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October 5, 2023

In today's BG Reads:

🔥 City of Austin continues to work on wildfire mitigation strategies

🏠 Colony Ridge developer defends Houston-area community as state leaders vow action against it

🔋 ERCOT seeks more power reserves to avoid ‘unacceptable’ winter risk

Read on!

🔎 Austin City Council Regular Meeting Agenda (LINK)

📺 Watch Here Live at 10AM

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

City continues to work on wildfire mitigation strategies (Austin Monitor)

The public may not have noticed, but Austin-Travis County had 963 different brush and grass fire alarms in September, Assistant Fire Chief Andre de la Reza told members of the city’s Public Safety Commission on Monday.

The department was able to handle those without requiring anyone to evacuate their homes, but the number demonstrates that fire has become an ever-present danger for Austinites.

Justice Jones, Austin Fire Department’s wildfire mitigation officer, reported that the department continues to work with other city departments, including Austin Energy, the Parks and Recreation Department, Austin Water, and Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Jones told the committee the department has received a federal grant to update the city’s current community wildfire management plan. Those funds will help to establish new goals and enhance the community’s wildfire resilience.

This spring, the Austin Monitor reported that the city had 23 community wildfire protection plans in place and was working to establish another 24. Those numbers remain the same, according to Jones’ presentation... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Developer of parking-free downtown apartments surrenders building to lender (Austin Monitor)

A parking-free, 30-unit apartment building that gained attention as one of the first attempts to bring “missing middle” housing downtown has been turned over to its lender after failing to generate enough occupancy to operate successfully.

Weaver Buildings, the company that created the Capitol Quarters project on Nueces Street near 12th Street, announced this week it had gone through a deed-in-lieu transfer of the property to North Carolina-based Churchill Real Estate Holdings. The 45,000-square-foot project broke ground in 2019 and offered three-bedroom apartments exclusively at a cost of $1,200 per bedroom in an attempt to offer shared living options for the downtown workforce.

Occupants began moving into the apartments last August… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Colony Ridge developer defends Houston-area community as state leaders vow action against it (Texas Tribune)

From the eye of a growing political hurricane, the developer of a massive residential community near Houston rejected allegations by conservative media and state elected officials that the development is a “magnet for illegal immigrants” whose streets are overrun by crime.

It’s all “bullshit,” said Trey Harris, who owns the development with his brother John and cousin Kevin, on Tuesday from their company’s office in Liberty County.

In one of his most extensive interviews since the allegations began flooding right-wing media and Republican leaders started calling for action, Harris dismissed accusations that the development is flouting laws and using targeted Spanish-language marketing to attract undocumented people.

Critics of the developer’s advertising have focused on ads that tell potential buyers they don’t need a Social Security number to buy land in the community. There is no state or federal law against selling land to people who aren’t citizens… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Alleged ex-lover transcript, financial records among new Paxton impeachment document dump (Dallas Morning News)

The House members who unsuccessfully prosecuted Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial last month released more than a dozen documents late Monday that at first included the attorney general’s home address and other personal information.

The tranche of documents include bank records, transcripts from the impeachment proceedings, payroll and residence records for Paxton’s alleged ex-lover and letters from trial witnesses’ lawyers. In a letter accompanying the information release dated Oct. 2, 2023, House managers said the documents provide Texans a “complete look at all the facts in full context.”

Much of the evidence was not presented in trial because witnesses to Paxton’s alleged crimes, including Paxton and Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, intended to invoke their Fifth Amendment right against incriminating themselves, the House managers added in their public letter… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

ERCOT seeks more power reserves to avoid ‘unacceptable’ winter risk (Bloomberg)

The Texas grid operator is seeking to secure an extra 3,000 megawatts of power reserves this winter to avoid an “unacceptable” risk of an emergency in extreme conditions. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas estimates that there is an almost 20% probability that the state grid it manages will enter into an energy emergency alert, or EEA, if there is a repeat of last year’s December storm, ERCOT said in a notice Monday. Procuring 3,000 megawatts will cut that probability to less than 10%. “ERCOT is not projecting energy emergency conditions this winter season, but we want to be prepared and ensure all available tools are readily available if needed,” Pablo Vegas, chief executive officer of the grid, said in a separate statement.

