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BG Reads 4.18.2024

BG Reads 4.18.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - April 17, 2024

April 18, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

Presented by:

Today, Bingham Group celebrates seven years in business! We are grateful to our past and present clients, team members, contractors, and supporters for being part of this journey. Thank you all!

//A.J. Bingham, Founder and CEO

April 18, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 The Austin City Council meets at 10AM today.

🟣 Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s resignation was in works a week before announcement

🟣 Developers have built thousands of windowless bedrooms in Austin. Now, the city may outlaw them

🟣 Texas lawmakers look to take zoning changes out of Dallas’ hands

Read On!

CLICK HERE TO REVIEW CITY OF AUSTIN PUBLIC MEETINGS / AGENDAS FOR THE WEEK OF APRIL 15, 2024

[BINGHAM GROUP]

✅ (NEW) BG Podcast Ep. 247: Austin Politics Weekly Recap and What's Ahead

✅ (NEW) BG Podcast Ep. 246: 2024 Elections - Austin Mayoral Round Up

On this episode we welcome back Jack Craver, independent reporter and founder of The Austin Politics Newsletter. Jack and Bingham Group CEO A.J. Bingham discuss the candidate field for the 2024 Austin Mayoral elections, including incumbent Mayor Kirk Watson.

✅ BG Blog: Land Development Code Amendments (4) Overview

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

[AUSTIN CITY HALL]

✅ The Austin City Council meets at 10AM today.

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s resignation was in works a week before announcement (Dallas Morning News)

Outgoing Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax says City Council members began suggesting he resign one week before it was officially announced, according to a city memo obtained by The Dallas Morning News.

In an April 8 memo to City Attorney Tammy Palomino, Broadnax identifies the names of the eight council members who suggested he resign as well as the dates and times, including three suggestions that came the day of the Feb. 21 announcement.

Also in the memo, Broadnax says his resignation is now effective as of the end of May 2. He was announced as Austin’s next city manager on Apr. 4 and starts on May 6.

“I notified the City Council of my resignation from my position as City Manager on February 21, 2024 following suggestions that I resign by a majority of the City Council, to allow for a reset, refocus and transition to a new city manager to move the city forward,” Broadnax wrote. “For your awareness and in the interest of transparency, please find below the City Council members referred to above and the dates that the suggestion to resign was made.'

According to Broadnax, council members Jaime Resendez and Jaynie Schultz first suggested he resign at 8:15 a.m. on Feb. 14. Council members Adam Bazaldua and Gay Donnell Willis suggested he resign two days later at 10:30 a.m. Council member Carolyn King Arnold, the city’s deputy mayor pro tem, suggested Broadnax resign on Feb. 20 at 6 p.m.

Council members Paula Blackmon, Zarin Gracey and Chad West suggested the city manager resign on Feb. 21. Blackmon at 9:15 a.m., Gracey at 12:15 p.m. and West at 2 p.m… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Developers have built thousands of windowless bedrooms in Austin. Now, the city may outlaw them. (KUT)

For two decades, UT Austin professor Juan Miró has given his undergraduate architecture students an assignment: Draw the window in your bedroom. The task for a class called “Architectural Detailing and Materials,” Miró says, is to get students thinking about the details of a room. The dimensions. The window. The windowsill.

When Miró gave this assignment in January 2022, several students raised their hands. They told him they couldn’t complete it. They didn’t have a bedroom window to draw.

“I said, ‘What do you mean? That’s impossible. That’s illegal,’” Miró recalls.

It’s not illegal. Not in Austin. Building codes adopted by the city do not require natural light in apartment bedrooms, and developers have been designing and constructing windowless bedrooms since at least 2002. The majority of these rooms appear to be in student housing, tucked into buildings throughout West Campus, the neighborhood immediately west of the university… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin Convention Center redevelopment spurs new downtown hotel partnership (Austin Convention Center)

Three downtown Austin hotels are forming a new partnership to keep business flowing during the upcoming redevelopment of the Austin Convention Center.

Hotel Van Zandt, Fairmont Austin and Hilton Austin have launched Austin’s Red River Collection, a coalition intended to establish a smoother booking experience while the Austin Convention Center remains closed for redevelopment between 2025 and 2029.

During the estimated $1.6 billion transformation, the Austin Convention Center Department and the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau have a plan to work cooperatively with the business community. It is an effort to ensure the city will maintain its ability to accommodate major gatherings and economic drivers, like the annual South by Southwest festival, bound to experience significant disruption due to the redevelopment process… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

New rules in the works for electric vehicle charging stations (Austin Monitor)

In addition to changes to major portions of the city’s land use regulations, City Council heard at last week’s meeting about proposed changes to rules governing where public electric vehicle charging stations can be located in the future.

Because of Austin’s ambitious climate protection goals and strategies, which include reaching net-zero communitywide greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, city staff has proposed new land use regulations related to situating electric vehicle charging stations. According to the city’s Climate Equity Plan, by 2030, Austin should have “a compelling and equitably distributed mix of level 1, 2, and DC fast charging infrastructure to accommodate 40 percent of total vehicle miles traveled in the city. This translates to 226 megawatts of electrical load and could mean more than 37,000 charging ports.”

