🟪 Austin's social service 'reset' continues with city evaluation, further cuts ahead (Community Impact)

🟪 City council moves toward adding surveillance regulation to city code (KXAN)

🟪 Austin could create zoning for missing middle housing (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Austin ISD seeks to exit more than $70 million in bond contracts for closing schools (KUT)

🟪 Asana Partners buys The Arboretum shopping center with plans to upgrade it (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 In fiercely competitive Democratic Senate race, social media influencers increasingly drive the conversation (Texas Tribune)

🟪 The Supreme Court lets California use its new, Democratic-friendly congressional map (NPR)

🟪 Americans are exceptionally anxious about their political system, new Gallup polling shows (Associated Press)

READ ON!

🟪 [Team]: Bingham Group is pleased to welcome Annick Beaudet, MPA, FAICP as a Senior Consultant focused on Mobility and Public Infrastructure.

Based in Austin, Annick brings nearly 30 years of experience working at the intersection of transportation systems, land use, and public-sector capital programs, with a reputation for helping public agencies turn ambitious visions into executable, results-driven initiatives.

Before entering consulting, Annick spent 18 years in senior leadership roles with the City of Austin, including Assistant Director of the Austin Transportation Department and Mobility Officer for Project Connect, where she helped coordinate and advance Central Texas’s landmark transit expansion efforts.

For organizations exploring strategic partners to advance mobility or public infrastructure priorities, Annick’s addition further expands Bingham Group’s ability to support complex, high-impact initiatives. Contact us here.

🟪 [Podcast] Also, check out my recent feature on the Austin Eras Podcast. Host Adam Flagg and I discuss my path into community leadership and the lobbying profession, growing up in Austin, and what’s shaping the future of Central Texas.

🟪 Book Review - The Austin–San Antonio Megaregion: Opportunity and Experience

🏛️ Council Meeting

✅ Austin's social service 'reset' continues with city evaluation, further cuts ahead (Community Impact)

Funding for Austin's social service programs is in line for further cuts, and the city is now evaluating how to both save and reduce portions of its tens of millions of dollars in annual spending.

“I know we’re just at a very challenging time as an organization, and I know these are going to be difficult decisions. But I do feel like that if we all come together, all of the community, all of one voice and all of the partners, and we all work on this together, we can get to a very good place," Assistant City Manager Stephanie Hayden-Howard said Feb. 4.

Last year, City Council originally passed a fiscal year 2025-26 budget with significant investments in social services like homelessness response, public health programming, violence interruption and resident assistance.

That added spending was backed by a tax increase presented for voter approval through Proposition Q. However, most of the funding anticipated by council was stripped away in a budget rewrite after voters rejected the tax measure… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ City council moves toward adding surveillance regulation to city code (KXAN)

City council members took a big step toward creating a framework for how the city of Austin uses surveillance technology.

The TRUST Act, which stands for Transparent and Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology, passed during the council’s meeting on Thursday. It directs the city manager to come up with an ordinance amending the city code to “regulate the adoption, acquisition, deployment, use, and review of surveillance technology by any City department.”

A press release from council members said the TRUST Act would “advance a comprehensive framework to regulate how surveillance technologies are adopted, funded, deployed, and reviewed by City departments. The proposal seeks to balance legitimate public safety needs with strong protections for privacy, civil liberties, and transparency.”

The resolution — which was Item 61 on the Feb. 5 council meeting agenda — asks City Manager T.C. Broadnax to return to council with the ordinance by April 23… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin could create zoning for missing middle housing (Austin Business Journal)

As Austin continues to look at ways to increase the supply of homes within the city, staff are urging city leaders to create a new zoning type for missing middle housing projects. 

The Austin Planning Department published a study on the city’s zoning rules and improvements that could be made to add more housing in Austin. The study recommends that Austin city leaders create two new base zones to fully enable the development of mixed-use and missing middle housing projects. 

Missing middle housing projects are ones that add three to 16 units, according to the study, but there is some flexibility on what types of projects fit the missing middle description. 

These types of projects are referred to as missing middle because most local governments' zoning and development codes don’t allow for projects that provide a middle-sized amount of housing, yielding either single-family homes or large-scale apartment projects. Some examples of missing middle projects the Austin study highlighted were cottage courts, townhomes and stacked flats. 

The study said that since Austin adopted its 1984 land development code, over 95 percent of housing built in Austin has either been single-family homes or apartment complexes with over 100 units. Most of the middle housing built in the city came through planned unit developments — PUDs — or through the redevelopment of the old Robert Mueller Municipal Airport site. 

One of the recommended zonings is called middle residential, or MR. That would allow for more townhomes, cottage courts and projects with multiple units that are roughly the same scale as single-family homes. It’s recommended this zoning could allow four to six units to be built on lots that are 5,750 square feet in size, which used to be Austin’s minimum lot size, and more units could be added to larger lots. 

Another recommended zone is mixed-use, or MX, which would allow for the development of transit-oriented uses and prohibit car-oriented builds. The MX zones could be split across two categories: MX-1 for small scale neighborhood complexes with retail and office as the commercial uses that’d be a maximum of four stories tall, and MX-2 could be used for high traffic areas close to transit and with pedestrian-oriented ground floor uses. 

