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July 30, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Residents back tax hike for 2026 bond projects, survey shows (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Updated City of Austin org chart

🟪 A fight to save an Austin middle school puts families at odds with Texas over how to rate schools (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Austin is big winner in $16.5B Samsung-Tesla pact (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Effort underway to hit the brakes on Austin's $1.6B convention center project (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 New York Democrats unveil their own mid-decade redistricting scheme, targeting future elections (NBC News)

🟪 East Texans condemn Dallas millionaire’s plan to pump 16 billion gallons of their groundwater to other parts of the state — every year (Texas Tribune)

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ Memos:

• Office of Government Relations – Federal Legislative Update (July 29, 2025)

• City Council Rules of Procedure and Agenda Posting Changes (July 18, 2025)

🏛️ The City of Austin FY 2025 - 26 Proposed Budget

• Bingham Group will be following the budget process, including the City Manager and department presentations to City Council, through its approval in August.

• » Click Here for our high-level summary of the FY2025-26 Proposed Budget. «

🏛️ 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]

✅ Residents back tax hike for 2026 bond projects, survey shows (Austin Monitor)

More than two-thirds of Austin residents say they’re willing to support a tax increase to fund the city’s next bond package, with housing, transportation, and parks emerging as the most widely shared priorities among the 2,002 people who responded to a recent public survey.

Those findings were presented at Monday’s meeting of the Bond Election Advisory Task Force, where members also reviewed long-term capital needs for cultural facilities and confirmed key milestones in the bond planning timeline, including a curated shortlist of projects totaling more than $3 billion expected this week, and a series of public town halls scheduled for September.

The survey, conducted as part of the city’s community engagement phase for the 2026 bond, asked residents to identify pressing needs, allocate a hypothetical $100 budget across issue areas, and indicate whether they’d support a property tax increase to fund new projects. In open-ended responses, 34 percent of participants named housing and homelessness as Austin’s most urgent issue, followed by 22 percent who cited transportation and mobility infrastructure… 🟪 (READ MORE)

🟪 A fight to save an Austin middle school puts families at odds with Texas over how to rate schools (Texas Tribune)

For months, an initial threat to close Dobie and the staffing changes that followed, all to avoid a state takeover, have roiled the Rundberg neighborhood Dobie anchors in northeast Austin. Parents and advocates say the school is the heartbeat of a community made up of working-class immigrants and refugees.

“The school has been there for 50 years. It’s a part of the community,” said Irma Castanon, who runs a Girl Scout troop on campus for Dobie students, many of whom are her daughter’s friends. “That's where all our kids go to school.”

Dobie's uncertain fate underscores a core issue brewing across the state: What happens when the state’s metrics used to measure success and failure in education are fundamentally at odds with how a community views their schools? The question comes as Gov. Greg Abbott has called state legislators back to the Texas Capitol with marching orders to eliminate STAAR and revisit how testing shapes the state’s school accountability system. While the test is controversial throughout the state, it’s not yet clear what may replace it… 🟪 (READ MORE)

🟪 Austin is big winner in $16.5B Samsung-Tesla pact (Austin Business Journal)

Excitement permeated Austin's business community as word spread that Tesla Inc. is linking up with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. on a $16.5 billion supplier deal in which the latter will make artificial intelligence chips at its Taylor factory that has struggled to find a main customer.

Experts and analysts called the move an overwhelmingly positive one for both companies — but also for the region. The two tech giants are pillars of the metro economy, with Tesla's electric vehicle gigafactory in eastern Travis County and Samsung's chip fabs in Taylor and North Austin.

"It just shows the strength of the ecosystem that this kind of scale partnership can happen 40 miles apart from each other's facilities and be so impactful," Opportunity Austin CEO Ed Latson said.

Elon Musk on July 28 confirmed news of the partnership, a few weeks after the ABJ reported that the business titans were discussing a supplier deal. The deal is reportedly set to run through 2033, and Musk has said that the $16.5 billion total is the "bare minimum." Samsung will produce the next-generation AI6 chip that will serve as the foundation of Tesla’s driving hardware suite for its electric vehicles… 🟪 (READ MORE)

🟪 Effort underway to hit the brakes on Austin's $1.6B convention center project (Austin Business Journal)

Demolition of the Austin Convention Center has been ongoing for months, so it may come as a surprise that a move is afoot to halt the $1.6 billion plan to tear it down and build a new one in its place.

A group called Austin United PAC aims to gather 20,000 signatures to force a ballot measure that would stop the project — either until it is approved by voters or for seven years. The petition, which is close to the finish line, also calls for the city to prioritize funding for music, arts, cultural and outdoor tourism rather than spending on conventions.

“It's a phenomenal waste of money," said Bill Bunch, a community activist who's involved with Austin United PAC and also serves as executive director of the Save Our Springs Alliance. "It's basically a theft of funds that in any sort of functional local democratic process world would be supporting what actually does bring visitors to Austin, not just downtown, but all of Austin, and that is local culture and parks."

While the demolition of the old convention center started in April, Bunch said the project isn’t too far along to stop. He said the six city blocks that the project encompasses could be well suited for an arts and culture district.

