BG Reads | News You Need to Know (June 8, 2022)
[HEARINGS]
Thursday, 6/9
[AUSTIN METRO]
City must raise wages to $22/hour, working group says (Austin Monitor)
Members of the city’s living wage work group urged City Council Tuesday to raise the city’s living wage to $22 an hour for the upcoming fiscal year. They said the wage should apply to all regular and temporary city employees except employees of the summer youth program, regardless of position or number of hours worked.
Council members Vanessa Fuentes, Ann Kitchen, Chito Vela, Kathie Tovo and Pio Renteria have already signed on to a resolution on the June 16 agenda calling on the city manager to adopt a living wage of $22/hour in next year’s budget.
The current living wage is $15/hour and that has not changed since 2018. City management raised employees’ wages to $15 as a result of a recommendation from the living wage working group in 2015.
The Human Resources Department convened the working group again this year, asking for its recommendations on a living wage. According to staff’s calculations, providing a $22 minimum wage would cost the city between $18.2 million and $22.8 million, not including wages for police.
Carol Guthrie, business manager for AFSCME Local 1624, told Council during its work session that it’s time to raise wages so the city can meet the demands of the public and its own employees. With inflation, gas prices and rising housing costs, Austin city employees are suffering and underpaid, she said.
While the city raised its minimum wage to $15 in 2018, it failed to keep raising that amount, which should have become $16.83 the following year… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Professors behind conservative-backed “Liberty Institute” say UT has strayed from plan (Texas Tribune)
University of Texas at Austin finance professor Richard Lowery was emailing with a colleague in London last November when he was asked if it was true that the so-called “Liberty Institute failed to launch.”
Six months prior, UT-Austin had received $6 million in the state budget to launch a new think tank “dedicated to the study and teaching of individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets,” known as the Liberty Institute.
The project had hit some roadblocks after The Texas Tribune reported that the university was working with conservative donors and politicians to launch the center, sparking concerns among some students and faculty that the Legislature was “politicizing” the university… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Faced with scooter seizures, Bird pays property tax bill months late (KUT)
After Travis County's top tax collector warned he would start seizing Bird scooters to recoup unpaid property taxes, the California-based company rushed to pay its outstanding bill in full.
Bird, which rents out dockless electric scooters around Austin, had been listed among the top 10 delinquent property tax payers in Travis County for 2021. The company owed $147,195 — which was the seventh-highest unpaid bill this year, according to the county's tax office.
Tax bills went out in November 2021. The deadline to pay was Jan. 31. With additional penalties and interest, Bird owed about $149,000.
Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector Bruce Elfant says Bird hadn't been returning phone calls. His office was filing a lawsuit to seize the company's scooters and sell them off to recoup the unpaid bill… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
How much homebuyers in Austin are overpaying (AXIOS)
The pandemic inflated metro Austin housing prices by nearly 68% above the historic trend line, making the local market the most overpriced it's been in at least three decades, a new analysis finds… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
ETS-Lindgren OK'd for incentives to add jobs, stand up new facility in Cedar Park (Austin Business Journal)
One of Cedar Park's largest private-sector employers plans to expand to meet heightened demand for a piece of equipment it makes that is used in data centers.
ETS-Lindgren Inc. — which two decades ago became the first company to relocate to the suburb northwest of Austin as part of the city's economic development efforts — late last month detailed plans to move into a long-vacant warehouse at 3310 W. Whitestone Blvd., on the west side of Cedar Park.
The company, which is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based ESCO Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: ESE), manufactures electromagnetic and acoustic energy components and ensures electronics components don't interfere with each other. ETS-Lindgren opened a 70,000-square-foot building at 1301 Arrow Point Dr. in 2001 and is now Cedar Park's third-largest private-sector employer with 330 employees, according to the city.
On May 25, the Cedar Park City Council approved an economic development performance agreement between the Cedar Park Economic Development (Type A) Corporation and Excalibur Research Development & Manufacturing LLC to reimburse a maximum $300,000 to extend utility lines for the new building, as well as surrounding tracts. ETS-Lindgren is finalizing a lease with Excalibur, a fellow manufacturer, to occupy the facility.
Council also approved nominating ETS-Lindgren for Texas Enterprise Zone designation, a state sales and use tax refund program designed to create jobs in economically distressed areas. The application will head to the governor's office for review.
