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BG Reads 3.15.2024

BG Reads 3.15.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - March 15, 2024

March 15, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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March 15, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 Austin area continues to see population increase; falls out of fastest-growing metro ranking

🟣 Planning Commission gets its first look at Equity-Based Preservation Plan

🟣 Biden aims to repair places left broken by previous economic strategies

Read on!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

✅ BG Blog - City of Austin org chart red line (as of 2/9/2024)

[AUSTIN CITY HALL]

From the City of Austin Council Message Board:

RE: City Manager Search Events—March 25th and 26th

Council Members:This is to give an update on the activities in the City Manager search for March 25th and 26th.On the 25th, two candidates—T.C. Broadnax of Dallas and Sara Hensley of Denton—will meet with City of Austin personnel in the morning. That evening, the public will have an opportunity to attend a “Meet the Candidates” event.The event will be held at the Permitting and Development Center located at 6310 Wilhelmina Delco Dr, Austin, TX 78752. It will begin at 6:00 PM and run until 7:30 PM.Judy Maggio has agreed to serve as our facilitator for the evening event and will begin with each prospect giving an opening statement to introduce themselves to the public. The candidates will also have an opportunity to give a brief closing statements.The City of Austin press release provides additional information regarding the “Meet the Candidates” event which includes a mechanism for Austinites to submit questions in advance that Judy will ask each candidate.http://assets.austintexas.gov/austincou ... 153619.pdfThe event will be televised live on ATXN. It will also be re-run.After the interviews, both candidates will be available for a meet and greet with the public.On March 26th, we will interview the candidates. The Council will convene at 8:30 AM. We will go into Executive Session and interview the two candidates. Media availability with each candidate will occur directly after their closed-session interview with us.Depending on the interviews, and as indicated previously, we may invite one or both prospects back for activity/interviews on April 1st and/or 2nd. We will have posted Council action for the April 4th meeting. The posted action will be to direct our search firm to negotiate a contract with the specific person. I previously wrote that we might do this on April 2nd. But that would make it difficult to allow the required public comment on a council action item if, in fact, we bring someone back for more interviews. And waiting two days for a regular meeting is less rushed and just makes sense. We don’t have to take action on April 4th, but we will be posted and in a position to do so, if we want.Thanks.KirkOn behalf of Mayor Watson

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Austin area continues to see population increase; falls out of fastest-growing metro ranking (Community Impact)

New U.S. Census Bureau estimates show Central Texas remains one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, although the pace of the Austin area's annual population growth is slightly slowing.The Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metropolitan area—including Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis and Williamson counties—saw population growth of 7.53% between July 2020 and July 2023 with 173,000 new residents added.New Census Bureau reporting ranks the population of the five-county region as the 26th-largest nationally, and behind others in Texas including the Metroplex, Greater Houston and the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro to the south.

Between 2022 and 2023 alone, the region added about 50,000 people. That more than 2% population increase wasn't enough to keep the Austin area as the fastest-growing major metro in the U.S. year over year, a distinction it held for more than a decade. The new Census Bureau estimates placed the Austin metro second, with a growth rate that was 0.13 percentage points behind Jacksonville, Florida… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Planning Commission gets its first look at Equity-Based Preservation Plan (Austin Monitor)

With the draft Equity-Based Preservation Plan now available for public review, city boards and commissions are getting briefed on the document that includes over 100 recommendations for preserving the highs and lows of Austin’s history.

The Planning Commission, which will be voting on the plan this fall, heard an overview of the draft at its March 12 meeting.

“We’re updating a plan that hasn’t been changed since the 1980s,” said Ben Heimsath, an architect and chair of the Historic Landmark Commission.

Hundreds of hours in the making, the draft document is the product of a Preservation Plan working group, which is now in its third year of exploring Austin’s history and how to preserve it. The group is made up of individuals from over 19 ZIP codes, a third of whom are renters, Heimsath said. An overarching goal of the group’s work is for preservation to serve all of Austin, including underrepresented and underserved communities… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin's I-35 expansion construction timeline sharpens (AXIOS Austin)

The timeline of the state's multibillion-dollar I-35 overhaul is coming into focus, and Austin commuters may want to reacquaint themselves with a map of the city as they try to ferret out shortcuts.