The study said much of Austin's existing mixed-use developments have come through special zoning designations like specialty zoning districts, density bonus programs and planned unit developments but there isn't a generalized transit-oriented mixed-use base zone in city code… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin ISD seeks to exit more than $70 million in bond contracts for closing schools (KUT)

After obligating itself to pay nearly $100 million in bond money on schools Austin ISD plans to close, district records show, district leaders say they are trying to unwind as much as $72 million of those renovation contracts.

The district is moving to halt future spending by pausing work and terminating construction contracts tied to the closures, a step leaders argue could significantly reduce the final price tag. But the district has not yet exited “many” of those contracts and has not released them publicly.

The district has spent $24 million in renovations thus far on schools soon to be shuttered, and committed another $72 million in would-be improvements, for a total of more than $96 million, according to the most recent 2022 bond financial report from November.

However, Michael Mann, Austin ISD’s executive director of construction, said in a statement the district is working to terminate contracts that account for much of the remaining commitments and estimated the final amount of bond dollars spent on closing schools could be closer to $41 million… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin faces diminished parks growth (Community Impact)

Austin’s supply of parks and open spaces is often referenced as one of its most cherished amenities. But after years of population growth, it’s become more challenging to meet rising recreational needs.

The city prioritizes all residents living within 10-minute walks from a park and offering at least 24 acres of parkland per 1,000 people. Portions of city bond packages have been used to expand parkland, and Austin’s also relied on a parkland dedication system requiring developers to either pay fees or contribute land. But future acquisition funding is uncertain, especially under a new state law that slashed dedication requirements.

“Parks create community; parks are spaces for recreation, for physical health for mental health, for relief from urban life,” said Scott Grantham, Austin Parks & Recreation principal planner. “It’s going to be vital that we find a way to continue to bring parks to the people.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Asana Partners buys The Arboretum shopping center with plans to upgrade it (Austin Business Journal)

The Arboretum has a new owner with plans to revamp the longstanding and popular retail center.

Charlotte-based Asana Partners announced on Feb. 4 that it acquired the approximately 200,000-square-foot shopping center at 10000 Research Blvd. The site sits in the affluent Great Hills neighborhood and is home to The Cheesecake Factory, Amy's Ice Creams, Cava, Juliet Italian Kitchen, Pottery Barn, Soma and more.

Washington Prime Group Inc., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021, is the former owner of the retail center and has been shedding its properties. It recently sold Lakeline Plaza, Lakeline Village and Wolf Ranch Town Center.

The Arboretum transaction closed Jan. 27. The acquisition cost was not disclosed.

Asana Partners will make physical improvements to the property, introduce activations for community engagement and craft a merchandise mix. These changes are intended to re-establish the retail center as a class A, premier shopping destination, it said. The goal is to create an 18-hour retail destination — a place people will visit morning, day and night.

Work on The Arboretum is slated to begin this summer with an early 2027 completion, according to Asana Partners… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ In fiercely competitive Democratic Senate race, social media influencers increasingly drive the conversation (Texas Tribune)

The disputed allegation was first aired on TikTok.

A Dallas-based political content creator, Morgan Thompson, told her almost 200,000 followers that state Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat running for U.S. Senate, referred to former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred as a “mediocre Black man.”

The claim went viral. And, from his home gym on Monday, Allred made his own selfie-style video in which he tore into Talarico for the alleged remark and endorsed his rival in the primary, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

Talarico called the allegation a “mischaracterization of a private conversation,” acknowledging he described Allred’s “method of campaigning” as mediocre but insisting he “would never attack him on the basis of race.”

By that point, though, the allegation had become national headline news, bringing a virulent, ongoing proxy war waged online by content creators in the name of their preferred candidates to a blistering head.

The discourse around the Senate primary, which features two attention-savvy candidates, one a Black woman and the other a white man, has for weeks been driven by a mass of political content creators who often peddle amateur punditry, rumors and outright attacks against the candidates and each other. The dueling and near-constant stream of takes has come to frame the intensely competitive primary as a referendum on identity politics in the Democratic Party, hardening each camp’s views against the other and making for an increasingly hostile intraparty contest in a midterm cycle Democrats see as their best chance in years to compete statewide… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Why top Republicans are turning on Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller (Texas Tribune)

After winning the White House the first time, Trump endorsed Miller twice for his reelections in 2018 and 2022 — in primaries where Miller cruised to victory. Trump called the Stephenville Republican his “man in Texas,” and when he won his second presidential term in 2024, there were reports that Miller was being considered for Agriculture Secretary in the presidential cabinet.

Now, as Miller seeks a fourth term as agriculture commissioner, a statewide position overseeing Texas’s second largest industry, he’s never been more vulnerable.

The three-term incumbent is effectively the underdog in the primary race for his own seat. His Republican opponent, Nate Sheets — a former Miller donor turned critic — has raised three times Miller’s haul since the start of 2025. Trump — his most powerful ally — has been noticeably silent in the most difficult election of Miller’s career. And other sitting Republican officeholders are publicly attacking him, on accusations of being corrupt and ineffective.

Perhaps most perilous to his reelection — Gov. Greg Abbott, the de facto Republican leader of the state and an influential campaign powerhouse — has been shouting from the rooftops that Miller is undeserving of another term.

“He’s been an utter failure in his job as Ag Commissioner,” Abbott said on a conservative radio show last month. “There are character flaws with him that do not reflect positively on the state of Texas.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)