BG Reads 8.2.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - August 2, 2024

August 02, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

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www.binghamgp.com

August 2, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 Big deal between Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, major airlines faces delay (Austin Business Journal)

🟣 Officials weigh expanding Austin's airport EMS program (Community Impact)

🟣 Austin Council budget priorities posted

Read On!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

🟣 BG Podcast Episode 262 - On this episode Bingham Group CEO A.J. Bingham and Associate Hannah Garcia wrap up the week of July 22, 2024 in Austin politics, and discuss the week ahead.

🟣 Bingham Group has renewed its MBE and DBE certifications with the city of Austin. We are currently seeking sub-consultant services to support projects in the Austin Metro. Learn more here.

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

As construction slowdown continues, a new workforce housing project takes shape (Austin Monitor)

While the pipeline for multifamily housing projects has slowed severely since the end of 2023 in Austin, a local developer has announced something of a rarity: a new 110-unit project aimed primarily at workforce and middle-income residents.

Earlier this week, Notional Development Partners, which is based in Austin, announced the close of funding for its 600 Cumberland project that will be located just off South First Street to the south of Oltorf Street. Half of the units in the eight-story, half-acre project will be priced for affordability to those earning from 50 percent to 80 percent of the area’s median family income.

Guidelines from the Austin Housing Finance Corporation would put the maximum rent for those units from $1,102 to $1,712 for an efficiency apartment, $1,181 to $1,956 for a one-bedroom unit and $1,417 to $2,201 for a two-bedroom unit. To subsidize the affordable units, the developers are seeking a property tax exemption for the project, which was rezoned for greater density as part of City Council’s recent adoption of land use changes to encourage equitable transit-oriented development… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Big deal between Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, major airlines faces delay (Austin Business Journal)

 A new comprehensive financial agreement between Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and its primary airlines isn’t expected to be completed by the Sept. 30 expiration of the current one, making it likely the existing deal will be extended on a month-to-month basis into 2025 as negotiations continue.

However, airport officials and representatives of several airlines characterized the delay as relatively routine, particularly in light of the multibillion-dollar expansion that’s gearing up at ABIA. The so-called use and lease agreement will lock in rates for gates, landing fees and other airline operations at ABIA for at least five to 10 years.

The deal is hugely important for ABIA and will help shape its expansion.

By setting the parameters under which airline leases and fees will be calculated, it will go a long way toward determining how many new gates the airport will build and how much space each airline will occupy — although Sam Haynes, ABIA's deputy chief of communications and marketing, said it's already been determined that the airport's planned new concourse will have a minimum of 20 gates… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Officials weigh expanding Austin's airport EMS program (Community Impact)

An Austin-Travis County EMS program launched last year to assist visitors with medical issues at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport could be getting more support.What's happeningSeveral public safety issues and funding items are under review as city officials consider their priorities in Austin's proposed fiscal year 2024-25 budget.Among those is an initiative that's stationed ATCEMS staff at ABIA to respond to any medical calls there. The staffing update was made to keep medics in the airport in case of emergencies, and to maintain regular EMS service in the surrounding area.“Yes, this is about serving people who are at the airport, but it is also about making sure that the ambulances that are in service that are at the stations that we’re funding with our tax dollars are able to serve the residents of Austin—primarily in District 2 where they get pulled, but when they get pulled from District 2 to the airport, there’s a knock-on effect elsewhere,” council member Alison Alter said July 31… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas activist frustrates election officials with lawsuit about threat to ballot secrecy (Texas Tribune)

Laura Pressley claims to hold the key to what should be a closely guarded secret: how every voter in Williamson County has voted.

Her story about how she got hold of this information goes something like this: She had gathered clues through scores of public-records requests she had made over the years to the Williamson County elections department, looking for a breakthrough in her quest to find flaws with the electronic voting machines that Texans use to cast their ballots.