As Eric Thomas, zoning division manager with the Planning Department, told Council, “With the rapid transition to electric vehicle, or EV, use, there is a need for a principal land use for electric vehicle charging that balances environmental benefits with land use considerations.” He reminded Council that the city, which plans to electrify most city vehicles, has a goal of 40 percent of total vehicle miles traveled in Austin being electrified by 2030… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texas lawmakers look to take zoning changes out of Dallas’ hands (D Magazine)

Dallas’ update to its land use plan, which includes reexamining the city’s predominantly single-family zoning, has been met with significant pushback among vocal residents. But if some conservative state policymakers have their way, the debate could become moot. Lt. Dan Patrick has indicated a desire to at least discuss zoning as it relates to housing affordability in the next legislative session. Some conservative groups have also indicated their support for this legislation.

ForwardDallas, the city’s not-yet-adopted plan, would only inform the city’s land use and zoning in the future. A great deal of concern around single-family neighborhoods centers on where and how to allow for more density—specifically middle or “gentle” density like triplexes, duplexes, and the like. In our April issue, Matt Goodman wrote about how Dallas needs density to survive, and about just how nasty the fight over density has become.

At a public information session at Samuell Grand Recreation Center recently, a mostly hostile audience took turns at the microphone, reiterating their distaste for the idea of eliminating what they felt protected “the character” of their neighborhoods: single-family zoning. There are very real questions about how and where to introduce middle density. But state Rep. John Bryant, D-Dallas, issued a warning before the discussion began: the harsh reality is that Dallas might not have the final say in its zoning updates. Bryant warned that there is an effort to change zoning “at the state level,” too. He couched this as another way Austin would wrest local control from cities and counties.

“The Legislature passed over the vigorous opposition of myself and others in this last session a bill that began the process of limiting the ability of cities to deal with a large number of matters that relate to us as local citizens,” he said. Bryant was referring to House Bill 2127, the so-called “Death Star” bill that limits city’s abilities to create ordinances that are more strict than state law. While urbanists and historians have long pointed to the racist history of exclusionary zoning, removing lot size minimums has long been considered somewhat of a “liberal” idea. In fact, four years ago conservative policy analyst Stanley Kurtz warned in the National Review that then Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden planned to “abolish the suburbs” by eliminating single family zoning... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Miriam Adelson and the Texas Sands PAC are ones to watch (Austin Business Journal)

Miriam Adelson poured $4.1 million into a political action committee in Texas ahead of March's primary elections — signaling her increased interest in Lone Star State politics amid efforts to legalize gambling. Adelson, part of the new majority ownership group of the Dallas Mavericks and head of the family that controls Las Vegas Sands Corp., made the contribution to the Texas Sands PAC on Feb. 6, according to a Feb. 26 campaign finance report. Her contribution came two months after her family finalized its purchase of a majority stake in the Mavericks from longtime owner Mark Cuban on Dec. 27. Dallas Business Journal dove into the February campaign finance reports to examine the influence of Adelson and her family heading into next year's legislative session.

Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS), a casino company that generated more than $10 billion in revenue in 2023, also contributed $9,000 to the PAC between December and February. The company launched the PAC in January 2022 with $2.3 million of initial funding from Adelson. The campaign finance report shows Texas Sands PAC spent $1.9 million supporting 35 candidates in primary races this year — an average of nearly $56,000 each. A spokesperson for Las Vegas Sands could not immediately be reached for comment. House Speaker Dade Phelan received the largest contribution at $200,000 in his heated state representative primary race. Phelan, a Republican from Beaumont, came in second to David Covey in the primary and the two are headed to a May runoff.

Phalen has feuded with the far right wing of the GOP and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who backs Covey. Phelan supported the House's impeachment of Paxton last year. In North Texas, where it's common for Texans to go to Oklahoma to gamble, politicians whose campaigns received funding from the PAC included Rep. Frederick Frazier with $79,000, Rep. Justin Holland with $79,000, Rep. Charlie Geren with $60,000, Rep. Venton Jones with $54,000, Rep. Angie Chen Button with $29,000, Rep. Ben Bumgarner with $29,000, Rep. Morgan Meyer with $29,000 and Rep. Jeff Leach with $15,000… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[NATION/WORLD NEWS]

At antisemitism hearing, Columbia official tells lawmakers, 'We have a moral crisis' (NPR)

A little déjà vu happened on the Hill on Wednesday.

The president of Columbia University testified about how the school has responded to antisemitic incidents on campus after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel's military response in Gaza.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish students on college campuses have experienced a "stark increase" in antisemitic incidents following Oct. 7.

Wednesday's hearing was reminiscent of another antisemitism hearing, held in December, when House Education Committee members grilled the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania. Two of those presidents ended up resigning, in part because of that hearing.

But there were some stark differences between the hearings, including that the Columbia representatives agreed with lawmakers that antisemitism was a serious problem on campus… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

AI chips drive growth at TSMC (Wall Street Journal)

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing posted higher first-quarter profit and said it expected growth this year thanks to what its chief executive called insatiable demand for chips used in artificial intelligence.

Chief Executive C.C. Wei said he expected AI-related chips to account for more than 10% of TSMC’s 2330 0.00%increase; green up pointing triangle total revenue this year, with the proportion increasing to 20% by 2028.

“Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the insatiable AI-related demand for energy-efficient computing power,” Wei said, adding that the company’s more advanced technology could reduce power consumption.

TSMC, which makes chips for companies such as Apple and Nvidia, said Thursday that net profit in the first quarter rose 8.9% from a year earlier to the equivalent of about $7 billion, slightly exceeding analyst forecasts. Revenue was also up… (LINK TO FULL STORY)