BG Reads 3.24.2025

🟪 BG Reads - March 24, 2025

March 24, 2025

Bingham Group Reads

Presented by:

March 24, 2025

âś… Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Vision for transforming city core draws scrutiny ahead of likely Council vote (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Lawmakers push to spend billions of dollars for water projects and debate which ones to prioritize (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Grid reliability, housing affordability: Texas Senate passes slate of priority bills (Community Impact)

🟪 Here's why Trump highlighted Texas in dismantling Department of Education (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 As the Left looks to 2028, it waits on Ocasio-Cortez’s big decision (New York Times)

Read On!

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[COMMUNITY]

Austin Sunshine Camps’ Keeper Luncheon (March 26, 11:30AM to 1PM)

Since 1928, Austin Sunshine Camps (ASC) has provided the magic of overnight camp without the barrier of cost to more than 56,000 children in Central Texas.

As a past board president and longtime volunteer and fundraiser, I am proud to support this incredible organization.

This gathering is more than just a lunch—it’s an opportunity to hear inspiring stories, connect with fellow supporters, and meet the dedicated team behind Austin Sunshine Camps.

Wednesday, March 26, 11:30AM to 1PM

2225 Andrew Zilker Rd, Austin, TX 78746

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ City Hall:

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

âś… Vision for transforming city core draws scrutiny ahead of likely Council vote (Austin Monitor)

With Downtown Austin poised for overlapping mega-projects over roughly the next decade, City Council’s Mobility Committee took a closer look last week at the draft Austin Core Transportation Plan, which aims to tie all of the projects together.

Committee members broadly supported the plan’s vision, but raised concerns about implementation details, including how to balance safety for vulnerable road users with curbside access needs and delivery demands.

At last Thursday’s meeting, city staffers outlined the next steps for the plan’s likely adoption by City Council, its implementation strategy and integration with major infrastructure projects slated to transform the city core.

The plan identifies four east-west “priority corridors” in downtown – Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth streets – where the city aims to reallocate road space to better serve pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders.

These improvements are intended to complete Austin’s transit-priority network by connecting new east-west lanes with existing north-south routes… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

âś… Google to occupy downtown Austin's Sail Tower later this year (Austin Business Journal)

Google’s occupancy, or lack thereof, of its full-building lease of downtown Austin’s Sail Tower has long been a question mark hanging over the Central Business District's real estate scene. It has finally provided an answer.

The tech giant will move into the 804,000-square-foot, 35-story tower later this year, a company spokesperson confirmed.

“We look forward to opening our new Austin office at 601 W. 2nd this year that deepens our longstanding commitment to Texas and the local community,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Google declined to comment further. A number of questions remain unanswered, such as its intentions for its other Austin-area leases, the precise timeline of its Sail Tower move-in and whether it will occupy all of the building or try to sublease some of the space. Most of Google's roughly 2,000 Austin employees work in either the Saltillo development in East Austin or the 500 West 2nd St. skyscraper, which is next to the Sail Tower... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

âś… Empire Group secures $58M loan for San Marcos build-to-rent project (Austin Business Journal)

A national developer of build-to-rent housing is bringing more of it to Central Texas after securing financing for a new project in San Marcos. Arizona-based Empire Group of Cos. will build its next build-to-rent neighborhood across I-35 from the San Marcos Premium Outlets, said Bryan Freel, Empire's managing director of development.

With groundbreaking for the project, called Village at Centerpoint Station, expected to happen later this month, Empire has secured a $58 million construction loan arranged by Arizona-based Tower Capital, according to an announcement. Empire Group is a major developer of build-to-rent housing, with more than 5,000 units either in pre-development, development, lease-up or completion stages across the country.

Village at Centerpoint Station will consist of 270 homes on 24 acres at the northwest intersection of I-35 and Center Point Road, according to the announcement. That’s a density of about 11 homes per acre… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Some Austin ISD students to be picked up at 'hub' instead of neighborhood next school year (Community Impact)

Some Austin ISD magnet and choice-program students will no longer have neighborhood bus pickup as the district transitions its transportation routes, according to a news release.

All Austin ISD magnet schools and an all-girls college preparatory high school will use a “hub model” for transportation, which include the following schools:

  • Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders

  • Kealing Magnet School

  • Liberal Arts and Science Academy

  • Lively Magnet School

The new hub model means that students will no longer be picked up in their individual neighborhoods and will instead be picked up at their nearest AISD middle or high school, called their “hub.” Families can find their nearest hub at the Transportation Hub Spots Locator website… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

âś… Grid reliability, housing affordability: Texas Senate passes slate of priority bills (Community Impact)

Texas senators approved 20 bills on March 19, including proposals aimed at hardening the state power grid and increasing housing stock in new neighborhoods. The overview Amid growing electric demand, Senate Bill 6 seeks to strengthen Texas’ power grid and better protect residential customers from outages during emergencies.

