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- BG Reads 12.6.2023
BG Reads 12.6.2023
🗞️ BG Reads | News - December 6, 2023
December 6, 2023
In today's BG Reads:
âś… HOME proponents, opponents speak out
âś… Texas Legislature adjourns fourth special session
âś… Stream plans to begin East Sixth Street transformation in new year
More stories below. Read on!
[2024 Austin City Council Race Watch]
Next fall will see elections for the following Council positions, District 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, and Mayor. Candidates can’t file for a place on the ballot until July 22, 2024.
Declared candidates so far are:
District 2
District 6
Krista Laine
District 7 (Open seat)
District 10 (Open seat)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
HOME proponents, opponents speak out (Austin Monitor)
City Council Member Leslie Pool led the charge in talking about the HOME initiative at a City Hall press conference Tuesday. Joining her in promoting the plan to reconfigure Austin’s single-family zoning rules were several Council members as well as representatives of labor, environmental and transit organizations.
As of late, Pool has been the surprise face of changing the rules to promote density. On Tuesday, she said, “When I started on Council in January 2015, Austin was still a place for working families. After all, the median home price was $238,000, and there were a lot of options in almost every neighborhood.” But this year, she said, “the median home price in Austin is $540,000 – well beyond the reach of a middle-income earner whose price point is limited to $350,000.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
LINKS:
City Council will meet for a Special Called meeting and vote HOME Phase 1 tomorrow at 10AM. You will be able to watch live here (ATXN Live).
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson on dropping police indictments, mending relationship between city hall and APD (KXAN)
Indictments against 17 Austin police officers tied to protests in 2020 will be dismissed, the Travis County District Attorney’s office and the City of Austin announced Monday.
Thousands of people rallied in Austin in 2020, following the death of George Floyd and Mike Ramos, concerned about police violence. During those demonstrations, some officers fired “less lethal rounds,” sometimes called “beanbag rounds,” which left many bruised and bloodied.
Grand juries indicted 21 officers for their use of force. The officers who had their indictments dismissed will be allowed back on duty.
KXAN’s Jennifer Sanders sat down with Austin Mayor Kirk Watson to discuss why the city made this decision and what work is being done to improve the relationship between the city and the Austin Police Department… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Stream plans to begin East Sixth Street transformation in new year (Austin Business Journal)
A substantial facelift of Austin’s East Sixth Street will begin in the new year.
Stream Realty Partners LP said preliminary preservation work is planned to begin in early January as part of a major restoration of more than 30 properties along the popular street with Congress Avenue to the west and I-35 to the east.
The initial work will focus on restoring the facades and interiors of the Stream-owned buildings that have fallen into disrepair. The majority of interior and exterior work is scheduled to begin late in the first quarter of 2024 and early in the second quarter of the year, according to the developer.
Stream’s vision for the district is to make East Sixth Street an all-day destination with local shops, live music and an array of restaurants. The strip of bars, shops and occasional office spaces has a reputation for drunken revelry and at times criminal activity, and Stream aims to change that. The firm, which has been acquiring property along East Sixth since at least 2020, said it intends to revive a weekend farmers market, outdoor concert series and other community events to ensure the street will remain active thorough the day… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin's shift to electric buses is plagued by vehicle glitches and supplier bankruptcy (KUT)
Capital Metro's drive to electrify its entire fleet of buses is coming with some hard lessons about the high costs of early adoption.
The transit agency's battery-powered buses have been less reliable and harder to fix. Now, a company selling million-dollar electric vehicles to CapMetro has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, throwing a new wrench into the gears.
Austin's transit agency has been a national leader in the switch to electric buses. The zero-emission vehicles are quieter. They don't blast diesel fumes in your face at the bus stop. The electric vehicles can provide a smoother ride than their diesel-powered cousins… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
As offices sit empty and housing costs soar, some Texas developers are converting workspaces into apartments (Texas Tribune)
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of remote work, the U.S. is sitting on a ton of vacant office space — and Texas is no exception. The state’s largest metropolitan areas are facing double-digit office vacancy rates even as their workers are back in the office at higher rates than employees in other major cities across the country.
At the same time, the U.S. is facing an acute and persistent housing shortage. By various estimates, the country needs millions more homes than it has — a key driver of the nation’s housing affordability crisis. Texas has one of the worst housing shortages in the country, second only to California, with a need for 306,000 more homes than it has, according to a recent analysis by Up For Growth, a nonprofit that focuses on housing policy.
Housing advocates, office landlords, policymakers and developers see the glut of empty office space as a potential vehicle to help solve the nation’s housing woes by converting the unused space into new apartments — while also keeping those properties financially viable... (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas Legislature adjourns fourth special session — leaving vouchers, school safety and elections bills unfinished (Texas Tribune)
The fourth special legislative session ended Tuesday when the House adjourned without taking action on some key bills the Senate had passed, leaving senators with little choice but to adjourn as well.
