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September 19, 2023

In today's BG Reads:

🏠 Austin will try again to tame its housing affordability crisis

🚸 Child care in focus as Austin officials consider economic deal

💡 ERCOT CEO talks Texas grid emergency

Read on!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

🆕  Listen: BG Podcast Ep. 216 

(Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify).

Topics include:

✅ Is the city Austin back in play for economic development?

✅ Texas AG Ken Paxton's acquittal

✅ The battle to save Flo the tree

➡️ Check out our red lined City of Austin org chart.  The changes reflect the many changes in city leadership since February 2023.

➡️ You can view those here: BG Blog: Tracking City of Austin Leadership Changes (Updated September 1, 2023).

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Austin will try again to tame its housing affordability crisis with zoning reforms. Can it do it this time? (Texas Tribune)

As Austin’s sky-high housing costs put increasing pressure on renters and homeownership out of reach for many working Austinites, a yearslong fight over what kind of housing the city should allow could be at a turning point.

Austin has long been the epicenter of the state’s housing affordability crisis, but the problem reached new heights in the pandemic era amid massive population and job growth.

The crisis — along with the rise of a new political bloc calling for reform — has given Austin leaders a renewed mandate to tackle the problem. After the collapse of big housing reform proposals in recent years, the Austin City Council is embarking on a new push to ease city restrictions on how much housing can be built and where.

The current restrictions, the thinking goes, impede the city’s ability to build enough homes to meet the crushing demand for housing — resulting in higher home prices and rents… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Child care in focus as Austin officials consider economic deal for $291M NXP expansion (Community Impact)

Austin City Council is poised to sign off on an economic development agreement with Netherlands-based semiconductor company NXP that would support a multiyear expansion at its Austin facilities.Leading up to a final vote on the proposal, city officials said they hope the agreement can set a local standard for community benefits in similar processes—with a particular focus on child care—in addition to an estimated $1.53 million the city stands to gain through the deal.“You’ve been a longtime player in this community, a longtime leader in this community. And that’s not lost on anybody. But as we take this first step, we also have to be thinking, ‘Who’s going to be next at that podium?’’ Mayor Kirk Watson told NXP representatives during a Sept. 12 briefing on the proposal. “We want Austin to be seen as somebody that’s willing to work with industries like yours. At the same time, we have some specific needs in Austin, and that’s what we’re attempting to address.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

📺 Today @9AM: Austin City Council Work Session (Agenda)

📺 Thursday @10AM: Austin City Council Regular Meeting (9.21.2023 Agenda)

And in other Austin Metro News:

➡️ Austin to make airport expansion easier (Austin Business Journal) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

[TEXAS NEWS]

ERCOT CEO talks Texas grid emergency, conservation requests and rising demand on the grid (Houston Chronicle)

An extraordinarily hot summer tested Texans and the power grid that was to keep them cool during the day and the lights on at night. As weeks of triple-digit temperatures settled over the state, demand on the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s power grid operator skyrocketed, setting 10 all-time demand records. As industry and people are increasingly drawn to the state, ERCOT has struggled to balance the explosion of demand on the grid with available supply, asking Texans to conserve electricity use on nearly a dozen days this summer.

On Sept. 6, the state's grid briefly experienced its first emergency since the deadly 2021 blackouts. The emergency order came days after ERCOT, which controls the flow of electricity across 90% of Texas and acts as the trading floor for the wholesale electricity market, reshuffled its leadership ranks, promoting Woody Rickerson to the newly created position of senior vice president and chief operating officer from vice president of system planning and weatherization.

What grade would you give ERCOT’s performance this summer? "I think ERCOT and the electric market overall, because it's a team effort to deliver the electric services in Texas, did an outstanding job this summer. I'd give them a strong A. They were challenged, we've all been challenged with extreme heat. This has been an unprecedentedly hot summer, and being able to get through that with the support of all the market, with the support of Texans who responded really well during conservation calls, is really quite an accomplishment.

I think we should feel good about how the summer went, given how challenging it was," he said. Sept. 6 was the first time Texas had a grid emergency since the 2021 blackouts. ERCOT is still in the process of investigating exactly what happened, but how close were we to rotating outages that night?

"I think a lot of people equate being in emergency operations with proximity to controlled outages, and that's not necessarily the case. In this case, this is one where we went into emergency operations and right to the second level of it, to specifically to avail of some resources that we had only available in EEA 2. By being able to utilize that, it avoided the need to have any further risk on the system and to get into controlled outages. So, we never expected to get into controlled outages on Sept. 6," he said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

And in other Texas News:

➡️ Texas Gov praises Ken Paxton following his acquittal (The Hill) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

➡️ SMU raised $100 million in seven days following ACC announcement, school says (Dallas Morning News) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

[NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS]

Biden and Adams avoid each other in New York (Politico)

This time last year, President Joe Biden and New York City Mayor Eric Adams were together at a high-dollar Democratic fundraiser and at the United Nations General Assembly’s marquee reception.

This week, their relationship in tatters over the migrant crisis in New York, Biden and Adams have no plans to cross paths during the president’s three days in the city.

The mayor’s schedule was packed Monday as he was whisked between events as diverse as a chat with the Swedish prime minister, a roundtable with Pakistani leaders and a meeting with the mayor of Seoul, South Korea.

But Adams had booked no time with Biden and was not expected to do so.

Adams was invited to but likely will not attend the president’s campaign fundraisers nor a reception Tuesday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that are part of Biden’s schedule, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The decision by Biden and Adams to avoid each other is a concession to the reality that their relationship is deeply broken, according to several people familiar with the dynamics. Cobbling together a meeting could have been uncomfortable for both men, with no obvious upside… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

OTHER NEWS:

➡️ Zelenskyy is set to visit the U.S. as GOP opposition to Ukraine aid grows (NPR) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

American Business Confidence in China Slumps to Lowest in Decades (Wall Street Journal)

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