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- BG Reads 11.8.2024
BG Reads 11.8.2024
BG Reads - November 8, 2024
Bingham Group Reads
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November 8, 2024
➡️ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Special fund could help Council members respond to neighborhood needs (Austin Monitor)
🟪 Travis County readies 6 priority bills for Texas’ 89th legislative session (Community Impact)
🟪 ECHO’s $350M plan offers to ‘effectively end’ homelessness in Austin (Austin Monitor)
🟪 After election, Texas House speaker race remains up for grabs (Texas Tribune)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN/TRAVIS COUNTY]
🟪 [NEW] Full Travis County 2024 election results
🟪 [NEW] MEMO: City of Austin Executive Leadership Team and Organizational Announced (Effective November 4, 2024)
In an October 30 memo, City Manager T.C. Broadnax announced several key additions to the city leadership team, effective November 4.
You can view the memo here: CITY OF AUSTIN MEMO: Executive Leadership Team and Organizational Announcements. An org chart is included on page 3.
We particularly wanted to flag the creation of a Grants Division within the Intergovernmental Relations Office to focus on creating a centralized grant funding strategy and governance for the City that advances City Council’s strategic priorities, leverages local resources, and targets investments for Austin.
The memo notes “the City lacks a centralized grants function causing us to potentially leave federal and state funding on the table. Staff from across the organization are currently being identified for potential reassignment to the Grants Division.”
🟪 The Austin Council has three (2) regular meetings left in 2024:
November 21
December 12
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
➡️ Special fund could help Council members respond to neighborhood needs (Austin Monitor)
Under a proposal approved Thursday, City Council members may have the ability next year to fund projects in their districts without following the usual planning and budgeting processes.
The resolution, sponsored by Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, directs the city manager to explore a pilot program to establish a special fund for each Council member to promptly respond to neighborhood needs, such as providing funding for sidewalk repairs or park improvements.
The funding program would take effect in the 2025-26 budget cycle. It’s uncertain how much funding would be allotted for each district or how each project would be managed.
The resolution calls for the consideration of several factors regarding the allocation of funds, including equitable dispersion, areas of historical disinvestment, high-growth areas and alignment with the city’s Capital Improvement Program.
As Fuentes explained before the vote, “This district service fund I believe is a great way for our offices to show tangible improvements in the neighborhoods that we serve. I also see it as a great way for us to build on the 10-1 system, especially as we approach the 10-year anniversary of having district representation throughout the city.”
Co-sponsors of the item included Council members Ryan Alter, Paige Ellis and Zo Qadri, with Council members Chito Vela and José Velásquez signing on at Thursday’s meeting… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Travis County readies 6 priority bills for Texas’ 89th legislative session (Community Impact)
As the Nov. 12 bill filing date approaches, Travis County officials have approved a set of legislative priorities for the 89th Texas legislative session, which begins Jan. 14, guiding staff's agenda as they advocate for the county with lawmakers at the Capitol.
On Oct. 29, county staff outlined key takeaways for what to expect in the upcoming legislative session:
The Legislature will continue to operate with an estimated $23.8 billion surplus, or “rainy day fund.”
School vouchers will continue to dominate attention.
Eliminating extraterritorial jurisdictions of municipalities will gain momentum.
Increased interest in water infrastructure investments.
Staff also presented commissioners with several updates to the county’s overarching legislative guiding statements, including some language around development of special purpose districts in extraterritorial jurisdictions or unincorporated areas… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ ECHO’s $350M plan offers to ‘effectively end’ homelessness in Austin (Austin Monitor)
The city is projected to need $35 million annually over a 10-year period to effectively end homelessness via a plan that emphasizes adding hundreds of permanent supportive housing units while also addressing emergency shelter and prevention steps to keep people from losing their homes.