It concluded much like it began, with no deal on school vouchers, other Republican priorities sunk by intra-party fighting and a governor unable to broker peace between the feuding heads of the legislative chambers.
The latest casualties were Senate Bill 5, which would spend $800 million on school safety measures through 2025; and Senate Bill 6, which would change the timeline of a trial after an election contest is filed by a citizen or group. The failure to pass school vouchers, while a victory for Democrats and some rural Republicans, came at the cost of blocking funding that would have also increased school funding and provided bonuses for teachers.
The special session was scheduled to end Wednesday at midnight. But with the House skipping town at 11:30 a.m. without action on pending Senate bills, there was nothing the Senate can do to advance them to the governor’s desk. Senators had stood at ease Tuesday morning, pending the action from the lower chamber, and then adjourned for good just before 1 p.m… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Takeaways from the final Whitmire, Jackson Lee debate of Houston mayoral campaign (Houston Chronicle)
State Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee clashed over plans to fight crime and addressed recent controversies they’ve each inspired in their careers during the final debate of Houston’s mayoral race. Whitmire and Jackson Lee met one last time at Texas Southern University.
The debate was sponsored by ABC13 and the Chronicle. Whitmire (42.5%) and Jackson Lee (35.6%) advanced to a Dec. 9 runoff in the general election because neither won a majority of the vote. Early voting runs through Tuesday, and Saturday is election day. Jackson Lee challenged Whitmire on whether he would seek to take money from Metro to help fund more police officers and other crime-fighting tools. “Metro, 280 officers, ought to be working with HPD,” Whitmire said when moderators initially asked that question. “We don’t need to take their money, although their money will follow them when they work in concert with HPD.”
Both candidates agreed that Police Chief Troy Finner would continue to lead the department. Whitmire said he thinks Finner has been a good chief but has room for improvement. “He’s a good police chief, but I think he can be better. In fact, I expect him to be better. I think the current administration has kind of held him back. I want to have really aggressive, productive crime prevention, law enforcement in this city,” Whitmire said. “I want him to help me do more recruiting, I want him to go with me to high schools and community colleges.”
Moderators pressed the two candidates about a pair of Chronicle articles last week addressing Whitmire’s history of mingling his personal career with lawmaking and Jackson Lee’s troubled record as a boss.
Whitmire argued conflicts are relatively unavoidable in the part-time Legislature, where legislators make $7,200 a year. He said he is proud of his 50-year record of public service and stressed that he has never been charged with a crime. Jackson Lee said she could not recall episodes that former staffers recounted about an “emotionally bruising” atmosphere in her office, where some said she frequently rebuked them with harsh language. “Incidents that might have been reported? I don’t recall,” Jackson Lee said. ”What I do recall is embracing staff where we work together specifically for example for Hurricane Harvey."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US/WORLD NEWS]
Sen. Tuberville drops his monthslong hold on military promotions (NPR)
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., says he will drop his hold on most military promotions. He has been blocking military promotions for months over his objections to an unrelated Pentagon policy that pays for service members' travel to seek abortion care.
Tuberville told reporters in the Capitol on Tuesday that he will drop the hold on all promotions except those for four-star generals. Tuberville has been blocking promotions since February, creating a backlog that has grown to more than 450.
"We didnt get the win that we wanted, Tuberville told reporters in the Capitol on Tuesday. "We still have a bad policy, We tried to stand up for the taxpayers of this country."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
NCAA President Charlie Baker calls for new tier of Division I where schools can pay athletes (Associated Press)
NCAA President Charlie Baker is asking members to make one of the most dramatic shifts in the history of college sports by allowing highly resourced schools to pay some of their athletes.
In a letter sent to more than 350 Division I schools Tuesday, Baker said he wants the association to create a new tier of NCAA Division I sports where schools would be required to offer at least half their athletes a payment of at least $30,000 per year through a trust fund.
Baker also proposed allowing all Division I schools to offer unlimited educational benefits and enter into name, image and likeness licensing deals with athletes… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
The U.S. can afford a bigger military. We just can’t build it. (Wall Street Journal)
When the Center for Strategic and International Studies simulated a war between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, the wargame ended with Taiwan still free, at grievous cost. The U.S. loses two aircraft carriers and up to 20 destroyers and cruisers; China sees more than 50 major surface warships sunk.
What looks like a draw, though, becomes a Chinese victory before long. As Eric Labs, a navy analyst for the Congressional Budget Office explains, China can replace lost ships far more quickly. In the past two years, its navy has grown by 17 cruisers and destroyers; it would take the U.S. six years to build the same number under current conditions, he said.
“In terms of industrial competition and shipbuilding, China is where the U.S. was in the early stages of World War II,” Labs said. In the U.S. now, “we just don’t have the industrial capacity to build warships…in large numbers very fast.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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