BG Reads 12.20.2024

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December 20, 2024  

➡️ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Bond task force sees timelines, budget constraints for possible elections in 2025 and 2026 (Austin Monitor)

🟪 This highway corridor through Williamson County is the gold standard for economic development (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 What nonstop flights are coming and going from Austin in 2025 (KUT)

🟪 Texas regulators shelve an electricity market reform proposal they say does too little to shore up grid (Texas Tribune)

🟪 US government tells officials, politicians to ditch regular calls and texts (Reuters)

Read On!

📍 The Austin Business Journal 2024 Williamson County Growth Summit 

• Wednesday's Summit highlighted the region's economic growth, future opportunities, and challenges. Key themes included intercity collaboration, development regulations, infrastructure, and manufacturing, attracting over 1,000 attendees.

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🟪 Review: The 2025 Austin Council Meeting Calendar 

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

➡️ Bond task force sees timelines, budget constraints for possible elections in 2025 and 2026 (Austin Monitor)

The Bond Election Advisory Task Force will have to decide by very early 2025 if the city should move forward with a possible climate change and sustainability bond package next fall, in a process and timeline that would see no community input or engagement in the proposal that would be put before voters.

At a meeting this week, the task force received presentations from staff in the Financial Services and Capital Delivery Services departments covering the long-term financial and logistical considerations involved in a bond package that the city’s budget office has suggested should limited to approximately $600 million. Eric Bailey, deputy director of delivery services, said the timeline needed to get a small 2025 bond proposal of about $50 million put on the ballot would wipe out any public engagement sessions and reduce the planning and design process the city is moving toward to speed up delivery of major capital investments. The remaining nonclimate-related needs could then be put before voters in 2026, with a hypothetical $550 million ask to stay within suggested budget and borrowing guidelines.

“Staff is developing project charters which define scope schedules and budgets, as well as coordinating opportunities between departments,” he said, noting that collaboration with departments that utilize public rights of way need to work closely to determine schedules, budgets and project scope. “If Council were to decide to hold a 2025 bond election, much of the project vetting, scoping and development would be truncated and any community engagement input and incorporation into the bond funded projects would be eliminated from the schedule.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ This highway corridor through Williamson County is the gold standard for economic development (Austin Business Journal)

In 2021, site selector John Boyd Jr. called a stretch of U.S. Highway 79 that runs through Williamson County "the most prized industrial real estate in the entire U.S." It's since been lined with large industrial parks, facilities from corporate heavyweights like Tesla Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., housing developments, data centers and more.

Looking back three years later, Boyd — principal at Florida-based site selection firm The Boyd Company Inc. — offered a wry assessment of his description: "It certainly has" come true.

If anything, he may have understated it. That 17-mile stretch of highway that runs from Round Rock to Taylor — as well as the 97-mile stretch that continues to College Station and includes Milam County — is on track to be one of the most desirable corridors in the world for advanced manufacturing.

The Williamson County Economic Development Partnership, which handles economic development for the county north of Austin, recently commissioned a report that studied the economic impact of five projects from Taylor to Rockdale: the Samsung plant, the $600 million Soulbrain Holdings Co. Ltd. phosphoric acid plant, Titan Development Ltd.'s Hutto MegaTech Center, Skybox Datacenters LLC and Prologis Inc.'s data center campus in Hutto, and the massive advanced manufacturing park being developed at the old Alcoa Corp. site… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ What nonstop flights are coming and going from Austin in 2025 (KUT)

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA) will add nonstop service to four new cities in 2025: Jacksonville, Memphis, Milwaukee and Reno. But the airport is expecting an overall slowdown in passenger traffic as the post-pandemic travel boom continues to level off.

The number of non-stop destinations served from ABIA fell to 76 in December, a 10% decline from a year earlier. Airlines are expecting a slower January and February than in 2024 with service picking up slightly in March as more flights are added.

"I think we're coming out of 2024 in a better position than we were going into 2024," said Joseph McCulloch, a frequent traveller who reports on airlines, airport lounges and hotels at his site ATXJettsetter.com.

"We're starting to see more adds [of flights] than removals, which is nice, because for a while there, we were seeing only removals. so I think it's going to give people a lot more options," he said.

Long lines could remain an issue in 2025, especially as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) struggles with short-staffing. The agency is sending about two dozen officers to help with screening through December… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ ACC buys historic Ford building for $2.8M to house new campus in Lockhart (Austin America-Statesman)

Austin Community College has purchased the historic Ford building in downtown Lockhart for $2.785 million to develop a campus to serve its next crop of students south of Austin, ACC announced Thursday.

