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- BG Reads 1.23.2025
BG Reads 1.23.2025
🟪 BG Reads - January 23, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
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January 23, 2025
➡️ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Texas budget writers prioritize school vouchers, teacher (Texas Tribune)
🟪 Newest Austin Assistant City Manager appointed (City of Austin)
🟪 Analysis: UT undergoes 8 major leadership changes in year before president resigns (Austin American-Statesman)
🟪 Trump highlights partnership investing $500 billion in AI (Associated Press)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
Texas Tribune CEO Sonal Shah sits down with Watson to discuss his plans to address issues from housing affordability and homelessness to workforce development and the expansion of I-35, and how the city will interact with state leaders known to relish a fight with local elected officials.
🏛️ Austin City Hall Executive Management Team Announcement
Jessica “Jess” Ferrari appointed to Assistant to the City Manager effective January 27th per a memo from City Manager T.C. Broadnax. This news follows two other recent executive level changes announced last week.
ℹ️ Helpful City Links:
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
➡️ Palm Park improvements are among the next steps for Waterloo Greenway project (Austin Monitor)
A recent city memo and presentation to the Downtown Commission last week offer some up-close looks at the progress and next steps for the Waterloo Greenway project that is making major improvements along Waller Creek’s route through downtown.
The memo from Jorge Morales, director of the Watershed Protection Department, and the presentation from the Waterloo Greenway Conservancy showed that the next major milestone for the project will be the transition to the redevelopment of Palm Park following the completion of the Confluence construction in 2026. With community engagement efforts complete and design milestones advancing, Waterloo Greenway Conservancy officials are preparing to finalize schematic designs for the next phase.
The Confluence phase, which is focused on creek and trail improvements between Fourth Street and Lady Bird Lake, is now more than halfway complete, with an expected finish by mid-2026. Improvements in that area include large-scale tree planting, erosion control measures and habitat restoration initiatives. 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Austin rents have fallen for nearly two years. Here’s why. (Texas Tribune)
Austin rents skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic as tens of thousands of new residents flocked there and the region’s job market boomed.
Now, Austin is one of the only major U.S. cities where rents are falling.
Austin rents have tumbled for 19 straight months, data from Zillow show. The typical asking rent in the capital city sat at $1,645 as of December, according to Zillow — above where rents stood prior to the pandemic but below where they peaked amid the region’s red-hot growth.
Surrounding suburbs like Round Rock, Pflugerville and Georgetown, which saw rents grow by double-digit percentages amid the region’s pandemic boom, also have seen declining rents. Rents aren’t falling as quickly as they rose during the pandemic run-up in costs, but there are few places in the Austin region where rents didn’t fall sometime in the last year… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Owner of longtime Austin restaurant chain Z'Tejas seeks to sell its four locations (Austin Business Journal)
After resuscitating the nearly four-decade-old Z’Tejas restaurant chain from bankruptcy and helming it for six years, Randy Cohen is ready to sell. The price tag for the business — which operates under the legal name Cornbread Ventures LLC — is between $10 million and $12 million, Cohen said. Investors Michael Stone and Cohen bought Z’Tejas out of bankruptcy in 2018, with Cohen remaining sole owner.
Now, however, Cohen — who founded TicketCity — aims to sell the chain that has four standing locations: two in the Austin metro in Avery Ranch and Kyle, and one in Scottsdale, Arizona, and another in Chandler, Arizona. The Tex-Mex and Southwestern restaurant opened its first location on West Sixth Street in 1989.
Cohen, who recently turned 60, said he wants to focus on other ventures, such as his Loop of Love foundation. He also wants to be more present for his family. He noted that his main role at Z’Tejas was investor, not operator. “I'm not a restaurateur at the end," he said.
"This was a labor of love to make sure we didn't lose another restaurant soldier that's out there during these tough times.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Analysis: UT undergoes 8 major leadership changes in year before president resigns (Austin American-Statesman)
University of Texas President Jay Hartzell's resignation to take the chief administrative job at Southern Methodist University was sudden to many, but an analysis of recent departures shows it was just the latest in a string that has rocked the UT System's flagship university. From January 2024 to January 2025, at least seven other top leaders have resigned, faced demotion, retired or not been renewed. This includes five vice presidential departures nearly half of UT's 12 vice presidential positions in the president's office.
