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- BG Reads 2.13.2025
BG Reads 2.13.2025
🟪 BG Reads - February 13, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
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February 13, 2025
✅ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 The Austin Council meets today at 10AM (Agenda + Livestream Links)
🟪 Austin ranked as the second-most expensive for rent in the metro area (KVUE)
🟪 County judge approves election to decide whether SpaceX launch site will become a city (Texas Tribune)
🟪 NYSE comes to Dallas with rebranded branch as Texas Stock Exchange eyes launch (Dallas Morning News)
🟪 US eggs prices hit a record high of $4.95 and are likely to keep climbing (Associated Press)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
📺 Today at 10AM: Austin City Council Regular Meeting
🏛️ City Memos
President Trump Executive Orders / Pause on Federal Grants, Loans and Disbursements Update (2.11.2025)
As a follow up to the January 29, 2025 Memorandum, the Intergovernmental Relations Office (IGRO)continues to review recent federal administration actions along with partner departments relating todirect and discretionary funding awarded to the City of Austin.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
✅ Austin ranked as the second-most expensive for rent in the metro area (KVUE)
Perhaps to the surprise of no one, rent prices in Central Texas are incredibly high.
A new report from digital rent marketplace Zumper revealed the average rent prices in the Austin area. The report found that Kyle has the most expensive rent on average in the Austin area, with a one-bedroom apartment pricing out at an average of $1,560 per month.
Kyle also had the fastest-growing rent prices in the area both year-over-year and month-over-month, rising a remarkable 15.6% since February 2024 with a 4% monthly growth rate… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Austin AI Alliance sets out to measure progress of local efforts (Austin Business Journal)
The Austin AI Alliance this week laid out an ambitious goal of measuring how Austin is adopting artificial intelligence tools and what impact its local startups, global tech companies and civic institutions are having at the local, national and worldwide level.
It's a task for which you might think AI is well suited. But, like any AI project, it needs plenty of human input and direction.
The project, which aims to produce an annual report, will start by gathering information from the alliance's membership, which includes large companies such as Dell Technologies and IBM, as well as a long list of tech organizations such as Austin Women in Technology, The University of Texas Machine Learning Laboratory and the city of Austin, said AI Alliance Executive Director Jay Boisseau at a Feb. 11 kickoff event… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Saronic to use huge new facility in Austin to ramp up production, hire hundreds (Austin Business Journal)
After signing one of the largest industrial leases in the metro in 2024, an Austin-based defense technology company plans to hire hundreds as it ramps up production at its new headquarters. Saronic Technologies, which produces three models of autonomous boats for the U.S. Navy, signed its lease at Eastside Commerce Center in December, said co-founder and CEO Dino Mavrookas.
The new office and production facility will be the headquarters of the company, which also operates out of various offices around the city. Saronic employs about 350 people and will multiply its workforce moving forward, Mavrookas said.
The new headquarters at the intersection of Dalton Lane and Old Bastrop Highway will have “everything there, from hardware and software engineering to our final assembly and production.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Firefly Aerospace to add 50 new employees thanks to $8.2M Texas Space Commission grant (Austin Business Journal)
Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace Inc., which builds rockets and lunar landers, announced Feb. 11 that it received an $8.2 million grant from the Texas Space Commission that will enable it to increase its manufacturing capabilities, conduct educational outreach and add 50 jobs.
The company — which has 750 employees spread across more than 275,000 square feet of space in Cedar Park and Briggs — said in an announcement that the funding comes from the Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research Fund, which supports development of emerging spaceflight technologies, workforce training and infrastructure critical to Texas' growing aerospace sector.
The Texas Space Commission was launched by the state Legislature in 2023 with $350 million to position Texas as a global industry leader... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
✅ County judge approves election to decide whether SpaceX launch site will become a city (Texas Tribune)
Cameron County’s top elected official on Wednesday signed an order clearing the way for an election that would allow employees of SpaceX’s South Texas launch site to make it the county’s newest city.
The order, signed by County Judge Eddie Treviño, approves a petition filed in December by several SpaceX employees requesting an election to determine whether their Starbase headquarters could become a town under the same name.
The would-be town is roughly 25 miles east of Brownsville along the Gulf of Mexico.
