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BG Reads 4.8.2024

BG Reads 4.8.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - April 8, 2024

April 08, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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April 8, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 Tesla report shows it is now Austin's biggest private employer

🟣 Metro's fastest-growing neighborhoods unveiled

🟣 Video - Total Solar Eclipse Day Forecast for Central Texas

Read On!

CLICK HERE TO REVIEW CITY OF AUSTIN PUBLIC MEETINGS / AGENDAS FOR THE WEEK OF APRIL 8, 2024

[BINGHAM GROUP]

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

[AUSTIN CITY HALL]

✅ Final Draft of City Manager Contract Link

✅ We’ve received word that Brie Franco, the city of Austin’s Intergovernmental Relations Officer, has retired from the city. She received a Distinguished Service Award at yesterday’s Council meeting. This is important because role serves as the focal point in developing and steering the City of Austin’s State Legislative and Federal Agendas, including hiring and managing the city’s contract lobby teams.

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Video - Total Solar Eclipse Day Forecast for Central Texas (CBS Austin)

CBS Austin Meteorologist Avery Tomasco breaks down the latest forecast for the total solar eclipse on April 8.

Tesla report shows it is now Austin's biggest private employer (Austin American-Statesman)

You might know Tesla's gigafactory as the place that makes Cybertrucks or the sprawling property you see when you drive on SH-71.

But while Austin-based Tesla is one of the region's best-known names, it is now also one of its largest employers, according to a new report filed by the company with Travis County.

The report is tied to a $14 million incentive deal the company signed with the county before building its gigafactory. As part of the deal with the county, the company is required to report certain updates including employment numbers, contracts, injuries and more annually, one of the few reports that provide a glimpse into the company.

Here's what the latest report says:

Tesla's Austin facility has now grown to 22,777 employees, up from 12,277 the year before.

This makes Tesla the largest private employer in Austin just ahead of H-E-B, which has about 19,000 employees, according to employment data tracked by Opportunity Austin... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Metro's fastest-growing neighborhoods unveiled (Austin Business Journal)

The fastest-growing neighborhoods in the Austin metro have been revealed.

The map at the bottom of this story shows where the most homes have been springing up lately. It comes as no surprise that none of the neighborhoods are located in Austin city limits, which no longer offers much space for sprawling neighborhoods that can yield hundreds of new homes annually. Instead, the bulk of the action is happening north of Austin in Williamson County — but Hays County to the south is having stronger showings than previous years.

Take, for example, the Sunfield master-planned community in Buda by Scarborough Lane Development. That huge, new neighborhood about 15 miles south of downtown Austin came in at No. 1 on this year's list. Read more about the sprawling community here.

Overall, 2023 saw a decline in new home starts across the metro. In 2022, there were 21,502 starts compared to 15,527 in 2023, a 28% decrease. The decrease has been linked to builder caution caused by rising mortgage rates starting in early 2022… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

To close or stay open? Ahead of the eclipse, Texas schools weighed logistical hurdles versus learning opportunities (Austin Monitor)

In the weeks leading to the eclipse, Texas school districts within the path of totality weighed safety and organizational hurdles to decide whether to close or stay open that day. Based on data from prime viewing states during the 2017 solar eclipse, the Texas School Safety Center projected increased traffic could mean school bus routes might “see an increase in travel time that would put some students getting home past midnight.”

Seguin ISD canceled school after realizing it had an insufficient reserve of substitutes to cover for the large number of teachers who asked for the day off, Superintendent Veronica Vijil said. Five hours north, Como-Pickton ISD also decided to close after local law enforcement officials told the district they could not guarantee a timely response to emergencies if schools stayed open on April 8, Superintendent Greg Bower said.

Other districts, including the biggest ones within the path of totality, decided the learning benefits outweighed the difficulties the eclipse will bring.

Round Rock ISD, which serves almost 47,000 students, will brave the day’s logistical challenges and provide a normal school day. Their buses are equipped with electronic tags, which will allow parents to monitor if they’re running late in case of heavy traffic, district officials said... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

November city elections, which would boost turnout, not in Dallas’ future (Dallas Morning News)

Dallas elections won’t shift from May to November, a move that experts say would have increased participation in mayoral and council contests that have tiny turnout, leaving many residents disconnected from the political process. Dallas elections will continue to occur on the first Saturday in May, when many residents are distracted by the trappings of spring and weekend activities. Americans are conditioned to vote the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Even so, a majority of the city’s Charter Review Commission rejected proposals to move Dallas elections to November and failed to produce any plans that could improve voter turnout.

