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BG Reads 8.20.2024

BG Reads 8.20.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - August 19, 2024

August 20, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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www.binghamgp.com

August 20, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 Ballot order drawing for Austin Council candidates today at 2PM

🟣 Facing budget deficit, Austin ISD board approves tax rate election (KXAN)

🟣 Save Our Springs Alliance lawsuit seeks to remove Austin charter amendments from ballot (Austin American-Statesman)

🟣 Texas’ jobless rate inched up in July amid nationwide slowdown (Dallas Morning News)

Read On!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

🟣 BG Podcast Ep. 265: Austin Politics Weekly Recap And What's Ahead

🟣 Updated City of Austin Org Chart (as of 7.2.2024)

LINK TO THIS WEEK’s CITY OF AUSTIN HEARINGS + AGENDA

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🟣 The last day for a Council candidate to file was Monday, August 19, 2024, at 5 p.m.

🟣 Today at 2PM in Council Chambers, a drawing to determine the order in which the names of candidates are to be printed on the ballot for the election to be held.

🟣 Review the Ballot Applications for the November 2024 Election

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Save Our Springs Alliance lawsuit seeks to remove Austin charter amendments from ballot (Austin American-Statesman)

The Austin City Council violated the Texas Open Meetings Act when placing a slate of charter amendments on the Nov. 5 general election ballot, a lawsuit filed Monday claims.

The suit was filed in Travis County's 98th District Court by attorneys representing the Save Our Springs Alliance, an environmental nonprofit; its executive director, Bill Bunch; and Joe Riddell, a former staff attorney in the Texas attorney general's office.

It seeks to invalidate the City Council's approval of adding the charter amendments to the ballot. As Monday is the last day to order an election, if a judge rules in favor of the group, the 13 charter amendments approved last week by the City Council would not make it onto the ballot this year.

The lawsuit asserts that the city's governing body violated both the public participation requirements and the public notice requirements of the act when it authorized the election at a hearing last Wednesday because all of the proposed amendments were compressed into one agenda item, rather than each one being taken up individually. This limited the amount of time a person could speak on the amendments and did not give substantial public notice on what the amendments would change, the lawsuit claims… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Facing budget deficit, Austin ISD board approves tax rate election (KXAN)

On Monday, the Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees approved a voter-authorized tax rate election (VATRE) to help reduce the district’s multi-million dollar deficit going into the 2024-25 school year.

According to Austin ISD, the district has a $119 million deficit. The district estimates that if voters approve the tax rate increase, the shortfall will be reduced to $78 million before budget cuts. The money, according to district officials, would be used to increase salaries for teachers and staff.

Several trustees pointed to the Texas legislature’s failure to raise the basic allotment, the base amount of money the state gives districts per student, as the reason Austin ISD and many other school districts are looking to put a tax rate increase on the ballot. State lawmakers have not raised the basic allotment since 2019, amid inflation reducing school districts’ buying power… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Median home-sales prices decline in all five Central Texas counties in July, report says (Austin American-Statesman)

The Central Texas housing market remains on its cooling streak, the latest figures show. The median sales price of a home in all five Austin-area counties declined last month compared with the same month last year, according to the Austin Board of Realtors' monthly report for July released Wednesday.

Experts have said the lower closing prices are due mainly to higher mortgage interest rates that have chipped away at many buyers' purchasing power. And the supply of housing in the five-county Austin region is climbing (active listings were up 20.3% this July over July 2023), giving prospective buyers more choice and leverage in negotiations, industry experts and real estate agents say. In the five-county Austin-Round Rock region, half of the homes sold for more than $450,000 in July and half sold for less, for a 2.8% decline in the median closing price.

Though mortgage rates declined last week to their lowest level since May 2023, sharply higher rates overall for the past 2½ years have meant some buyers aren't able to afford the home they once could afford, while others no longer can afford to buy at all. Along with higher rates, demand for housing also has eased due to a slowing influx of new residents moving into the Austin area in recent months, experts have said. That has led to a correction in the local market, which experts say is returning to more normal levels following a period of unsustainable growth after the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020.

“With rates around 6.5%, only about half of homeowners in our market can afford a median-priced home and only about a quarter of renters can afford a starter home," Clare Knapp, housing economist for the Austin Board of Realtors, said in a news release. “Consistently high mortgage rates continue to impact buyer’s purchasing power, but July’s increase in sales in four of the five counties (in the Austin region) shows the strength of Central Texas housing demand,” Knapp said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Project Connect anti-displacement funding gets close look from Community Development Commission (Austin Monitor)

Members of the Community Development Commission have requested more information from city staff about the decision-making process for spending Project Connect funds intended to preserve or create affordable housing near the mass transit system.