The Texas grid’s push to solicit seasonal power capacity is unprecedented in a region that has long relied on market forces to procure supplies and spare reserves. Texas electricity consumption is growing faster than any other grid in the country, and demand can no longer be met with traditional sources of energy. While wind and solar have been a boon, renewable sources are inherently intermittent. Efforts to secure backup reserves may lead to higher costs for consumers. When ERCOT ran the same analysis ahead of last winter, the probability was 7%, ERCOT Chief Operating Officer Woody Rickerson said at the Gulf Coast Power Association conference in Austin Tuesday.

“We feel like that 20% probability is just not acceptable. It’s too high,” he added. Just because ERCOT is asking for the additional reserves, that supply may not all be available or “it may be too expensive,” Rickerson said. “This will educate us as to what the market is capable of providing,” he noted. The highest risk hour for supply shortages this winter is from 7-8 a.m. local time, according to the notice… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as House speaker could cost GOP its best fundraiser heading into 2024 (Associated Press)

“Nobody can raise money like him,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D. “And no matter who is the next speaker of the House, none of them can do what Kevin McCarthy did.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP’s House campaign arm, postponed its upcoming fall gala in Dallas that McCarthy was supposed to headline. The committee said McCarthy helped it raise more than $40 million during the last election cycle and $20-plus million so far this cycle.

The totals were even higher for a McCarthy-aligned super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, which said that it and its associated nonprofits had raised about $645 million under McCarthy. That included about $215 million for the 2020 election, roughly $350 million during last year’s midterm races and around $80 million so far this cycle… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

House GOP takes revenge on Democrats after McCarthy ousting (The Hill)

Some Republicans felt that Democrats should have sided with McCarthy.

“You have [House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)] acting like he’s trying to work in a bipartisan manner. He says we’re going to continue putting people over politics. That is the biggest load of garbage I’ve ever heard. They literally just aligned themselves with Matt Gaetz and the MAGA extremists to burn down the House. And they act as though you know, ‘We stand up for democracy; we stand up for our institutions.’ This was an opportunity to actually show leadership, real leadership, not nonsensical BS,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said in response to a question from The Hill. 

“Frankly, it’s not serious to hear their outrage about the need for bipartisanship. They’re not serious about it. Because if you were, this was a moment to actually stand up for the institution and say, ‘Yeah, we’re not playing part to this.’ Yes, it’s Republicans’ responsibility. We’re in the majority. But they aligned themselves and facilitated this. They can’t act like they have clean hands in this.”

But Democrats were quick to point out that McCarthy made a number of strategic errors: caving to insistence from some in the conference that allowed for just one member to call for a motion to vacate, repeatedly giving in to right-wing demands and refusing to negotiate with Democrats but then blaming them at various turns, including ahead of the vote to eject him… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

The world’s dollar addiction is hard to kick (Wall Street Journal)

Yes, the dollar share has declined steadily over the past 25 years, but this was in the context of the euro’s creation in 1999 and a long rally in the dollar after the 2008 financial crisis. Central-bank reserve managers tend to cut their dollar allocations whenever the greenback is strong, to avoid getting burned by an overvalued currency.

Their big diversification push in recent years has been primarily driven by the search for higher yields in other Western currencies such as the Canadian and Australian dollars.

Ultimately, only countries that had little choice, such as Argentina and Russia, have taken strong action to sidestep the U.S. Despite Brazil’s stated intentions, 80% of its reserves are still in dollars.

There is little evidence China is really moving away from U.S. assets either. A big reason for its reduced Treasury holdings is the hit to bond prices from higher interest rates. According to Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a simultaneous rise in holdings in Belgium and Luxembourg also suggests that some assets have simply moved offshore… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

America’s Food Giants Confront the Ozempic Era (Wall Street Journal)

You just started taking Ozempic. Will you still crave that bag of potato chips?

Big food companies and investors are watching as Ozempic and other similar weight-loss drugs flow to millions of people, upending America’s diet industry and raising new questions about how consumers will eat. 

Executives at food manufacturers fromCampbell Soup to Conagra Brands said they are fielding questions from investors about the drugs’ potential impact, as internal teams start to assess consumer behavior and brainstorm ways to respond.

The drugs, which suppress patients’ appetites, have exploded in popularity in the U.S., straining manufacturing capacity. 

Morgan Stanley has projected that 24 million people, or nearly 7% of the U.S. population, will be taking such medications in 2035. 

Those people could cut their daily calorie consumption by as much as 30%, according to the firm, which surveyed over 300 patients. For a person on a 2,000-calorie diet, that could mean eliminating a one-ounce bag of salted potato chips, a bottle of soda and more each day… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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