“People in power don’t want to change how they get there,” said former Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, who wrote a letter to the commission urging an amendment proposal to develop November elections. “They like to stay in power. That’s just human nature. They don’t want more people voting.” One of the members against moving Dallas elections was Adam McGough, a former City Council member who used to be Rawlings’ chief of staff. “Going to November is not going to solve the problems,” McGough said at a February meeting of the commission. “There’s apathy. That is the issue.” Charter Commission member David de la Fuente developed the proposal to move the elections from May to November in odd numbered years. He knew he had an uphill fight. “It’s really hard to convince the beneficiary of a broken system to do something to fix the broken system,” he told The Dallas Morning News... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Why Houston metro’s population spiked in recent years, outpacing trends in NYC, L.A. and Chicago (Houston Chronicle)

Americans are leaving massive metropolitan areas — places like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and their surrounding suburbs — in droves, and they have been doing so for a while. But new census data tells a different story in the Houston metropolitan area, a sprawling 10-county area of more than 7.5 million people.

Between July 2022 and July 2023, the Houston metro area gained nearly 140,000 people. That’s one new resident every four minutes or so, according to estimates by the Greater Houston Partnership, the city’s business association. That numerical increase was more than any other metro area in the country except for Dallas, which gained more than 150,000 people over the same period. Meanwhile, the country’s three largest metros — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — all lost people. Across the board, metro growth was clustered in the South and Southwest.

The overall population spike in the Houston metro area is clear, but what exactly is causing the growth and where it is happening is more nuanced. To understand the change, you have to look at individual changes in what demographers have identified as the three components of population change: domestic migration, which includes people moving into an area from other areas of the country; international migration, which includes people moving into an area from outside of the country; and natural change, which is the total number of births minus the total number of deaths in an area. First up, domestic migration. The Houston metro area saw nearly 40,000 people move in from other parts of the country between 2022 and 2023. What’s clear from the new census data is they’re largely not moving into Harris County or Houston.

In fact, Harris County lost nearly 23,000 people to other areas of the country between 2022 and 2023: what is known as negative domestic migration. Instead, Americans from other parts of the country are largely moving into Harris County’s neighbor to the north, Montgomery County, and its neighbor to the southwest, Fort Bend County… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[NATION/WORLD NEWS]

Here’s what we know about Uber and Lyft’s planned exit from Minneapolis in May (Associated Press)

The future of Uber and Lyft in Minneapolis has garnered concern and debate in recent weeks after the City Council voted last month to require that ride-hailing companies pay drivers a higher rate while they are within city limits.

Uber and Lyft responded by saying they would stop serving the Minneapolis area when the ordinance takes effect May 1, causing the city to weigh the ordinance it passed. The state could also take action, while riders and drivers are left wondering what could come next.

The Minneapolis City Council last month overrode a mayoral veto and passed an ordinance that requires ride-hailing companies to pay drivers a minimum rate of $1.40 per mile and $0.51 per minute — or $5 per ride, whichever is greater — excluding tips, for the time spent transporting passengers in Minneapolis.

Supporters of the ordinance said the rate would ensure that companies pay drivers the equivalent of the city’s minimum wage of $15.57 per hour.

Council Member Jamal Osman, who co-authored the ordinance, said in a statement: “Drivers are human beings with families, and they deserve dignified minimum wages like all other workers. ... the Minneapolis City Council will not allow the East African community, or any community, to be exploited for cheap labor.”… LINK TO FULL STORY)

Taiwanese chip-making giant TSMC gets $6.6 Billion for Arizona project (Wall Street Journal)

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is getting up to $6.6 billion from the U.S. government for a factory complex under construction in Phoenix and will expand the operation’s scope and sophistication, part of a drive to regrow the domestic semiconductor industry.

TSMC, as the company is commonly called, will invest more than $65 billion in total and add a third chip factory to the manufacturing complex it started building in 2021, U.S. officials said. The company, the world’s largest contract chip maker, will also make currently cutting-edge 2-nanometer chips at one of the factories there.

“It’s a national security problem that we don’t manufacture any of the world’s most sophisticated chips in the United States,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a briefing with reporters. She described chips as drivers of artificial intelligence and necessary components of technologies that underpin the economy... (LINK TO FULL STORY)