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August 18, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 A big red flag for Austin's future home market (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Austin ISD gets a ‘C’ in latest school ratings. Here’s how to find your campus’ grade. (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Council to weigh new placement, funding rules for public art (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Riding political wins, a once-restrained Gov. Greg Abbott is increasingly steamrolling foes (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Dallas and Fort Worth end their diversity efforts to keep federal fundings (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Trump's D.C. 'crisis' enters 2nd week with more soldiers — and no exit strategy (NPR)

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

🏛️ City of Austin Org Chart (as of July 2025)

💰 2026 City of Austin Bond - Public Input

ℹ️ 2025 Essential Resources for Navigating the City of Austin

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ A big red flag for Austin's future home market (Austin Business Journal)

The number of empty home lots in the Austin area has ballooned in recent years.

Housing market data company Zonda recently counted 250,541 future lots in the metro, a 12% year-over-year increase and a 46% increase since 2020. The bulk of those — about 91% — haven't been touched by a bulldozer.

It's a concerning data point for a housing market being praised nationally for bringing supply up fast and prices down after a pandemic feeding frenzy. Home inventory levels are healthy after over a decade of paltry product.

But Austin's annual home starts are down 15% year over year. Compare that to other Texas cities: Houston is down 1%, Dallas is level and San Antonio is up 4%.

Developers reached by the Austin Business Journal confirmed there are more housing developments playing the waiting game than normal, which is how Austin has ended up with dearths of housing in the past.

The reasons for the sidelining are plentiful. There are ongoing affordability questions for the consumer due to inflation and interest rates leading to higher prices and more inventory. Securing financing for building is not as easy as it was a few years ago.

But developers said the bigger reason is economics. Efforts to bring prices down to a point palatable for them and the consumer are complicated by the minimum threshold needed to sell a home to make a profit. Those numbers are driven up by lengthy entitlement and building timelines, the costs of land and more… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ Austin ISD gets a ‘C’ in latest school ratings. Here’s how to find your campus’ grade. (Austin Monitor)

Following the release of long-awaited A-F accountability ratings from the Texas Education Agency (TEA), Austin Independent School District Superintendent Matias Segura said modest improvements in scores show the district is making progress.

“There’s obviously a lot of work to get to do with the number of D’s and F’s that we have, but when you look at the trend, it’s trending in the right direction,” Segura said at a Friday press conference.

The TEA’s A-F scores for both the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic years were released Friday. AISD received a system-wide letter grade of C in 2025. The district saw the number of campuses rated A increase from 16 in 2024 to 22 in 2025. The number of AISD’s F-rated campuses fell from 29 in 2024 to 23 in 2025.

However, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath had criticisms for the district’s performance.

“Austin ISD has an extremely high number of chronically underperforming campuses,” Morath said. “That is a very significant problem, and that is a problem that doesn’t just happen on its own.”

AISD said it’s proud to see more A-rated schools and fewer Fs. The district said 69 of its 116 campuses showed overall growth and 35 campuses boosted their letter grade. That included 11 schools moving up from an F or D to a C… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Council to weigh new placement, funding rules for public art (Austin Monitor)

Austin City Council will consider changes in September to the Art in Public Places program. The changes could expand where publicly-funded artwork can be located, apply new requirements to some public-private partnership projects and allow more flexibility in using funds for maintenance and relocation.

The Art In Public Places (AIPP) program, created in 1985, allocates up to 2 percent of eligible capital improvement budgets for visual art on city projects. Staff say the revisions are intended to clarify program procedures, broaden participation and address long-term care of artworks.

The recommendations were included in a recent staff memo and are part of a yearlong review directed by Council through a resolution passed in March that was aimed at updating the city code and program guidelines for the first time in several years… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Alcohol sales continue downtrend (Austin Business Journal)

lcohol sales, a major booster of profit margins for bars and restaurants, have been tapering.

The Texas Restaurant Association conducted a study with 70 restaurant operators in the state, and 37% said they're experiencing a decrease in alcohol sales so far this year compared to last year. A closer look at Austin’s on-premise alcohol sales data shows a similar picture as consumers tighten their spending and are generally less interested in drinking these days.

Sales at Austin restaurants, bars, clubs and other venues that sell alcohol dropped to about $578 million in the first half of the year, down from $582 million during the same time period in 2024, according to data from the state comptroller’s office. This year's figure also represents a 3% decline from the first half of 2023, when on-premise alcohol sales were at nearly $597 million.