Why it matters: The misery of moving north and south at rush hour through Austin's chief arteries is about to get a lot worse.

What's happening: The Texas Department of Transportation has moved past the public input and design phase and is acquiring right of way, potentially displacing businesses and people from more than 140 properties.

Zoom in: The $4.5 billion, 8-mile central piece of the project, the most costly and controversial, includes dismantling the existing I-35 upper decks north of Manor Road.

Adding two non-tolled high-occupancy lanes in each direction from U.S. 290 East to Ben White Boulevard, for a total of at least 15 lanes — though there are more when frontage roads are folded in.
Sinking lanes beneath ground level from East Oltorf Street to East Riverside Drive and from East Cesar Chavez Street to Airport Boulevard.

The timeline: Construction is expected to start later this year and last through 2032 in the following phases:

2024-26 – East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard bridge
2024-27 – Drainage tunnel under I-35 and East Cesar Chavez Street
2024-31 – Lady Bird Lake (Holly Street to East Ben White Boulevard)
2025-28 – CapMetro Red Line bridges (Airport Boulevard and East Fourth Street)
2026-31 – University (U.S. 290 East to East Martin Luther King Boulevard)
2026-32 – Downtown (East Martin Luther King Boulevard to Holly Street)

(LINK TO FULL STORY)

Outdoor Voices to close all retail stores, take business online (Austin Business Journal)

Austin-based athleisure outfitter Outdoor Voices Inc. will be closing all of its stores on March 17, a local store employee confirmed.

Customers flocked to the retailer's South Congress store on March 13, where items were discounted 50% and a line to get in wrapped around the building. A report by The New York Times points to executive turnover and a declining valuation in recent years.

Outdoor Voices, which moved its headquarters to Austin in 2017 from New York, intends to continue with its online operations after closing its physical stores, the employee said. It's known for women's "athleisure" apparel like leggings, shorts and sports bras. It also sells accessories and men's clothing.

The retailer had 16 stores in operation or planned by publication time in cities such as Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York and San Francisco, according to its website. Its lone Austin location is at 1204 S. Congress Ave., next to Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, Billy Reid and others businesses. Outdoor Voices has two other retail stores in Texas — one in Dallas' NorthPark Center and another in Houston's Heights Mercantile... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

With new state funds in hand, community colleges waive tuition for some high school students (Texas Public Radio)

Texas community colleges know many high schoolers are skeptical of higher education because of the price tag. Some want to change that conversation by using new state dollars to waive tuition for some of their youngest students.

Austin Community College, one of the most populous junior colleges in the state, is set to waive tuition for this year’s graduating high school seniors through 2027. ACC’s Board of Trustees will vote on the proposal in April. If the proposal passes, the school would use the $6.8 million it received this year through House Bill 8 — the legislation passed last year that expanded the pot of money junior colleges get funding from and tied future funds to positive student outcomes — to pay for this benefit.

“‘Discount’ doesn’t change people’s perceptions that they can’t afford to go to college… ‘Free’ means something when you’re talking about college affordability in the way that a discount does not,” ACC Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart said.

Austin Community College plans to pay eligible students’ tuition before federal and state aid kicks in. Known as a “first-dollar” program, this setup would allow students to use other aid toward expenses like books, child care and housing. The plan is a rare departure from “last-dollar” scholarships, in which federal and state aid goes to tuition before the institution covers the Other schools are also doubling down on financial support for their youngest students with dual credit. By the spring, nearly every community college in the state will have waived the cost of dual credit courses for economically disadvantaged high school students. This effort was facilitated by the state — colleges who participate qualify for extra state funding… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Biden aims to repair places left broken by previous economic strategies (Washington Post)

President Biden, speaking Wednesday in a community that he cited as a painful example of racist urban policy, highlighted a new economic strategy aimed at revitalizing places that for decades have been cut off from the nation’s growing prosperity. Biden spoke at a Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee in a largely Black and Latino neighborhood where 17,000 homes and 1,000 businesses were destroyed in the 1960s to make way for an interstate highway. The president’s trip, which includes a stop in Michigan on Thursday, is part of an effort to court minority voters in states that are key to his political future. In conjunction with the Midwestern swing, the White House unveiled $3.3 billion in federal grants to remove or retrofit highways that separate minority neighborhoods in many cities from jobs, entertainment centers, hospitals and other services.