One day, she fell to her knees, weeping, and asked God to reveal to her the vulnerabilities she was certain existed, she told attendees at an April social media event on ballot secrecy issues organized by the right-wing organization Cause of America, according to an audio recording reviewed by Votebeat. “I said, ‘Dear Lord, show me the pattern, because I know it's here.’”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Katy police chief Noe Diaz will be the Houston Police Department's new chief, Whitmire says (Houston Chronicle)

Months of searching for Houston’s next full-time police chief ended with Mayor John Whitmire naming J. Noe Diaz, leader of the less than 100-person Katy Police Department, as Troy Finner’s replacement in charge of the nation’s fourth-largest city’s law enforcement agency.

“Chief Diaz brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of service and dedication to his new role,” Whitmire said Thursday in a letter to City Council members, who must vote on appointing the next chief. The mayor praised Diaz’s work with the Narcotics Division of the State Police, where he was stationed in Houston. In that time, he worked with the Harris County Organized Crime Task Force, Houston police, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI.

Diaz was appointed as a Texas Ranger in 2008, serving in Rio Grande City before returning to Houston. As a Ranger, he spent over a decade working on what the mayor called high-profile public corruption investigations.

Diaz will now step into to run one of the largest police departments in the country, one reeling from a recent scandal that involved more than 260,000 dropped cases that toppled the former chief. The department has a budget of more than $1 billion, a staff of 6,288 and a dire need to replenish the ranks of police officers after a wave of retirements and resignations. “The comments I’ve gotten are that he’s a fair, even-handed guy,” Mike Knox, a retired Houston Police Department officer and a Republican candidate for Harris County sheriff, said of conversations he’s had with Katy police officers. “He’s not too political — he’ll just follow the law and do his job.”

Diaz did not respond to multiple requests for comment before the announcement. Katy’s city administrator didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Gregory Fremin, a retired Houston Police Department captain and a professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, said it is common for a new mayor to bring in a chief that reflects his goals and aspirations. Whitmire’s search has been compounded by the fact that the department is reeling from a scandal over its handling of 264,000 cases suspended using an internal code citing a lack of personnel, Fremin said.

“They want to bring an outsider in,” Fremin said. “The new chief will come in … and he’ll want to select, interview and promote an entirely new regime of command staff personnel. He’ll want to surround himself with people he knows and trusts.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

San Antonio City Council reviews updated charter amendments before calling for election (Texas Public Radio)

San Antonio City Attorney Andy Segovia presented to the City Council on Thursday the proposed city charter amendments they will vote on next week. The list of charter amendments presented included smaller raises for council members and the mayor than originally proposed by the Charter Review Commission. It also included a new proposal to remove the longtime ban on city employees engaging in municipal politics outside of their jobs.

The changes come from council’s comments and requests after they were first presented with the Charter Review Commission’s recommendations in June. The city council will vote on the recommendations one by one in August, and the approved recommendations will then go on the November ballot for voters to decide. The new salary proposals presented to council were $58,000 for council members and $73,000 for the mayor, with annual adjustments tied to the U.S. Census Bureau’s definition of San Antonio’s area median income.

Council members are currently paid a salary of $45,722, and the mayor is paid a salary of $61,725. The original salary proposals from the Charter Review Commission were $80,000 for council members and $95,000 for the mayor. Most council members called in June for those salary proposals to be reduced, but some said they’d been shrunk too much.

“If we wanna treat any potential new council member along the lines of what the median family can earn in this city, then we ought to be paying that kind of compensation,” District 9 Councilmember and mayoral candidate John Courage said. “And I’m not gonna be a city councilman for District 9 — this is not gonna benefit me.” Several council members recommended that the salaries line up with the average median income for a family of three in San Antonio, in the $60,000 range. Others, like District 10 Councilmember Marc Whyte and District 8 Councilmember Manny Peláez, another candidate for mayor, said they wouldn’t support any raise...(LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

Things to know about the largest US-Russia prisoner swap in post-Soviet history (Associated Press)

The U.S. and Russia on Thursday completed their largest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history, a deal involving 24 people, many months of negotiations and concessions from other European countries who released Russians in their custody as part of the exchange.

Here are some things to know… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[2024 Austin City Council Race Watch]

This fall will see elections for the following Council Districts 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, and Mayor.

Declared candidates so far are:

Mayor

District 2

District 4

District 6

District 7 (Open seat)

District 10 (Open seat)

_________________________

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