Restaurants operate on low profit margins, averaging 3% to 5%, according to TRA CEO Emily Williams Knight. Because alcohol typically delivers a 70% to 80% gross margin, "it's a vital contributor to profitability," she has said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Dallas and Fort Worth end their diversity efforts to keep federal fundings (Texas Tribune)

Two of Texas’ largest cities ended their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts this week to preserve hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

The Dallas and Fort Worth city councils said the shift was needed to align with the Trump administration, which has made ending such initiatives a top priority. The votes follow similar decisions by state agencies, universities and school districts across the state and country.

Other Texas cities, including Houston, San Antonio and Austin have yet to take similar action.

Dallas City Manager Kimberly Tolbert on Wednesday said she has directed all city departments to stop using policies and programs considering race, gender, ethnicity, religion or national origin while allocating funds or benefits.

Austin officials said they were aware of the change in federal policy and believe the city is in compliance with all rules and laws.

“The City of Austin’s law department is evaluating all related city programs and, as of today, we are in compliance with federal requirements,” said T.C. Broadnax, the city manager. “Federal funding is critical in our efforts to provide programs that support Austinites and keep our city healthy, resilient, and thriving.”

San Antonio's city manager echoed Broadnax.

“The City of San Antonio continues to evaluate all relevant programs to ensure compliance with federal requirements," Erik Walsh said in a statement… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ Clashing with Council: Inside Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ rocky first two months at City Hall (San Antonio Express-News)

As mayor, you have to have the votes of at least five City Council members to get anything done. In her first two months on the job, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones appears to have done little to cultivate allies among council’s 10 members. If anything, some of her directives and conduct have antagonized colleagues, including council liberals who’d supported her when she was running for mayor. “My fear is that anything she wants to push forward at this point — because of what she’s done so far — some may begrudgingly go with it, but there may be others who are like, ‘You know what? She’s weak, she’s insulted us, she doesn’t seem to listen to us, and we’re going to vote no,’” said Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Jones avoided the possibility of one such vote when, in a memo she sent to City Council late Thursday, she ended her push to unilaterally change the process by which council members can propose new policies, programs and laws — a win for the council.

Yet she remains at odds with a majority of council members over her position that the city should slow its negotiations with the Spurs over how much the city will contribute toward a downtown arena. She first wants the city to commission an “independent economic analysis” of the impact of building the facility at Hemisfair. Jones, 44, castigated council members in a recent guest editorial she wrote for the San Antonio Report outlining why she believes such an analysis is critical. “Despite what some of my colleagues are stating, nothing needs to be done by August 21 — not a damn thing,” Jones wrote, referring to a deadline preferred by the Spurs and some council members for agreeing to the basics of an arena financing deal between the city, Bexar County and the NBA franchise. “Not one of my colleagues has articulated why we need to act by that date.” Her public takedown was a surprising move for a mayor trying to lead City Council. She could be dealt her second loss when the council is eventually asked to approve a term sheet outlining each parties’ financial contribution to a new home court for the Spurs… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump's D.C. 'crisis' enters 2nd week with more soldiers — and no exit strategy (NPR)

As the U.S. capital braces for a second week with soldiers and masked federal agents conducting "roving patrols" on the city streets, President Trump says he knows some Americans fear he's crossed a dangerous line.

"Already they're saying, 'He's a dictator,'" Trump said Wednesday, speaking at the Kennedy Center in Washington. "The place is going to hell and we've got to stop it. So instead of saying 'He's a dictator,' they should say, 'We're going to join him and make Washington safe.'"

It's impossible to untangle the impulses that led Trump to abruptly militarize law enforcement in D.C., putting hundreds of National Guard troops and federal agents on the streets, while attempting a chaotic takeover of the city's Metropolitan Police Department.

But Trump has long made crime, especially when committed by young Black men, a central part of his populist message, dating back to his time as a high-profile real estate developer in New York City.

He has also regularly portrayed urban communities like Washington, D.C. in bleak, often apocalyptic terms.

During his first inaugural presidential address in 2016, Trump spoke of "mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities" while promising to end what he called "American carnage."

But critics say a deeply troubling aspect of Trump's unfolding crackdown in D.C. is that he launched it on false and debunked claims that Washington is spiraling into disorder… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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