Lockhart joined ACC's taxing district after voters within that town's school district boundaries on Nov. 5 approved an annexation proposal with 61% support, marking the college's first successful annexation in 14 years. In exchange for a property tax rate of 10.12 cents per $100 of valuation, residents within the school district will have access to all ACC educational resources and in-district tuition, with classes set to start in the spring at Lockhart High School outside of regular school hours.

ACC's purchase of the 20,000-square-foot Ford building on San Antonio Street will allow the college to develop a permanent home in Lockhart quicker than having to purchase land and construct a new building, as it had originally proposed in phase three of its annexation plan, the college said in a news release... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Icon to create 100 more 3D-printed homes at Community First Village (Austin Business Journal)

Austin-based, 3D-printing company Icon Technologies Inc. is continuing its partnership with East Austin's Community First Village, where construction is underway on more of the company's unique, printed homes.

Icon is partnering with Lennar Foundation, the charitable arm of homebuilder Lennar Corp., to build 100 homes at Community First using its industrial-scale 3D-printing technology, according to an announcement. Icon has already built 17 homes and facilities at the development, including Community First's welcome center.

Community First Village, created by Austin-based nonprofit Mobile Loaves and Fishes, provides affordable, permanent housing for people coming out of chronic homelessness. It will be able to house an estimated 1,800 formerly homeless people once its current phases of development are complete… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

➡️ Texas regulators shelve an electricity market reform proposal they say does too little to shore up grid (Texas Tribune)

The Public Utility Commission on Thursday shelved the performance credit mechanism, a controversial idea that was designed to bring more power onto the state grid and increase its reliability.

“I don’t believe that the PCM, as currently designed, will provide the reliability benefits needed in the ERCOT market,” PUC Chair Thomas Gleeson wrote in a Dec. 18 memo that the rest of the commission endorsed on Thursday.

The performance credit mechanism represented a complex change to the way Texas’ electricity market works.

The idea would have required electricity providers — the companies, co-ops and municipal utilities that sell power to people — to pay more to generators that committed to having electricity available when grid conditions get tight. Electricity providers then could have passed those extra costs onto consumers… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

➡️ US government tells officials, politicians to ditch regular calls and texts (Reuters)

The U.S. government is urging senior government officials and politicians to ditch phone calls and text messages following intrusions at major American telecommunications companies blamed on Chinese hackers. Right now. In written guidance released on Wednesday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said "individuals who are in senior government or senior political positions" should "immediately review and apply" a series of best practices around the use of mobile devices.

The first recommendation: "Use only end-to-end encrypted communications." End-to-end encryption - a data protection technique which aims to make data unreadable by anyone except its sender and its recipient - is baked into various chat apps, including Meta Platforms' WhatsApp, Apple's iMessage, and the privacy-focused app Signal. Corporate offerings which allow end-to-end encryption also include Microsoft's Teams and Zoom Communications' online meetings.

Neither regular phone calls nor text messages are end-to-end encrypted, which means they can be monitored, either by the telephone companies, law enforcement, or - potentially - hackers who've broken into the phone companies' infrastructure.

That's what happened in the case of the cyber spies dubbed "Salt Typhoon," a group that U.S. officials have said is being run by the Chinese government. Beijing routinely denies allegations of cyberespionage. Speaking earlier this month, a senior U.S. official said that "at least" eight telecommunications and telecom infrastructure firms in the United States were compromised by the Salt Typhoon hackers and that "a large number of Americans' metadata" had been stolen in the surveillance sweep.

Last week, Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan said the wave of intrusions "likely represents the largest telecommunications hack in our nation's history" and it's not clear that American officials have figured out how to defeat the hackers' spy campaign. Jeff Greene, CISA's executive assistant director for cybersecurity, told reporters Wednesday that the investigation remains ongoing and various targeted agencies and people are at different stages of their response.

The Salt Typhoon compromise "is part of a broader pattern of PRC activity directed at critical infrastructure," Greene said, referring to Chinese-linked cyber operations focused on utilities and other sensitive networks and tracked under the nickname "Volt Typhoon."… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Trump vows to speed up permits for megaprojects (Yahoo! Finance)

President-elect Donald Trump said he will expedite federal permits and environmental reviews for construction projects worth more than $1 billion. Many infrastructure megaprojects — in particular energy projects — fall in that price range… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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