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✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 City of Austin proposed budget to be released next week — what to expect (KXAN)

🟪 Texas cities encourage and cope with massive growth (Governing)

🟪 Austin Habitat For Humanity has increased its salary qualifications to buy a home. The numbers may surprise you. (KVUE)

🟪 Inside Elon Musk’s stellar year at the Texas Capitol (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Gov. Newsom signs housing bill overhauling California’s landmark environmental law (Associated Press)

 🟪 Air travel hits new milestone with 6 record days in 2025 -- and July Fourth surge expected ahead (ABC News)

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

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

💰 2026 City of Austin Bond - Public Input

🏛️ City of Austin Seeks Proposals for Colony Park Displacement Mitigation Strategy RFP

ℹ️ 2025 Essential Resources for Navigating the City of Austin

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ City of Austin proposed budget to be released next week — what to expect (KXAN)

The city of Austin will release its proposed budget several days before it presents to Austin City Council this year, according to City Manager TC Broadnax.

The proposed budget will be made public on July 11 — next Friday. City staff will officially present that proposed budget to city council on the following Tuesday, July 15.

Broadnax sat down with KXAN’s Grace Reader on Inside Austin’s Agenda last week to break down what you can expect from the budget process this year. Here’s what you need to know… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas cities encourage and cope with massive growth (Governing)

Cedar Park, a small city in Texas, has a stunning new library. The $31 million edifice includes rentable community rooms, a maker’s space with machines to handle digital fabrication, an indoor play space for kids and two screened reading porches on the second floor. Plus, not to be overlooked, thousands of books. Since it opened last November, the library has welcomed more than 330,000 visitors. That’s like every single resident of the city coming through its doors, four times each.

As successful as the new library has been, it’s only the start of something much grander. It’s built among a group of towering pecan trees and surrounded by walking trails and a new playground — a public stake in the ground for the new Bell District, a 54-acre master-planned complex with restaurants, shops, office space and hundreds of housing units. The project responds to a community demand that came up again and again during a recent comprehensive planning process, says Brenda Eivens, Cedar Park’s city manager: “This desire to have a place to go, an identity, something that feels like the heart of your city.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin seeks volunteers to curb misuse use of ADA parking spots (KVUE)

The City of Austin is seeking volunteers to support its ongoing efforts to prevent illegal parking in designated accessible spaces. 

Through the Accessible Parking Enforcement Program, city officials aim to raise public awareness and ensure that parking reserved for individuals with physical disabilities remains available to those who need it.

In partnership with the Austin Police Department (APD), the program has been in place for four years, with 165 trained volunteers to date. These volunteers are authorized to issue warnings and citations to vehicles parked illegally in Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-designated spaces, with fines reaching up to $500… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin Habitat For Humanity has increased its salary qualifications to buy a home. The numbers may surprise you. (KVUE)

Austin Habitat for Humanity is expanding who qualifies for its affordable homeownership program, allowing more middle-income families to buy homes as housing prices in the city remain out of reach for many.

According to Zillow, the average home in Austin now costs more than $528,000 – a price tag that makes homeownership inaccessible for much of the city’s workforce.

Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit dedicated to helping low- and moderate-income families achieve homeownership, recently raised its maximum income limits for applicants to match new local Housing and Urban Development (HUD) data. 

The new limits reflect the reality that even traditional wage earners are being priced out of the Austin housing market.

The updated income limits are:

• 1-person household: $72,950 (up from $68,500)

• 2-person household: $83,400 (up from $78,250)

• 3-person household: $93,800 (up from $88,050)

• 4-person household: $104,200, crossing the six-figure mark for the first time (up from $97,800)… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin avoids 100° in June for first time in six years (KXAN)

Austin officially avoided the triple-digit mark in June for the first time in six years.

Camp Mabry, Austin’s official weather reporting site, topped out at 99° for the month, on both June 9 and June 19.

Avoiding 100° makes 2025 the first year since 2019 without a triple-digit day in the month of June. Last year, four days at or above 100° were recorded.

In 2023, Austin hit the triple digits 15 times in June, while 2022 saw 21 days at or above 100° — more than any other year, with records dating back to the 1890s… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Capital Metro marks 40 years of Central Texas transit service (Community Impact)

Capital Metro leaders and local officials gathered July 1 to recognize the 40th year of the transit agency's operations in Central Texas.

CapMetro was created in the mid-1980s after area voters approved a tax increase for the transit service, and the newly-formed agency soon took over bus service in Austin. Various bus, shuttle, trolley, rail and other transit options were rolled out across Central Texas in the decades since, and the transportation authority now serves more than 25 million riders annually across its nearly 550-square-mile service area.

“Forty years ago, visionary leaders in Central Texas recognized the inevitable growth our region would experience. A need to enhance the ability of connecting Central Texas through reliable public transportation became the cornerstone of CapMetro’s creation. Today, we celebrate not just CapMetro’s 40th anniversary, but four decades of that vision becoming a reality," CapMetro President and CEO Dottie Watkins said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Inside Elon Musk’s stellar year at the Texas Capitol (Texas Tribune)

Elon Musk was pleading.

