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December 3, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Austin ISD selling two school sites in bid to lower budget gap (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 SH 130’s ‘Smart Freight Corridor’ in place to help driverless semi trucks (KXAN)

🟪 Austin ISD calls on Waymo to halt during school bus pick-up, drop-off (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Dells make $6.25B donation to support 'Trump accounts' for kids (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Texas removes women and minorities from Historically Underutilized Business program for state contracts (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Kerr County was among dozens of Texas communities to turn down state flood money, saying it wasn’t enough (Texas Tribune)

🟪 US Commerce chief confirms South Korea's 15% tariff rate retroactive to November 1 (Reuters)

READ ON!

[FIRM NEWS]

(Sunday) // I had the honor of representing the Austin Trail of Lights Foundation Board as President at one of our city’s most beloved traditions, the Zilker Tree Lighting.

Now in its 59th year, the Tree Lighting continues to bring our community together, marking the start of a season defined by connection, celebration, and Austin spirit.

[New Blog] Austin 2026: The New Rules of Economic Development at City Hall

Learn more about Bingham Group’s new practice — and review all of our services here: binghamgp.com/services

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

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

ℹ️ 2025 Essential Resources for Navigating the City of Austin

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Austin ISD selling two school sites in bid to lower budget gap (Austin American-Statesman)

The Austin school district must sell two school properties this year to keep its $19.7 million deficit from ballooning.  If the old Brooke or Rosedale campus properties fail to sell, district officials may have to go back to the drawing board to explore other ways to save money just months after a painful decision to close 10 schools because of budgetary and enrollment strains. 

Neither the Brooke or Rosedale campuses have been used as traditional schools for several years. 

The sales must be completed this fiscal year to keep the district's deficit in check. In June, the district predicted the budget gap would be $65 million without planned property sales.

District officials identified OHT Partners, a developer of multifamily residential buildings across Texas, as the buyer of the old Rosedale campus on West 49th Street. The district executed a sales contract with OHT in August, but is still finalizing the sale.

The campus previously served high need special education students until 2022 when the district used 2017 bond dollars to open a brand new school, also called Rosedale, for the same purpose on Silvercrest Drive.

However, the district’s potential sale hit a snag. The neighborhood around the campus' 1938 covenant restricts all but a few area lots to residential purposes, though the school property was conveyed for “public school purposes,” according to a lawsuit filed by the school district on Oct. 31.

In its lawsuit, the district asked a Travis County district judge to declare that the kind of multifamily development that OHT would like to build aligns with decades-old deed restrictions on the old Rosedale property… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ SH 130’s ‘Smart Freight Corridor’ in place to help driverless semi trucks (KXAN)

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) said State Highway 130’s high-tech upgrades are in place. 

The Smart Freight Corridor project stretches 21 miles along SH130, from Georgetown to Mustang Ridge. After two years of construction, new infrastructure along the road is prepared to help driverless trucks travel safer.

“We put poles, sensors, cameras, lots of technology up on the roadway,” Tyler Duvall, CEO of tech company Cavnue, said in 2024, “backed by software behind the roadway to crank out all kinds of analytics and analysis around what’s happening.”

According to Cavnue’s website, data from the highway—including traffic conditions and possible hazards— will be sent directly to connected autonomous vehicles and TxDOT.

“These advancements aim to boost freight efficiency and strengthen infrastructure oversight, enhancing safety and reliability for Texas’s trucking network,” it reads… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin ISD calls on Waymo to halt during school bus pick-up, drop-off (Austin American-Statesman)

The Austin school district is reportedly threatening potential legal action against Waymo after footage revealed the company's autonomous vehicles illegally passed school buses 19 times so far this school year. 

Cameras mounted on school bus stop-arms, installed by AISD on all buses in 2016, allegedly captured Waymo vehicles illegally passing the buses while they were stopped with their lights flashing, according to reporting from KXAN Tuesday. The footage shows the driverless ride-hailing cars slowing, and sometimes stopping, for students crossing the road but ultimately accelerating past the AISD bus.

Under Texas law, vehicles must come to a complete stop when a school bus is stopped with its stop-arm extended and its lights flashing. To ensure the safety of students getting on or off the bus, vehicles aren’t allowed to proceed until the school bus begins moving again. In January, the district approved a contract with AlertBus to automatically issue $300 fines to drivers who pass stopped school buses in an effort to curb such violations.

So far in the 2025–26 school year, the Austin ISD Police Department has issued about 7,000 school bus traffic safety violations, 19 of which were reportedly committed by Waymo vehicles, the department said Tuesday.

"Violations were occurring when the sun was up and when the sun was down and there was no light. They were occurring on busy streets. They were occurring on side streets with a lot of cars parked. There many circumstances at intersections, at right turns," AISD Police Assistant Chief Travis Pickford said. "There was not a whole lot of consistency other than you could tell that the vehicle was not recognizing that it needed to obey the state law of stopping whenever the (busses') red lights were on."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Dells make $6.25B donation to support 'Trump accounts' for kids (Austin Business Journal)

Austin billionaires Michael and Susan Dell have pledged $6.25 billion to the federal government so it can provide savings accounts to 25 million American kids. 

The donation will be used to deposit cash into “Trump Accounts,” which are a new type of account that was created as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill that was passed earlier this year.

Under the new law, the U.S. Treasury Department will deposit $1,000 into the accounts of American kids born between 2025 and 2028, and the funds must be invested in an index fund. But any kid that is under 18 at any point during 2025 is eligible to have such an account. Kids with these accounts can withdraw the funds once they turn 18 and the funds can be used to spend on education, buying a new home or starting a business. 

