbacks in gun rights.
“To do nothing would make the party look insensitive and out of touch,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist, noting that Republicans can’t afford to alienate suburban voters who support modest gun control measures, and are at least as intent on keeping children safe as protecting gun rights. “Cornyn is smart enough to know that navigating the politics after a gun massacre is delicate, and that delay can be your friend,” he said. But Cornyn’s ambition is to get McConnell’s job at some point. He’s thinking strategically about the party’s prospects. Cruz wants to be president. He’s focused on scoring points, and “legislating is not the best way to get him to his goals. He is a political grandstander and it’s extremely lucrative for him politically. … He can rile the base and that opens up wallets,” Rottinghaus said. The two Texans are among the top recipients in the Senate of political contributions from gun rights interests. Cruz has received $749,000 since his election in 2012, according to Open Secrets, while Cornyn has gotten $306,000 since his election in 2002. Cornyn is responsible for the most significant, albeit narrowly tailored, gun-related law in decades – the Fix NICS Act, authored after a massacre that left 26 people dead at a Sutherland Springs church on Nov. 5, 2017. The gunman had been convicted of domestic violence while in the Air Force. But the service failed to upload his records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, used to screen gun buyers. The law imposes new reporting requirements on federal agencies and provides incentives for states to improve their own reporting. In less than four years, a Justice Department report found, the number of records in the three databases searched with every NICS check increased by 11.5 million – up 11.4%… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[BG PODCAST]
Episode 158: Managing Growth in the City of Kyle - A Discussion with Council Member Dex Ellison
Today’s episode (158) features City of Kyle Council Member Dex Ellison. He and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss the growth and associated challenges with one the fastest growing cities in Texas.
According to the U.S. Census, the city grew from a populations of 5,000 in 2000, to just over 52,300 (and growing) in 2020.
First elected to Kyle City Council in November 2019, Council Member Ellison was re-elected in November 2019. -> EPISODE LINK