ETS-Lindgren was initially approved for the $300,000 grant during a May 16 meeting of the Cedar Park Economic Development (Type A) Corporation. During that meeting, officials said the company plans to add 50 jobs and invest $2.1 million in the new facility, which will be about 43,000 square feet and include manufacturing, office and warehouse space… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin City Council to vote on adding 13 additional HALO cameras on 6th Street (CBS Austin)
On Thursday, city council will consider whether to approve a resolution to expedite the purchase of 13 additional High Activity Location Observation (HALO) cameras.
"We had asked our Austin Police Department to take a look at security in this area of 6th Street and they came back to us and said that they had identified a need for some additional HALO cameras," Tovo said.
HALO cameras are the eyes over 6th Street. APD and city leaders gave two options in a recent city memo to upgrade all 47 cameras or add an additional 13. A full upgrade was recommended in the memo. CBS Austin reached out to APD for comment about the city council possibly voting against its recommendation, but we did not receive a response.
"My hope is that they'll be supportive of that. The additional measure to allow them to explore technology, I think allow them to come forward with other measures they believe would really enhance that camera system," Tovo added… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
At White House, Uvalde’s Matthew McConaughey makes impassioned plea on guns (Dallas Morning News)
In the spotlight of the White House briefing room, movie star Matthew McConaughey described in graphic detail the mutilation inflicted on 19 children and two teachers gunned down in his hometown of Uvalde. His voice choking, the Oscar winner pleaded with politicians to make such massacres less likely, even if that means tighter regulations on guns. “Many children were left not only dead but hollow,” he said, describing the “exceptionally large exit wounds of an AR-15 rifle.” “Responsible gun owners are fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals,” he insisted, moments after meeting with President Joe Biden. McConaughey spoke for 21 minutes, holding rapt the journalists and presidential aides crowded into the room has he recounted the lives and deaths of the Uvalde victims. He held up a photo of one young girl and spoke, his voice choking, about others, among them Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, whose body was so mangled by bullets that she could only be identified by the shoes she’d worn to school that day.
Camila Alves McConaughey sat with Maite’s green Converse shoes on her lap as her husband spoke. The 10-year-old had drawn a heart on the shoes because, the actor and best-selling author said, it “represented her love of nature.” He left without taking questions after ticking off solutions he described as commonsense, many of which face fierce resistance by his home state senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, and other Republicans. “We need background checks. We need to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 rifle to 21. We need a waiting period for those rifles. We need red flag laws and consequences for those who abuse them,” McConaughey said. “These are reasonable, practical, tactical regulations” that would bring meaning to the deaths in Uvalde, he said. “We’ve got to start right now by passing policies that can keep us from having as many Columbines, Sandy Hooks, Parklands, Las Vegases, Buffaloes and Uvaldes,” he said. Those half-dozen massacres alone claimed 148 innocent lives… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas reports first case of monkeypox, but officials say it poses little risk to the public (Texas Tribune)
Texas health officials said Tuesday they have identified the first case of monkeypox in the state this year, but noted the illness does not currently present a risk to the general public.
The case was identified in a Dallas County resident who recently traveled internationally, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. The department is working with Dallas County Health and Human Services and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate the case.
Health officials said they have also identified a “few” people who may have been exposed to the virus in Dallas. Those people are monitoring themselves for symptoms of infection, officials said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas schools can’t provide to-go meals this summer after federal waivers expire (KUT)
Texas school districts are losing flexibility in how they provide free meals to students this summer as federal pandemic waivers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture expire. Since March 2020, school districts have been able to let parents and guardians pick up to-go meals for their children. The waiver allowing that expired on the last day of the 2021-2022 school year. Now, children will have to eat meals at school district-approved sites, and their families will not be able to take the food to go. Rachel Cooper, a senior policy analyst with Every Texan, a left-leaning state policy think tank, says it is going to be more challenging for families to access meals when kids have to be taken to a meal site each day. Plus, she says, it will be harder for school districts.
“They have to have enough staff to be able to do that every single day versus being able to bunch the meals together and serve them once a week,” Cooper said. She said she’s concerned fewer children will get the meals now that these flexible options are going away. “Summer meals have always been a ‘problem child’ in Texas because it is so hard normally for families to access, because children have to be taken up to a site,” Cooper said. “They have to have transportation or a way of getting to the school or community center, and then they have to have someone watching them while they eat and stay there.” Cooper said participation in summer meal programs in the state has long been low. “It only serves about 12% of the kids who get regular school meals in Texas, and that’s what we’re afraid we’ll go back to seeing,” she said… (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