Last week, the commission received a presentation that detailed how the city has so far spent approximately $120 million of the $300 million in Project Connect money that was dedicated to anti-displacement efforts. The city plans to spend $20 million per year for the next nine budget cycles on anti-displacement efforts, targeting purchases or partnerships within 1 mile of rail or bus lines. Priority will also be given to properties that could be linked together, as well as the preservation of existing affordable units and properties that could be developed in phases.

To date, four major properties for multifamily projects have been acquired with the Project Connect money, with 160 existing units and a hundred more planned. The largest of those is the 66 acres of undeveloped property acquired for $27 million as part of the city’s purchase of the former headquarters for Tokyo Electron earlier this year. Other smaller purchases completed using Project Connect funds have preserved 109 affordable units and created 171 units of permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless people, with 1,304 rental units and 113 ownership units planned.

In addition, the Tokyo Electron land sits next to 18 acres of undeveloped property the city already owns, which offers the possibility of a large multiphased project more than 80 acres in size… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texas’ jobless rate inched up in July amid nationwide slowdown (Dallas Morning News)

Unemployment rose in more than half of U.S. states last month — including Texas — suggesting the weakness seen in the national jobs report that spooked markets extended beyond Hurricane Beryl. The unemployment rate in Texas — where the storm hit in early July — edged up 0.1 percentage point to 4.1%, below the nationwide average of 4.3%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.

Meanwhile, 27 other US states plus Washington, D.C., also saw their rates increase, with 10 rising at least 0.2 percentage point. The figures offer insight into Beryl’s impact on the July jobs report, which was released two weeks ago and helped spark a global market selloff. While some economists contended that the storm played a role in one of the weakest paces of hiring since the pandemic and the highest unemployment rate in three years, the bureau at the time said it had “no discernible effect” on the figures.

The number of people on the unemployment rolls in Texas — adjusted for seasonality — increased by about 4,800 from June to July while the state added about 37,000 new jobs. The bureau flagged 13 states that had statistically significant increases in their unemployment rates in July from the prior month. Texas was not one of them. The state of the economy is the number one concern for voters, and the presidential campaigns are concentrating their efforts in the swing states that will decide the 2024 election.

Michigan’s unemployment rate rose 0.3 percentage point from the prior month to 4.4% in July, the highest since 2022. Nevada’s jobless rate rose by 0.2 percentage point to 5.4%, among the highest in the nation. Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin all saw minor increases, while Pennsylvania’s rate was unchanged. The jobless rate also rose by 0.3 percentage point to 3.2% in Minnesota, home to Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate — Tim Walz... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

Biden’s goodbye to politics will begin in earnest with his convention speech (New York Times)

President Biden’s goodbye to a half century in national politics will begin in earnest on Monday. When he takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that evening, Mr. Biden will establish his time in office and his political legacy as the foundation for the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, the new Democratic nominee. According to a White House official who previewed the themes of the president’s remarks, he will say that she is the best person to finish a campaign he started — one that remains rooted in protecting democratic ideals and preventing a second term for former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee. It will be a bittersweet moment for Mr. Biden, who left the race and turned the keys of his campaign over to Ms. Harris less than a month ago. Since then, she has headlined packed rallies and delivered forceful campaign speeches, and the president has largely receded from center stage.

But Mr. Biden, who is supportive of Ms. Harris and appreciates the momentum around her, the official said, plans to ramp up his campaign schedule. He has also been focused on sealing up his legacy as a one-term president — but one who pulled the nation out of an economic spiral during the coronavirus pandemic, a point he will make in his speech. On Friday, Mr. Biden left Washington for Camp David for the weekend; he was scheduled to workshop his speech with Mike Donilon, a close adviser, and Vinay Reddy, his chief speechwriter. In his speech, the president will also frame Ms. Harris’s campaign as continuing policies and ideals he has long championed.

Mr. Biden’s remarks will make the case that “democracy prevailed” with his election in 2020. A win for Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, in November will mean that “democracy is preserved.” Before Mr. Biden speaks, the first lady, Jill Biden, is scheduled to deliver brief remarks. Dr. Biden’s time in office was spent supporting cancer-research initiatives and military families. She also lent her platform to many of the administration’s broader efforts, including a coronavirus vaccine campaign, and much of her time was spent on the campaign trail and at fund-raising events in support of her husband’s re-election effort… (LINK TO FULL STORY)