City Council’s Public Health Committee met on Wednesday and received a presentation from the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) on the recently completed modeling and forecasting of the city’s homelessness trends. The 10-year plan is seen as a way to move the city’s high numbers of chronically homeless individuals back into stable housing while efficiently providing aid to stop at-risk residents and families from losing their homes.
The report focuses on expanding housing capacity across emergency shelters, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing, with total costs expected to reach around $24.4 million for 550 emergency shelter units, $104.5 million for 2,355 rapid rehousing units and $217.4 million for 4,175 permanent supportive units. The plan proposes an annual, staged investment schedule that anticipates shifts in available funding, such as the expiration of specific federal support from the American Rescue Plan that the city has relied on in recent years… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ 480-foot mixed-use tower plans approved in Austin's South Central Waterfront (Community Impact)
Plans for a new mixed-use tower south of downtown won City Council approval in November with another likely following in the near future, the latest in a series of high-rise projects coming to Austin's South Central Waterfront.
The more than 100-acre waterfront district has been the subject of longtime city planning efforts with an eye toward future development.Proposed local regulations for new construction and community improvements rolled out this year, but now may not be rolled out until 2025. While those updates are in the works, more mixed-use construction is coming to the area.
Plans to transform one of the area's largest landmark properties, the 19-acre former Austin-American Statesman campus, were approved by council in late 2022—although the Save Our Springs Alliance sued city leaders to contest that vote.
That 305 South Congress redevelopment would bring multiple high-rises with millions of square feet of residential, hotel and commercial space alongside new public areas to the shores of Lady Bird Lake… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
➡️ After election, Texas House speaker race remains up for grabs (Texas Tribune)
The membership of the Texas House is finally set after Tuesday’s general election — but the future of the chamber’s leadership remains a mystery.
On Thursday, the jostling to hold the speaker’s gavel resumed with insurgent candidate Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield, saying incumbent Speaker Dade Phelan does not have enough support from House Republicans to win.
“We cannot continue to govern effectively without the Republican majority selecting our Speaker,” Cook wrote in the letter. “It is clear with my list of supporters that the current speaker cannot win an endorsement of the Republican Caucus.”
The House GOP Caucus will meet in a month to endorse its nominee for speaker. The speaker presides over the processes in the House and appoints members to leadership positions. Bills often live or die on whether the speaker supports them, or the lawmaker who has authored them... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
➡️ Harris’s loss triggers soul-searching, recriminations within Democratic Party (Wall Street Journal)
Kamala Harris’s defeat generated swift condemnation and soul-searching among Democrats, who are handing the White House back to a Republican they see as deeply flawed after their party failed to connect with voters preoccupied by inflation and illegal immigration.
The loss stunned Democrats, who felt confident going into Election Day that they had energy and momentum on their side. Instead, voters across several swing states delivered a clear rebuke by shifting in favor of President-elect Donald Trump.
The immediate reaction from party leaders was despondency. Asked who was to blame for the loss, one senior Democrat simply said “everyone.” The party lost ground with chunks of voters who used to be core to their coalition, including working-class voters and minorities, and lost rural areas in big numbers and failed to make up that deficit.
“This is a historic disaster of Biblical proportions. The Democratic Party, as it is, is dead. This is a historic realignment. There were Reagan Democrats. Now there are Trump Democrats,” said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist and former chief of staff to centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.).
“The elites of this country alienated voters everywhere because they didn’t want to hear what working- and middle-class voters were screaming for four years—focus on us and our problems, not your agenda to destroy Trump,” Kofinis said.
Trump made significant gains among Black and Latino voters, particularly among men, and was on track to sweep the battleground states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, and narrowed the margins in typically safe Democratic states such as Illinois and New Jersey.
Privately, Democrats were quick to point their finger at President Biden for running for re-election as an octogenarian and then, after a disastrous debate in June, stepping aside only after a tortured process. They now will spend four years pondering the vice president’s inability to defeat Trump despite his significant vulnerabilities, including 34 felony convictions... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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