If approved by voters in the town’s proposed area, the base would become a Type C municipality, defined as less than two square miles with 200 to 5,000 residents. Type C municipalities use a commission form of government with a mayor and two commissioners; the petition notes that SpaceX’s security manager, Gunnar Milburn, is the sole candidate for mayor… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ NYSE comes to Dallas with rebranded branch as Texas Stock Exchange eyes launch (Dallas Morning News)
The New York Stock Exchange will reincorporate its Chicago branch in Texas, it announced on Wednesday, rebranding it as NYSE Texas and moving to Dallas.
With the upstart Texas Stock Exchange taking shape and the Nasdaq expanding its reach in the Lone Star State, the Dallas region is about to find out if “Y’all Street” is big enough for three players.
Timing of the Big Board’s “fully electronic” Texas equity market will depend on regulatory filings, the NYSE said. The announcement comes as a number of big companies flock to Texas as a whole, drawn in by its low taxes and business-friendly regulation.
“As the state with the largest number of NYSE listings, representing over $3.7 trillion in market value for our community, Texas is a market leader in fostering a pro-business atmosphere,” Lynn Martin, president of NYSE Group, said in a statement. “We are delighted to expand our presence in the Lone Star State, which plays a key role in driving our U.S. economy forward.” New York’s NYSE and Nasdaq have had a near duopoly on the U.S. securities market for decades, but both apparently see a formidable challenger in the Dallas-based upstart TXSE.
The startup has gotten $161 million in initial backing from financial giants like BlackRock and Citadel Securities, and is on track for an early 2026 launch. Late last month, it filed for U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approval. The TXSE’s goal is to lower the costs of getting listed while also raising standards for who gets to be listed, in order to reincentivize companies to go public while taking advantage of Texas’ robust business community… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Can Texas chip away at its child care waitlist? (Dallas Morning News)
Child care significantly impacts the quality of life in Texas, so lawmakers must do more to expand access for more seats and ensure it’s affordable for working families, advocates say.
They plan to stress that message in Austin during a Wednesday hearing when they urge legislators to funnel more money to a Texas Workforce Commission program that helps families pay for child care. Over 2.1 million children under six live in Texas, with 65% of their parents employed, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
However, excluding providers who solely serve school-age children, the Texas Workforce Commission can only provide daily subsidized child care to 114,000 kids, which excludes 560,000 other low-income children, according to the nonprofit Children at Risk… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Greg Abbott responds to pope on deportation criticism: ‘The Bible calls for strong borders’ (Houston Chronicle)
Pope Francis’ rebuke of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation apparently did little to shake Gov. Greg Abbott’s faith in the effort.
A spokesman for the Texas Republican, who is a practicing Catholic, responded to the pope with a statement Wednesday saying: “The Bible calls for strong borders and law and order.” “And Jesus guided others to follow the laws of the land,” the statement said. The response came as Abbott was in D.C. Wednesday meeting with Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” who is overseeing the mass deportation regime.
“Texas finally has a partner in the White House who will restore law-and-order at our southern border,” the governor wrote on the social media site X. The pope this week wrote an open letter to U.S. bishops saying that he has “followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations.”
Francis, an Argentine Jesuit and the first Latin American pope, wrote that a nation has the right to defend itself and keep its communities safe from those who “have committed violent or serious crimes.”
But, he wrote, “deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
✅ US eggs prices hit a record high of $4.95 and are likely to keep climbing (Associated Press)
Egg prices hit a record high as the U.S. contends with an ongoing bird flu outbreak, but consumers didn’t need government figures released Wednesday to tell them eggs are terribly expensive and hard to find at times.
The latest monthly consumer price index showed that the average price of a dozen Grade A eggs in U.S. cities reached $4.95 in January, eclipsing the previous record of $4.82 set two years earlier and more than double the low of $2.04 that was recorded in August 2023.
The spike in egg prices was the biggest since the nation’s last bird flu outbreak in 2015 and accounted for roughly two-thirds of the total increase in food costs last month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Trump administration set to purchase $400 million worth of armored Teslas (NPR)
The Trump administration is expected to purchase $400 million worth of armored Tesla vehicles, according to a new State Department document detailing procurement for fiscal year 2025.
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk is a top White House official who has been leading the Department of Government Efficiency, a unit focused on shrinking the federal workforce and ferreting out corruption.
The document does not specify what Tesla vehicles will be purchased by U.S. officials, but Musk's Cybertruck, with its militaristic design and stainless steel exterior, could be an option.
After reports circulated Wednesday night of the State Department's intent to purchase Tesla vehicles, the document was edited, at 9:12 p.m., and now says the federal contract is for $400 million worth of "armored electric vehicles," but the word "Tesla" was removed… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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