“If we don’t do this right, we will someday again have what we had during [Winter Storm] Uri,” bill author Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said on the Senate floor March 19.

“You had large loads online in a city, and next door you had communities that were dark—people literally died in their homes and froze to death. That can never happen again.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

âś… Lawmakers push to spend billions of dollars for water projects and debate which ones to prioritize (Texas Tribune)

Texas lawmakers agree that the answer to the state’s looming water crisis is to invest billions of dollars into fixing the problem. What they don’t agree on, at least for now, is exactly how to spend the money.

State. Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, and state Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, filed bills this month that take big swings at solving the ongoing water issues plaguing Texas. They include investing billions of dollars into repairing and upgrading aging infrastructure like water pipes as well as creating new water sources for the future.

The discussion comes at an important time — a Texas Tribune analysis found the state could face a severe water shortage by 2030 if there was a recurring, statewide record-breaking drought and if state leaders and water entities failed to use strategies that secure water supplies.

A pair of proposals — Senate Joint Resolution 66 and House Joint Resolution 7 â€” would allocate up to $1 billion a year to boost water projects. Their accompanying bills, House Bill 16 and Senate Bill 7, both would create new water committees to oversee the funding and promote investment into new water projects… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

âś… Here's why Trump highlighted Texas in dismantling Department of Education (Austin American-Statesman)

Flanked by rows of children sitting in traditional school desks, President Donald Trump on Thursday gave Texas a shout-out as he prepared to sign an executive order aimed at dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.

The top three elected officials in Texas state government — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton — looked on as Trump signed the order in the White House’s East Room to begin shuttering the 45-year-old federal department. Trump vowed the move would mean "states that run very, very well, including a big state like Texas" could have education on par with the top-performing countries in the world. “We want to return our students to the states,” Trump said. “Some of the governors are so happy about this.

They want education to come back to them, to come back to the states and they’re going to do a phenomenal job.” Texas ranks in the bottom half of U.S. states for best quality education, coming in at No. 29 in 2024, according to U.S. News & World Report. The federal government doesn’t set academic curriculums, an authority that already falls under states and local school districts.

Trump also praised Abbott and Paxton among a slate of other Republican governors and leaders who joined him for the signing ceremony. And he called Patrick his friend and said he had “been a great friend of ours.” All three Texans touted their visit to the White House on their social media platforms, including a selfie by Patrick of the three Texas officials.

Texas has long played a major role in shaping national education policy. Texas was among the early adopters of charter schools in 1995. President George W. Bush, a former Texas governor, passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 to increase education access for disadvantaged students. Many of the education priorities of Texas’ leaders, such as school vouchers, are now mirrored in Trump’s top school issues at the federal level… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

✅ As the Left looks to 2028, it waits on Ocasio-Cortez’s big decision (New York Times)

For the last decade, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has been running for president, planning a run for president or pushing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to adopt more progressive policies. But now, as Democrats find their legal and fund-raising institutions under attack from the Trump administration, their base voters furious at their congressional leadership and their party’s popularity at a generational low, progressives are also staring down the prospect of a post-Bernie future.

A movement politician with a large and devoted base of supporters, the 83-year-old Mr. Sanders has signaled that he does not intend to run for president again. The question now is who will lead the network he built from scratch into the next presidential election and beyond. Interviews with nearly 20 progressive Democrats about the left wing’s future revealed a faction that sees the ideas Mr. Sanders has championed — reducing the power of billionaires, increasing the minimum wage, focusing more on the plight of workers — as core to the next generation of mainstream Democratic politics.

Though there is little agreement about who will emerge to guide progressives into a post-Sanders era, virtually everyone interviewed said there was one clear leader for the job: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. And it just so happened that Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez spent three days last week on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour through Arizona, Nevada and Colorado. In Denver, they drew 34,000 people, what Sanders aides said was the largest crowd of his career. Neither has so much as obliquely referred to the torch-passing nature of their trip, and in an interview, Mr. Sanders declined to answer questions about whether Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 35, would inherit his mantle.

But the subtext of their travels appears clear. She is what’s next — if she wants it.

“Alexandria has been doing an extraordinary job in the House,” Mr. Sanders said. “You can’t sit back. You can’t wallow in despair. You’ve got to stand up, fight back and get involved in every way that you can. There’s nobody I know who can do that better than Alexandria.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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