The departures include the resignations of the executive vice president or provost and the vice president for research; demotion of the vice president for marketing and communications and the vice president for campus and community engagement when the position was eliminated; and one retirement in the vice president for student affairs and dean of students role, which was held by one person but has now been separated into two.
Eve Stephens, the university police chief who in July 2023 became the first female and Asian American to hold that role, suddenly resigned last fall in a move that A to Z Sports, a sports digital media company, reported she was "pressured" to make; and the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, UT's largest college, told faculty members in an email that Hartzell did not renew her contract due to differences in the vision for the college.
By contrast, there were about half as many leadership change announcements in 2023, with the hiring or promotion of three vice presidents, the hiring of Stephens and a plan to hire a vice president of technology, which UT did in 2024 as well. UT spokesperson Mike Rosen said the leadership changes are not connected, and that the new hires will help make the university even stronger. "In any industry, large institutions cycle through periods of continuity and change," Rosen said in response to American-Statesman questions about the departures. "Recent changes in senior leadership roles are designed to ensure that UT operates with the best leadership team. President Hartzell, whose five-year tenure is consistent with today’s average duration for a university president, has assembled a team that is well-equipped to help his successor hit the ground running and lead UT to unprecedented heights."… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
➡️ Texas budget writers prioritize school vouchers, teacher (Texas Tribune)
Texas lawmakers are looking to spend billions of dollars over the next two years to create a school voucher-like program, cut property taxes, raise teacher pay, shore up water infrastructure and continue the state’s border crackdown, according to initial state budget drafts House and Senate leaders filed Wednesday.
Both chambers set aside $1 billion in their initial spending plans for education savings accounts, a voucher-like policy that would let families use state funds to cover the cost of private school tuition and other education-related expenses. That amount is double what was on the table two years ago and is a sign that supporters are emboldened after recent electoral gains in the House, the chamber that has thwarted past voucher proposals.
The chambers also aligned on putting $6.5 billion toward what Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s office described as maintaining “current border security operations.”
Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott had previously suggested they would look to redirect some of the state’s recent border spending surge toward other uses now that President Donald Trump is set to crack down on immigration through federal policy. But the $6.5 billion proposal mirrors the budgeted amount for border security for the current budget cycle… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Dallas City Council approves hire of next city manager (WFAA)
A former Dallas City Hall intern is set to become the city’s most powerful public official. Dallas City Council members named Kimberly Bizor Tolbert as the next city manager Wednesday, voting 13-2 to officially give her the job she’s been working in an interim capacity since February 2024. Tolbert will be the first Black woman to hold the role and the first woman in more than a decade.
The city's top job became vacant after former City Manager T.C. Broadnax resigned to become Austin's city manager last year. Tolbert was widely considered the frontrunner for the job but remained publicly coy through the summer on whether she would apply for the permanent position -- even as she implemented a major reorganization of city departments and oversaw the departures and subsequent replacement of top city leaders… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
➡️ Bishop Mariann Budde tells NPR 'I won't apologize' for sermon addressing Trump (NPR)
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde joined NPR's All Things Considered on Wednesday to discuss her hope President Trump's new administration would show compassion toward vulnerable communities following a sermon she made on Tuesday.
"I decided to ask him as gently as I could to have mercy," Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, said of her plea to Trump, telling All Things Considered, "how dangerous it is to speak of people in these broad categories, and particularly immigrants, as all being criminals or transgender children somehow being dangerous."
"To be united as a country with so many riches of diversity, we need mercy. We need compassion. We need empathy. And rather than list that as a broad category, as you heard me say, I decided to make an appeal to the president."
Her appearance on All Things Considered comes after a prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral, during which the bishop spoke directly to President Trump, who was seated in the front row alongside Vice President Vance.
"Let me make one final plea, Mr. President," Budde said in her sermon, which lasted 15 minutes. "Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now," Budde said, turning her gaze towards the president… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Trump highlights partnership investing $500 billion in AI (Associated Press)
President Donald Trump on Tuesday talked up a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank.
The new entity, Stargate, will start building out data centers and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast-evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House. The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion and could reach five times that sum.
“It’s big money and high quality people,” said Trump, adding that it’s “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration. Joining Trump fresh off his inauguration at the White House were Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. All three credited Trump for helping to make the project possible, even though building has already started and the project goes back to 2024… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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