It was April 2013, and Musk stood at a podium in a small committee room in the basement of the Texas Capitol. The Tesla CEO asked the legislators gathered before him to change state law, allowing him to bypass the state’s powerful car dealership lobby and sell his electric vehicles directly to the public.

He painted a bleak picture of what could happen if they didn’t give him his way.

“We would, I’m afraid, we would fail,” Musk told the assembled representatives. “So for us, it’s a matter of life or death.”

Clad in a dark suit instead of his now ubiquitous black T-shirt and baseball hat, the younger Musk was unable to persuade lawmakers in Austin. That year, the bill he wanted to pass died.

More than a decade later, however, Musk’s fortunes inside the Texas Capitol have changed — dramatically… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Dallas judge throws out Ken Paxton's lawsuit over State Fair of Texas gun ban (KERA News)

A Dallas County district judge dismissed Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against the State Fair of Texas and the city of Dallas over the State Fair’s gun policy enacted at last year’s fair.

In a June 24 ruling, Judge Emily Tobolowsky granted the city and State Fair’s motions for summary judgment in their favor, or a decision without a full trial. Tobolowsky did not provide any reasoning for her decision in court documents.

Karissa Condoianis, a spokesperson for the State Fair, told KERA News organizers are pleased with the court’s ruling.

“The State Fair takes no political position on the complex issues related to the lawful carrying of firearms in Texas, and in fact has been and continues to be a strong supporter of the right of responsible gun owners in Texas,” Condoianis said. “The State Fair’s No. 1 priority is the safety of our fairgoers, vendors, volunteers and staff, and we will continue to work with the Dallas Police Department to create a safe and secure environment.”

The fair will keep its current gun policy in place for this year’s fair, Condoianis said. She added the fair is grateful for the resolution of Cameron Turner’s criminal case… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Gov. Newsom signs housing bill overhauling California’s landmark environmental law (Associated Press)

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law an overhaul of California’s landmark environmental protection rules that he says is essential to address the state’s critical housing shortage and long-running homeless crisis.

The Democratic governor widely seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate called the two-bill package a historic reshaping of environmental rules that, while initially well intentioned, too often resulted in tangles of litigation and costly delays that strangled much-needed development.

Newsom said the bills, which he signed Monday night in Sacramento, represent the most consequential housing reform in recent California history. In general, the idea is to hasten reviews of housing projects under certain conditions, such as in dense urban communities.

“We have too much demand chasing too little supply,” Newsom said at a news conference. “So many of the challenges that ail us can be connected back to this issue.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ UVA ouster shows Trump higher ed fight ready to go beyond Ivy Leagues (The Hill)

The shocking ouster of the president of the University of Virginia (UVA) has shown the Trump administration is expanding its higher education battle to public universities and using local and state support to push its demands.  

University President James Ryan announced Friday he would be leaving after an apparent pressure campaign from the Trump administration that went largely unreported until it reached its boiling point. 

President Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) began a civil rights investigation into UVA months ago, according to The New York Times, with the administration particularly concerned about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at the university.

The department specifically pushed for the ouster of Ryan to settle the civil rights investigation, according to The Times, after he built a reputation of embracing diversity initiatives and made enemies among the conservative bloc in the UVA community.

While UVA’s Board of Visitors voted unanimously in March to shut down the university’s DEI offices, it was not enough for the federal government… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Air travel hits new milestone with 6 record days in 2025 -- and July Fourth surge expected ahead (ABC News)

Air travel is surging to new highs, and the Transportation Security Administration has added two more record-breaking days to the history books amid a summer of staggering passenger volumes. Just last week, as millions of Americans took to the skies, June 27 and June 29 now rank as the seventh and eighth busiest days respectively in TSA history, pushing 2025 to claim six of the agency's top 10 busiest days on record. The surge shows no signs of slowing down. TSA expects to screen 18.5 million travelers during the upcoming Fourth of July holiday period, which officially starts Tuesday. Sunday, July 6, is projected to be the busiest day as an estimated 2.9 million passengers pass through security checkpoints.

This record-breaking trend began earlier this month when TSA screened nearly 3.1 million travelers on Sunday, June 22, marking the single busiest day in the agency's history. "Airlines are offering great deals, and with Fourth of July falling on a Friday this year, it extends the weekend for many folks," explains Keith Jeffries, former federal security director at Los Angeles International Airport. "People are out of school, and they're going to enjoy themselves this summer." The robust travel numbers reflect broader economic strength, according to Jeffries.

"When you see TSA hitting some of the busiest days in its history, it's a testament to how well the economy is doing. People are traveling again, and that's exciting to see." Major airlines are preparing for the surge. American Airlines announced its largest-ever July Fourth operation, planning to accommodate nearly 7.6 million customers across 71,000 flights from June 27 through July 7. United Airlines expects to transport more than 6 million passengers during the same period -- 500,000 more than last year… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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