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- BG Reads // October 10, 2025
BG Reads // October 10, 2025
A.J. Bingham
October 10, 2025
faustin a
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www.binghamgp.com
October 9, 2025
✅ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Council OKs purchase of site for new homeless navigation center (Austin Monitor)
🟪 Austin faces a 30-day deadline to remove its Pride crosswalk, 'Black Artists Matter' roadway art (KUT)
🟪 Austin renames street after late economic development legend (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 Samsung employees to move into office building on Taylor campus this November (Community Impact)
🟪 Massive data center in Taylor will move forward, despite deed promising land would become park (KUT)
🟪 Paxton sides with Texas GOP, against secretary of state in lawsuit seeking to close primaries (Texas Tribune)
🟪 Shutdown strains already short-staffed air traffic controllers, union president says (NPR)
READ ON!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart
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[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
✅ Council OKs purchase of site for new homeless navigation center (Austin Monitor)
City Council voted 8–3 on Thursday to purchase a commercial property on South Interstate 35 to serve as the city’s first housing navigation center for people experiencing homelessness, following hours of debate and neighborhood opposition. The votes against the purchase came from Council members Marc Duchen, Zo Qadri, and José Velásquez.
The 1.39-acre site at 2401 S. I35, currently home to an auto sales business, will cost the city about $4.4 million. City staff said the property was appraised at $4.35 million and will continue generating rent until the current lease expires in March 2026. The purchase will be funded through the Austin Housing Capital Budget.
The navigation center will act as a central intake and referral facility, connecting unhoused residents or those at risk of losing housing to case management, health and behavioral services and housing programs. The facility had been expected to replace and expand on the functions currently provided by the Sunrise Navigation Center in South Austin, though Council member Ryan Alter backed away from that certainty in recent news coverage… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Austin faces a 30-day deadline to remove its Pride crosswalk, 'Black Artists Matter' roadway art (KUT)
Austin's roadway art, including the rainbow crosswalk at Fourth and Colorado streets and the "Black Artists Matter" painted on 11th Street could soon be gone.
Gov. Greg Abbott ordered cities and counties Wednesday to remove displays like these or risk losing state and federal money for road projects. He said this order will comply with a federal policy banning symbolic language and roadway art.
A TxDOT letter to cities and counties gives them 30 days to remove any "decorative crosswalks, murals, or markings conveying artwork or other messages."
"This prohibition includes the use of symbols, flags, or other markings conveying any message or communications," the letter from TxDOT's Executive Director Marc Williams read.
The city said it "will comply" with the new guidelines in a statement Wednesday… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Austin renames street after late economic development legend (Austin Business Journal)
The city is honoring the legacy of Pike Powers, a pioneer of Austin’s tech industry.
Austin City Council voted at its Oct. 9 meeting to rename a portion of old Red River Street, near the Moody Amphitheater, to Pike Powers Plaza. The renaming of the street was done to honor Powers' legacy of helping build out Austin’s tech sector.
Powers, an attorney, politician then economic development leader in Texas, died in 2021 and held various roles in the state, including opening the Austin office for Fulbright and Jaworski, which has since changed its name to Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP. He is credited with helping create economic incentives and subsidy programs, including the Texas Enterprise Fund, to attract major companies like Toyota and Apple to the Lone Star State.
He was posthumously inducted into the Tech Hall of Fame, created by the Austin Technology Council, earlier this year.
He helped lure industry-changing organizations such as Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. and Sematech — both consortiums designed to advance American technology faster than other countries — that are no longer around, but Powers’ legacy can still be seen in Austin. He was credited for helping bring Samsung Austin Semiconductor LLC to the region, which has long been a key economic engine in Central Texas as Samsung continues to invest billions into a fabrication facility in Taylor… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Samsung employees to move into office building on Taylor campus this November (Community Impact)
Employees of Samsung Austin Semiconductor will move into the new office building at the manufacturer’s Taylor campus by the end of November, Michele Glaze, senior director of communications and community affairs, said Oct. 8.
Glaze, speaking at a Hutto Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon, said the six-story office building boasts a number of amenities, including two cafeterias, open-concept cubicles, atriums, a fitness center and a meditation space. Additionally, the site is landscaped with Georgia loblolly pines, a lazy river that runs through the campus and a Texas-shaped water fountain.
About 1,000 Samsung employees will move into the Taylor site over the first two quarters, Glaze said, adding that this doesn’t include additional staff needed for security, hospitality and landscaping… 🟪 (READ MORE)
[TEXAS/US NEWS]
✅ Paxton sides with Texas GOP, against secretary of state in lawsuit seeking to close primaries (Texas Tribune)
Last month, the Republican Party of Texas sued over a state law that allows anyone to vote in any primary election, regardless of party affiliation.
On Thursday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responded, not to defend the state law, but to side with the GOP in asking a federal judge to strike down parts of the election code that allow for open primaries.
“The unconstitutional law stopping the [Republican Party of Texas] from closing its primaries is completely indefensible and a slap in the face to the Republican Party and voters,” Paxton said.
This is the latest in a string of cases where Paxton, as the state’s top lawyer, has not only declined to defend a state law, but actively campaigned for the courts to strike it down... 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Shutdown strains already short-staffed air traffic controllers, union president says (NPR)
Air traffic controllers will continue to work under strain as the government shutdown drags on, according to the head of the union that represents them.
"What they're working under is one of the lowest-morale times in history," Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told Morning Edition.
Congress's failure to pass a spending bill has left air traffic controllers working without pay. On Monday at a press conference at Newark Liberty International Airport, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed delays at airports on a "slight tick-up in sick calls" among controllers.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Tuesday staffing shortages caused a ground stop in Nashville and delays at airports in Philadelphia, Boston, Dallas, Chicago and Houston. On Wednesday, the FAA reported several staffing shortages, including at Reagan National Airport and its Philadelphia air traffic control facility… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Most states with National Guard troops in DC plan to withdraw this fall (Associated Press)
More than half the states contributing National Guard troops to President Donald Trump’s federal law enforcement initiative in Washington have set target dates for their withdrawal later this fall, state officials told The Associated Press.
The dates, in late October and November, could be extended, and it is not immediately clear when the other three states will remove their troops. But the planned withdrawals signal that the surge of troops into the nation’s capital may head toward a drawdown or a change in scope.
The plans by the contributing states come as Trump takes his push to send the military to other American cities, including Chicago and Portland, Oregon, which have each pushed back with legal action to try to stop any deployment.
The National Guard was activated in D.C. in August after Trump issued an executive order proclaiming an emergency over what the Republican president said were crime concerns. The order placed the local police department under the president’s authority for 30 days and then lapsed when Congress did not renew it… 🟪 (READ MORE)
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