🟪 Austin city manager preparing to present budget to council amid projected $26M shortfall (KVUE)

🟪 After petition rejection, Taylor says data center concerns will be addressed through comprehensive plan update (KXAN)

🟪 City of Austin proposes $6.6 billion budget (KXAN)

🟪 Inside the Austin Company Racing to Mass-Produce Nuclear Reactors for the AI Boom (CBS Austin)

🟪 ATP to mull $39M contract for light rail vehicles (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Bastrop County eyed for 2,800-acre data center campus (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Fed report cites 'stepped-up' inflation due to tariffs, Iran war, AI buildout (Reuters)

READ ON!

🏛️ Austin City Council July 23rd Regular Meeting Agenda

💰 FY 2026/27 Proposed Budget

The City of Austin's proposed FY 2026/27 budget was released Friday night.

The $6.6 billion operating budget represents a $301 million increase over the current amended budget and calls for higher property taxes, increased utility rates and cuts to social services.

Review the Fiscal Year 2026-27 budget documents here

🟪 Thursday, July 16 at 10AM : City manager will present draft budget to mayor and council

🟪 Wednesday, July 22: Work session (social service contracts will be discussed at this meeting)

🟪 Tuesday, July 28: Work session

🟪 Thursday, July 30: Work session

🟪 Thursday, Aug. 6: Work session and bond discussion

🟪 Wednesday, Aug. 12 – Friday, Aug. 14: Final vote approving budget

As Austin (MSA) continues to grow, more and more development is happening beyond the famed Austin City Limits. This Monthly LinkedGlenn event series highlights a single fast growing Austin suburb and July's stop is all about Hutto.... Hippos, Co-Op, Data Centers, Industrial, Retail, Downtown Redevelopment, Rooftops, Transportation and so much more...All things growth.

Full event details and ticket information here.

✅ Austin city manager preparing to present budget to council amid projected $26M shortfall (KVUE)

Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax is set to present his proposed $6.6 billion budget for fiscal year 2026-2027 to the Austin City Council on Thursday, outlining how the city plans to balance growing service demands with a projected $26 million budget shortfall.

The proposal calls for a 3.5% increase in property tax revenue — the maximum allowed under Texas law without requiring voter approval — while continuing to invest in public safety, utilities and other essential city services.

The proposed tax increase is expected to generate about $82 million more in revenue than last year's budget. Broadnax said about $18 million of that property tax revenue is projected to come from new developments added to tax rolls over the year.

The proposal comes months after Austin voters rejected Proposition Q, a ballot measure that would have allowed the city to exceed the state's voter-approval tax rate.

"The voters told us, we need to go back to basics," Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said after the November 2025 election… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ After petition rejection, Taylor says data center concerns will be addressed through comprehensive plan update (KXAN)

Days after a contentious Taylor City Council meeting over a citizen-led data center petition, city officials say they’re tackling residents’ concerns through proposed changes to Taylor’s Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code.

The petition, submitted in June, sought to amend the city’s land development code and create an ordinance to prohibit data centers in all existing zoning districts unless and until Taylor creates a zoning district specifically for digital infrastructure uses, like a data center.

The issue appeared on Thursday night’s city council agenda, where city officials announced they had determined the measure could not legally move forward through the initiative process… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ City of Austin proposes $6.6 billion budget (KXAN)

Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax has proposed a $6.625 billion budget for fiscal year 2026-27 that increases spending on public safety, homelessness services, housing and parks while raising the city’s property tax rate and utility bills.

The proposal calls for a property tax rate of 57.953 cents per $100 of valuation, up from 52.4017 cents this year. City officials estimate the median non-senior homestead would pay about $2,248 in city property taxes annually, an increase of roughly $174, or 8.4%, from the current fiscal year.

The budget also includes increases for several city utilities and fees.

Austin Energy’s typical residential customer would see an average monthly bill increase of $3.66, or 3.1%, while Austin Water’s typical residential customer would pay about $7.76 more per month, a 7.8% increase.

The proposed budget includes $6.625 billion in citywide operating expenditures, up about $301 million, or 4.8%, from the current year’s amended budget. The General Fund, which pays for core city services such as police, fire, EMS, parks and libraries, would increase to nearly $1.54 billion… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Inside the Austin Company Racing to Mass-Produce Nuclear Reactors for the AI Boom (CBS Austin)

An Austin startup believes it has found a way to build nuclear reactors faster, cheaper and at scale. Now, after reaching a major milestone on the Fourth of July, Aalo Atomics says it's one step closer to helping meet America's rapidly growing demand for electricity.

Inside an Austin warehouse, Aalo Atomics is developing a new generation of small nuclear reactors designed to be manufactured in factories instead of being built one at a time on-site.

"The whole internals would be inserted into a big tub of liquid metal," said Aalo co-founder and CEO Matt Loszak. "That liquid metal carries heat away to turn a turbine and produce electricity."

Before the company could prove its business model, however, it had to prove its technology.

Aalo was one of just 11 companies selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to participate in a pilot program with an ambitious goal: achieve nuclear criticality by July 4, 2026. Criticality is the point at which a nuclear reactor becomes self-sustaining… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ ATP to mull $39M contract for light rail vehicles (Austin Business Journal)

The Austin Transit Partnership is close to awarding the last major contract that will facilitate the buildout of Austin's light rail. 