The Treasury Department plans to launch these accounts on July 4, 2026. Dell said this massive donation was done partly to mark the 250th anniversary of America's independence… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ World Class entity files for bankruptcy protection in 11th hour to keep downtown IHOP site (Austin Business Journal)

A downtown property loaded with redevelopment potential that houses an IHOP will remain in Nate Paul's World Class Holdings portfolio for the time being, thanks to a last-minute bankruptcy filing.

The property was scheduled for a Dec. 2 foreclosure auction, but the owning entity, WC 707 Cesar Chavez LLC, prevented potential buyers from bidding on the property by filing a voluntary petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy that day.

Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy provides an automatic stay, which prevents the foreclosure of properties, and it's a tactic World Class has used in the past to stave off foreclosure sales. Despite using such maneuvers to hold onto properties, World Class has shed dozens of properties over the years since a 2019 FBI raid on its offices, and the IHOP is among several World Class sites that have been scheduled for foreclosure auction in recent months.

WC 707 Cesar Chavez — the business that owns the IHOP site — has estimated assets valued between $10 million and $50 million, estimated liabilities between $1 million and $10 million and between one and 49 creditors, according to documents filed with the Texas Western Bankruptcy Court… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Texas removes women and minorities from Historically Underutilized Business program for state contracts (Texas Tribune)

The state Comptroller’s office announced Tuesday it is removing women- and minority-owned businesses from the state program intended to give additional exposure to businesses owned by economically disadvantaged groups.

The Historically Underutilized Business program will now focus on businesses owned by disabled veterans and be renamed the Veteran Heroes United in Business program, or VetHUB. Only veterans with a 20% percent or higher service-connected disability will be eligible, according to a news release from the Comptroller’s office.

Businesses that have a HUB certification connected to their owners’ race, ethnicity or sex will have their certification revoked under the new rules, according to the office.

The restructuring, which the Comptroller’s office said was made under emergency rules and is effective immediately, greatly reduces the scope of the decades-old program created by the Legislature.

The HUB program was created with the intention of giving minority- and women-owned businesses a leg up when seeking state contracts. The program does not set quotas for the hiring of HUB-certified businesses, but sets goals that state agencies generally strive to meet.

State contracts that began prior to Tuesday’s announcement will not be affected by the rules change, according to a frequently asked questions page posted to the Comptroller’s website Tuesday… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Kerr County was among dozens of Texas communities to turn down state flood money, saying it wasn’t enough (Texas Tribune)

Three weeks after flash floods in Texas’ Hill Country killed more than 100 people, state lawmakers chastised Kerr County leaders for rejecting money a year earlier to create a warning system that could have alerted residents to rapidly rising water.

Several lashed out as a Kerr official representing the local river authority tried to explain why it declined money from a $1.4 billion state fund to help guard against destructive flooding.

One state senator on the special legislative committee tasked with investigating the deadly floods called the decision “pathetic.” Another said it was “disturbing.” State Rep. Drew Darby, a Republican from San Angelo, said the river authority simply lacked the will to pay for the project.

But Kerr leaders were not the only ones who rejected the state’s offer, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. In the five years since the fund’s launch, at least 90 local governments turned down tens of millions of dollars in state grants and loans.

Leaders from about 30 local governments that the news organizations spoke with said the state grants paid for so little of the total project costs that they simply could not move forward, even with the program’s offer to cover the rest through interest-free loans. Many hoped the state program would provide grants that paid the bulk of the costs, such as the ones from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which typically supply at least 75%. They believed that they could raise the rest.

Instead, many were offered far less. In some cases, the state offered grants that paid for less than 10% of the funding needed.

In Kerr’s case, the state awarded a $50,000 grant for a $1 million flood warning system, or roughly 5%. It said the river authority could borrow the rest and repay it over the next three decades, but local officials were not sure they would be able to pay back the $950,000 — and failure to do so could carry state sanctions… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ San Francisco sues nation's top food manufacturers over ultraprocessed foods (NPR)

The city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against some of the nation's top food manufacturers on Tuesday, arguing that ultraprocessed food from the likes of Coca-Cola and Nestle are responsible for a public health crisis.

City Attorney David Chiu named 10 companies in the lawsuit, including the makers of such popular foods as Oreo cookies, Sour Patch Kids, Kit Kat, Cheerios and Lunchables. The lawsuit argues that ultraprocessed foods are linked to diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and cancer.

"They took food and made it unrecognizable and harmful to the human body," Chiu said in a news release. "These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused."

Ultraprocessed foods include candy, chips, processed meats, sodas, energy drinks, breakfast cereals and other foods that are designed to "stimulate cravings and encourage overconsumption," Chiu's office said in the release. Such foods are "formulations of often chemically manipulated cheap ingredients with little if any whole food added," Chiu wrote in the lawsuit.

The other companies named in the lawsuit are PepsiCo; Kraft Heinz Company; Post Holdings; Mondelez International; General Mills; Kellogg; Mars Incorporated; and ConAgra Brands… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ US Commerce chief confirms South Korea's 15% tariff rate retroactive to November 1 (Reuters)

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Monday confirmed that the general tariff rate on imports from South Korea, including on autos, would drop to 15% retroactive to November 1 because South Korea has introduced legislation in parliament to implement the country's strategic U.S. investment commitments.

In a statement posted on X, Lutnick said that the move unlocks the "full benefit" of South Korea's trade deal with President Donald Trump.

"In response, the U.S. will lower certain tariffs under the deal -- including auto tariffs -- to 15%, effective November 1. We are also removing tariffs on airplane parts and will 'un-stack' Korea’s reciprocal rate to match Japan and the EU."

The bilateral trade deal also caps any future national security tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals at 15%, putting South Korea on an equal footing with key Asian rivals Japan and Taiwan.

The U.S. previously levied a 25% tariff on imports from South Korea, including national security-related autos duties invoked under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and "reciprocal" tariffs invoked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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