BG Reads | News You Need to Know (March 28, 2023)
[BG Blog]
Interim Austin City Manager Jesús Garza Announces Strategic Planning Changes and Fiscal Year 2023-24 Budget Process
On Friday (3.24.2023), Jesús Garza, Interim Austin City Manager released a memo announcing changes tot the city’s strategic planning and Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget process.
Regarding budget timeline, Mr. Garza wrote:
Although the budget process will generally remain in place as listed on the current council calendar, there are a few changes that I would like to highlight for your awareness. In addition to the financial forecast report being distributed on April 28, 2023, staff will provide a financial forecast presentation on Tuesday, May 2, 2023, during the regularly scheduled council work session. The FY2023-24 Proposed Budget document will be delivered to each council office on Friday, July 14, 2023. Staff will also provide a proposed budget presentation to the full council on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. The full proposed budget calendar dates are below… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[AUSTIN METRO]
State troopers will help Austin with police patrols as the city struggles with an officer shortage (Texas Tribune)
The state’s top law enforcement agency will beef up its presence in Austin and help local police handle violent crime and traffic incidents, city and state officials said Monday.
The move — agreed upon by Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — is a dramatic response as the city’s police department struggles with persistent vacancies in its officer ranks, a problem in virtually every major police department in the country. Austin has also had problems with long response times to emergency calls.
“My top priority is that the people of Austin both are safe and feel safe,” Watson said at a joint press conference Monday afternoon with Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon and Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw. “I also want to be sure that our police officers feel respected and have the resources they need to do their job. This is a recognition that the police department needs more staff and we have a partner that can assist us.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin ISD Board of Trustees may slow down search for permanent superintendent (KXAN)
The Austin Independent School District may pump the brakes on its superintendent search, a letter from the president of the Board of Trustees said.
Arati Singh wrote a letter addressed to the AISD community Monday that said the board is calling a special meeting March 30 to, “discuss the possibility of slowing down our search for our district’s next superintendent.” The letter also said the board would consider a contract extension with Matias Segura, the district’s interim superintendent, through June 30, 2024… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin school district plans child care, housing facilities to attract, retain workers (Austin american-Statesman)
The Austin school district is repurposing two of its campuses — one into a housing facility and the other into a child care center — in hopes of recruiting and retaining teachers and other employees by creating a more affordable environment.
The moves come as the district, like many across the state, struggles to attract and keep teachers, due in part to Austin’s skyrocketing housing costs.
The Austin school board on Thursday unanimously approved starting a search for partners to operate a child care center at the shuttered Pease Elementary School, at 1106 Rio Grande St., and to develop workforce housing at the Anita Ferrales Coy Facility, at 4900 Gonzales St… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin Energy reflects on emergency response two months after record-breaking ice storm (Austin monitor)
As brush collectors make their final sweeps for toppled tree debris, Austin Energy is working to uncover the hard lessons wrought by February’s catastrophic ice storm.
Gearing up to deliver an after-action report to City Council this spring, interim Deputy General Manager Stuart Riley and a cohort of Austin Energy executives stopped by the Electric Utility Commission last week to share their preliminary findings.
The storm, which coated Austin in nearly an inch of ice before wreaking “hurricane-level destruction” to utility lines, left 174,000 households and businesses without power at its peak, with some outages lasting up to 12 days. It came just two years after the record-shattering Winter Storm Uri, when blackouts mandated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas left millions across Texas without water and electricity.
Despite efforts in the past two years to weatherize infrastructure, Austin Energy was unprepared to withstand the buckling of the city’s urban canopy, which suffered damage to an estimated 10.5 million trees under layers of freezing rain. While the utility’s vegetation management program runs year-round to curb overgrowth, crews are still catching up to the city’s belated change to clearance policies, which were updated from 4 to 8 feet of clearance to 8 to 15 feet in 2019… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is running for Houston mayor (Texas Tribune)
Jackson Lee enters a mayoral contest that is already well underway. The early frontrunner has been state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and his competitors include Chris Hollins, the former Harris County clerk; Robert Gallegos, a member of the Houston City Council; Gilbert Garcia, former chairman of the city's Metropolitan Transit Authority; and Amanda Edwards, a former City Council member.
One of Jackson Lee's Democratic colleagues from Houston, U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, has already endorsed Whitmire. Whitmire declined to comment on Jackson Lee’s announcement… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says he won’t compromise with House on Senate’s property tax cut plan (Dallas MOrning News)
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says he won’t compromise with House leaders on dueling property-tax reduction plans, setting up a showdown that could spill over beyond the current legislation session, which must end Memorial Day. In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Patrick said the Senate plan to reduce property taxes, which largely involves raising homestead exemptions, is superior to the House counterpart that would give Texans a tax break through appraisal caps. Patrick said the plan approved by the Senate last week would not only give significant property tax reduction to most homeowners, but it would also give huge tax savings to Texans over the age of 65. “I can’t compromise on something I know is not the right policy,” he told The News. “There are other things we can work with the House on, but this is one I would say is not one of those things because the math is the math.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Nashville shooter was ex-student with detailed plan to kill (Associated Press)
The former student who shot through the doors of a Christian elementary school in Nashville and killed three children and three adults had drawn a detailed map of the school, including potential entry points, and conducted surveillance of the building before carrying out the massacre.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake did not say exactly what drove the shooter to open fire Monday morning at The Covenant School before being killed by police. But he provided chilling examples of the shooter’s elaborate planning for the targeted attack, the latest in a series of mass shootings in a country that has grown increasingly unnerved by bloodshed in schools.
“We have a manifesto, we have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” he told reporters. “We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)