ATP’s board is scheduled on July 15 to vote on authorizing a contract with Stadler U.S. Inc. for the company to provide the light rail vehicles that will run on the planned 9.8-mile route. The initial contract funding would be $39 million that could cover the initial design work needed to bring more light rail vehicles to Austin. 

Stadler's global headquarters is in Switzerland, and the company provides vehicles to all types of rail networks across the globe. Within the U.S., Stadler has a production facility located in Salt Lake City, which also serves as the company's U.S. headquarters, according to the company's website.

Austin won’t be the first light rail network Stadler has supplied vehicles for. The company previously announced it has a contract with the Utah Transit Authority to provide 80 light rail vehicles to the Salt Lake City light rail network.

The light rail vehicle contract is the last of three major contracts ATP needed to award to support the buildout of the Austin Light Rail… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Bastrop County eyed for 2,800-acre data center campus (Austin Business Journal)

An energy infrastructure company is considering building a gas-fired electric generation facility that will support a 2,842-acre data center campus in the Cedar Creek area of Bastrop County. It's the same company that earlier this year received approval to build one of the country's largest gas-powered generation projects in West Texas.

Representatives for Dallas-based Pacifico Energy LLC revealed in a July 9 application for incentives from Bastrop Independent School District the plans for the $2.2 billion project at 382 Earl Callahan Road. The incentives are through the Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation Act, or JETI – the lesser-used successor to the Chapter 313 program that sunsetted several years ago and provides rebates on some school district property taxes over a decade-long period.

Pacifico mentions in its application that at full buildout the electric generation facility would deliver 710 megawatts of "site-rated redundant power using simple cycle natural gas turbines" that will support 490 megawatts of informational technology load. It mentions the facility would be for a co-located hyperscale data center campus. It does not disclose the operator or the tenants of that campus… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Harris County DA’s office to treat ICE shooting as criminal investigation, says it may take months or years to complete (Texas Tribune)

Harris County officials still don’t know the names of the agents who were present when an ICE officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, leading the county’s district attorney’s office to investigate this case like a criminal investigation to figure out who fired the shot.

“We will investigate it like we do all criminal investigations,” said Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare during a Monday joint press conference with County Commissioner Rodney Ellis. “We are good at identifying individuals who don’t want to be found.”

Teare called the lack of cooperation from federal agencies unacceptable and unprecedented, but his office is determined to get answers for Araujo’s family and Harris County residents.

“In all likelihood, this will take many, many months — potentially years — before we finally get the answers that we all need, but we will not rest, and we cannot do it without the support of the public and the support of our commissioners,” he said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ How suing Biden more than 100 times fueled Ken Paxton’s rise and reshaped Texans’ lives (Texas Tribune)

In April 2024, the Biden administration cleared the way for more than 4 million low-wage workers to collect overtime pay. People earning less than $58,656 were to be paid time and a half if they worked over 40 hours a week, a shift that would put $1.5 billion into workers’ pockets, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Until Ken Paxton sued to stop it.

A Trump-appointed judge, who previously worked at the Texas attorney general’s office, agreed that it was an unconstitutional overreach and struck down the policy nationwide.

Today, the threshold for mandatory overtime pay remains at $35,568, where the first Trump administration set it in 2019… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Here’s the full schedule for the Spurs public listening tour on the future arena and downtown sports district (Texas Public Radio)

Spurs owners want to know what you think a downtown sports and entertainment district should look like.

Spurs Sports & Entertainment has planned a series of 10 “community conversations” to gather input on Project Marvel, the $4 billion planned arena district first introduced in late 2024.

In April 2025, the City of San Antonio and Bexar County signed an initial, non-binding, agreement with the Spurs to relocate the NBA basketball team to a downtown arena and repurpose the Frost Bank Center.

The plans were approved by voters late last year after a political action committee supporting the arena project spent more than $7 million on its campaign to support Propositions A and B on the Nov. 4 ballot.

The upcoming public listening tour kicks off July 13 and continues through July 23… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ After Lindsey Graham’s death, questions linger about aging politicians and health transparency (Associated Press)

The sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top ally of President Donald Trump and one of Washington’s best-known politicians, is renewing focus on the country’s aging lawmakers.

Graham, who had turned 71 just two days before passing away on Saturday night, was far younger than many of his Senate colleagues and appeared to have been in good health. He suffered a tear in his aorta, according to a preliminary report from the medical examiner.

It was the second time in less than a month that emergency personnel were dispatched to the home of a U.S. senator. In early June, Mitch McConnell, the former Republican Senate leader, was hospitalized for undisclosed reasons.

After weeks of increasingly dire speculation about his health, he finally revealed on Sunday that he had fallen and suffered from mild pneumonia. He released a photo, complete with a copy of the day’s newspaper.

Graham’s death and McConnell’s hospitalization have come amid an ongoing reckoning about the nation’s aging leaders, two years after the disastrous presidential debate that sparked widespread panic among Democrats about then-President Joe Biden’s capacities and accusations of a cover-up… 🟪 (READ MORE)