“Too many communities across America faced the loss of land, wealth and possibilities that still reverberate today,” Biden said. “Today we’re recognizing that history to make new history.” Milwaukee is one of 132 communities in 40 states that will benefit from the Transportation Department program, which is among a number of new federal initiatives designed to aid places suffering long-term economic ills, officials said. “For communities too often left behind, we’re rebuilding the roads, we’re repairing cracks in the sidewalk,” Biden said. “We’re creating places to live and play safely and to breathe clean air.” Biden’s embrace of strategies aimed at spurring development in specific locations marks a significant shift in U.S. policy, part of the broadest government intervention in the economy in at least four decades and one with significant political overtones.

States such as Wisconsin are critical to Democratic hopes in November, and Biden’s appeal to Milwaukee’s large number of Black voters may decide his fate there. The administration’s “place-based” approach aims to use a mix of spending and tax credits to spread prosperity more evenly, rebuild communities devastated by the loss of factory jobs and prevent blight in areas that otherwise would suffer during the transition to cleaner energy sources… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Election disinformation takes a big leap with AI being used to deceive worldwide (Associated Press)

Artificial intelligence is supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, making it easy for anyone with a smartphone and a devious imagination to create fake – but convincing – content aimed at fooling voters. It marks a quantum leap from a few years ago, when creating phony photos, videos or audio clips required teams of people with time, technical skill and money. Now, using free and low-cost generative artificial intelligence services from companies like Google and OpenAI, anyone can create high-quality “deepfakes” with just a simple text prompt. A wave of AI deepfakes tied to elections in Europe and Asia has coursed through social media for months, serving as a warning for more than 50 countries heading to the polls this year.

“You don’t need to look far to see some people ... being clearly confused as to whether something is real or not,” said Henry Ajder, a leading expert in generative AI based in Cambridge, England. The question is no longer whether AI deepfakes could affect elections, but how influential they will be, said Ajder, who runs a consulting firm called Latent Space Advisory. As the U.S. presidential race heats up, FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned about the growing threat, saying generative AI makes it easy for “foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence.” With AI deepfakes, a candidate’s image can be smeared, or softened. Voters can be steered toward or away from candidates — or even to avoid the polls altogether. But perhaps the greatest threat to democracy, experts say, is that a surge of AI deepfakes could erode the public’s trust in what they see and hear... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Shale boom sends US oil production to new world record (Houston Chronicle)

The U.S. produced more crude oil last year than any nation ever has, setting new records for total annual production and average monthly production, according to data released Monday by the Energy Department. The nation’s oil production reached an average of 12.9 million barrels per day in 2023, up from the previous global record of 12.3 million barrels per day set by the U.S. in 2019. The monthly average in December — 13.3 million barrels per day — was high enough to set a new monthly record.

The U.S. has become a global energy superpower in the 16 years since the Texas shale boom began reshaping the global energy industry. The Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico is the largest oil-producing region in the country, accounting for roughly 40% of all U.S. crude oil production, and among the largest in the world.

The U.S. has outpaced global oil powerhouses Russia and Saudi Arabia every year since 2018, the Energy Department’s data showed. Russia produced 10 million barrels per day in 2023; Saudi Arabia produced 9.7 million barrels per day. Before hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling unleashed the shale boom, U.S. oil production had peaked at 9.6 million barrels per day in 1970 and fell to a low of 5 million barrels per day in 2008. Production has increased steadily since 2009, when the so-called shale revolution reversed the trend… (LINK TO FULL STORY)