Any delay in the Austin Convention Center redevelopment could result in havoc for the city's plans. Visit Austin, the nonprofit that serves as the city's official tourism and promotional agency, has said it already has booked at least nine groups for the expanded facility when it reopens in early 2029… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

🟪 East Texans condemn Dallas millionaire’s plan to pump 16 billion gallons of their groundwater to other parts of the state — every year (Texas Tribune)

A Dallas millionaire is seeking permission to drill into the massive Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer to explore how much water is available. His enterprise, if fully realized, could drain 15.9 billion gallons of water from the massive body each year — more than triple the amount the city of Longview uses in a year.

Kyle Bass, through his company Conservation Equity Management, sees opportunity in the expanse of the aquifer, which has gone largely unstudied, to quench the thirst of the growing state. He purchased more than 11,000 acres in East Texas and plans to install more than 40 high-capacity water wells in Anderson, Houston and Henderson counties.

His neighbors have rung the alarm bells. Residents who rely on the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer — which extends millions of acres from western Louisiana through East Texas to the Mexico border — have had to dig deeper to access its groundwater. Locals worry this operation would dry out their personal wells, wells used for business purposes and the small springs that wildlife and ranches in the region rely upon. Experts, local leaders, and residents told lawmakers in an 11-hour hearing this month that the negative impacts could be innumerable.

“It’s dropping,” business owner Mark Calicutt told The Texas Tribune of the aquifer. “It’s dropping faster and faster each year. And if he does what he says he’s going to do, it will deplete the aquifer.”… ✅ (READ MORE)

🟪 New York Democrats unveil their own mid-decade redistricting scheme, targeting future elections (NBC News)

As Texas Republicans slowly move forward with plans to redraw congressional maps mid-decade, Democrats in New York plowed ahead Tuesday with their own scheme to counter any GOP redistricting efforts.

But the effort faces a long, arduous path forward, and it wouldn't be scheduled to go into effect for years, illustrating the limited options at Democrats' disposal as they hunt for ways to counter the GOP redistricting play in Texas.

Legislative Democrats in the blue stronghold unveiled a bill that would allow state lawmakers in Albany to conduct mid-decade redistricting — but only if another state were to do it first.

The proposal would, if it were enacted, effectively set up the prospect of a national redistricting tit-for-tat between Republicans and Democrats, with control of the House of Representatives in Washington potentially on the line.

However, there are key differences between what's happening in New York and what's happening in Texas, including the timing of any actual map changes. Texas Republicans are looking to immediately enact new district boundaries for the 2026 elections.

The bill in New York, which is technically a legislatively referred constitutional amendment, would allow the Legislature to redraw congressional districts if another state engaged in mid-decade redistricting.

It would have to pass the Legislature in two consecutive sessions — and then still be approved by voters in a ballot measure. In theory, that means that whatever new maps that would be created wouldn’t be in place until the 2028 elections… ✅ (READ MORE)

🟪 Despite grand claims, a new report shows noncitizen voting hasn't materialized (NPR)

After President Trump and many other Republicans warned that vast numbers of non-U.S. citizens would influence last year's election, states and law enforcement have devoted more resources than ever before to root out those ineligible voters.

More than six months into Trump's second term, they haven't found much.

New research out Wednesday tracking state government efforts across the country confirms what election experts have said all along: Noncitizen voting occasionally happens but in minuscule numbers, and not in any coordinated way.

"Noncitizens are not a large threat to our election system currently," said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which conducted the research. "Even states that are looking everywhere to try to amplify the numbers of noncitizens … when they actually look, they find a surprisingly, shockingly small number."… ✅ (READ MORE)

✅ AI is wrecking an already fragile job market for college graduates (Wall Street Journal)

What do you hire a 22-year-old college graduate for these days? For a growing number of bosses, the answer is not much—AI can do the work instead. At Chicago recruiting firm Hirewell, marketing agency clients have all but stopped requesting entry-level staff—young grads once in high demand but whose work is now a “home run” for AI, the firm’s chief growth officer said. Dating app Grindr is hiring more seasoned engineers, forgoing some junior coders straight out of school, and CEO George Arison said companies are “going to need less and less people at the bottom.” Bill Balderaz, CEO of Columbus-based consulting firm Futurety, said he decided not to hire a summer intern this year, opting to run social-media copy through ChatGPT instead. Balderaz has urged his own kids to focus on jobs that require people skills and can’t easily be automated. One is becoming a police officer.

Having a good job “guaranteed” after college, he said, “I don’t think that’s an absolute truth today any more.” There’s long been an unwritten covenant between companies and new graduates: Entry-level employees, young and hungry, are willing to work hard for lower pay. Employers, in turn, provide training and experience to give young professionals a foothold in the job market, seeding the workforce of tomorrow. A yearslong white-collar hiring slump and recession worries have weakened that contract. Artificial intelligence now threatens to break it completely. That is ominous for college graduates looking for starter jobs, but also potentially a fundamental realignment in how the workforce is structured. As companies hire and train fewer young people, they may also be shrinking the pool of workers that will be ready to take on more responsibility in five or 10 years. Companies say they are already rethinking how to develop the next generation of talent. AI is accelerating trends that were already under way… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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