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October 22, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Early voting has started for the Nov. 4 election. Here's what to know for the Austin area. (KUT)

🟪 Austin leaders cite lack of coordination in Texas' encampment clearing operation (Community Impact)

🟪 UT Austin is one of two universities that haven't rejected Trump administration's funding compact (KUT)

🟪 City of Austin launches homeless encampment surge Monday (KXAN)

🟪 Austin City Council Member donates $100,000 to improve Austin parks (KXAN)

🟪 Austin's airport sets new record with more than 45K departures post-U.S. Grand Prix race (KVUE)

🟪  Push to find more rare minerals sparks mining rush in Texas (Texas Tribune)

🟪 The day Amazon broke the Internet for millions of Americans (Wall Street Journal)

READ ON!

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ SB 840 Informational Session - Today @1PM

• As of September 2025, Senate Bill 840 (SB 840) is now in effect, allowing mixed-use and multifamily residential development in any commercial zone or within any commercial use building in Austin.

• To help clarify how this new law is being applied and what it means for local development, we are hosting an informational session on how SB 840 fits into the development process.

• Register for this session today on Zoom.  

🏛️ 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]

✅ Early voting has started for the Nov. 4 election. Here's what to know for the Austin area. (KUT)

Voters across the Austin area will decide on funding for city services, some mayoral and city council races, and — along with the rest of the state — changes to the Texas Constitution.

Here's what you need to know about when, where and how to vote.

Austinites will get to vote on Proposition Q, a proposed tax rate increase funding a variety of city programs that has faced controversy and a lawsuit in the months leading up to the election.

Voters will also get to weigh in on 17 constitutional amendments that cover property taxes, bail, water infrastructure, dementia research funding and more. Here's our guide to the proposed amendments and how they would affect the state.

KUT has put together voter guides for Travis and Williamson counties with more detailed information and links to sample ballots:

• Travis County voter guide

• Williamson County voter guide

🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin leaders cite lack of coordination in Texas' encampment clearing operation (Community Impact)

A state-led homeless encampment clearing operation in Austin has seen dozens of people relocated or arrested, Gov. Greg Abbott said, while city officials pushed back on Texas' "show of force" and a lack of local coordination.

"To some degree, I’m disappointed today ... because some of what we’re seeing with regard to addressing people living homeless is frankly not how it’s supposed to work. It’s not the way government ought to be working, especially when we’re talking about our most vulnerable Texans," Mayor Kirk Watson said.

Several state agencies are participating in an operation aimed at removing homeless people and encampments from Austin's public areas, Abbott announced Oct. 21. The Texas Department of Public Safety is leading the effort, he said, and coordinating with the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas State Guard and Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

"Texans should not endure public safety risks from homeless encampments and individuals," Abbott said in a statement. “Weapons, needles and other debris should not litter the streets of our community, and the state of Texas is taking action. I directed state agencies to address this risk and make Austin safer and cleaner for residents and visitors to live, travel and conduct business.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ UT Austin is one of two universities that haven't rejected Trump administration's funding compact (KUT)

UT Austin is one of two universities that have not publicly rejected the compact sent by the White House earlier this month.

The Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education asks universities to follow 10 points aligned with the Trump administration in exchange for better access to federal funding. The deadline for university officials to submit comments or feedback was Monday, Oct. 20.

Before that deadline, seven out of the nine universities presented with the compact publicly rejected the offer. Vanderbilt University is the other school that has not publicly said whether it will accept or reject the offer.

When the compact was first sent to universities, UT System officials said they were “honored” to be selected for potential funding advantages and “enthusiastically” looked forward to reviewing the document. A UT Austin spokesperson said Monday there were no updates on the matter… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin City Council Member donates $100,000 to improve Austin parks (KXAN)

Austin City Council Member Ryan Alter is contributing $100,000 of his office budget savings to the Austin Parks and Recreation Department to improve parks in District 5. 

After working with Austin Parks and Recreation staff to discuss the most “impactful and shovel-ready District 5 opportunities,” Alter said they found their priority projects, which will go towards improving Garrison Park and Piney Bend Playground, per a press release from the city.

“I look forward to continuing to work with APR and the community to bring these projects to fruition,” Alter said. 

In response to Alter’s generosity, Austin Parks and Recreation Director, Jesus Aguirre said, “We’re grateful for Council Member Alter’s generous $100,000 contribution in support of two District 5 park projects.” He said those funds will “help replace aging amenities at Garrison District Park like benches/tables, grills and drinking fountains, while also helping fund the Piney Bend Playground replacement.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin's airport sets new record with more than 45K departures post-U.S. Grand Prix race (KVUE)

The Monday after the Formula One U.S. Grand Prix set a new record for departing passengers at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA). 

More than 45,000 travelers flew out of Austin without major issues, according to ABIA officials. The race -held at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA)- drew an estimated 430,000 attendees over the weekend, Visit Austin reported.

A 2021 study estimated that the U.S. Grand Prix boosted local spending by about $434 million. Since then, Visit Austin said the race’s economic impact has likely approached $1 billion, driven by inflation, growing fan interest and higher spending on hotels. 

Last year’s event also pushed the airport to its limits, with about 36,000 passengers departing on Sunday and another 40,000 the Monday after the race... 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Will Austin embrace air taxis? (Austin Monitor)

At their most-recent meeting, City Council’s Mobility Committee heard a presentation from Assistant City Manager Michael Rogerson the burgeoning air taxi industry, which Rogers framed as an emerging issue for city transportation.

“As a matter of fact, we’ve had these (vehicles) here in Austin, at South by Southwest,” Rogers said, referring to test flights hosted in March by local aviation start up Lift. “So this is happening, this is real.”

The industry has seen significant investment recently, Rogers noted, especially in the wake of recent executive orders from President Donald Trump that directed the Federal Air Administration to hurry along the process of bringing air taxis into use. The measure is among those aimed at boosting the country’s air defenses and civilian aviation. Rogers cited a Reuters article which reported that air taxi firm Archer Aviation raised over $850 million immediately following the orders’ signing in early June. … 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Round Rock council prepares to vote on downtown zoning update (Community Impact)

Round Rock City Council members got an early look at a detailed proposal to update the city’s zoning and development rules to expand downtown’s official boundaries, allow taller buildings along specific corridors and create clearer design standards for new projects.

Additionally, the changes would add space for new housing and small businesses, encourage walkable streets and preserve Round Rock’s older buildings.

The update, which the Planning and Development Services Department has been working on for more than a year, will go for a final vote before City Council on Oct. 23. 

The proposal would update rules for three parts of downtown—MU-1, or the mixed-use historic commercial core district; MU-2, or the mixed-use downtown medium density district; and MU-L, or the mixed-use limited district… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Push to find more rare minerals sparks mining rush in Texas (Texas Tribune)

Major oil companies are drilling in East Texas again, but not for oil. This time, they’re after lithium for batteries and other rare elements. Chevron and Halliburton announced East Texas projects this summer. Exxon has acreage across the border in Arkansas. Smackover Lithium, a joint venture of a Norwegian oil giant and a Canadian miner, announced in late September the discovery of the most lithium-rich fluids ever reported in North America, measured deep beneath its Texas claims in a massive brine deposit called the Smackover Formation. “It’s ripe for development,” said Jamie Liang, a former Wall Street banker and founder of Houston-based lithium startup TerraVolta, which is developing a lithium refinery on the Smackover with federal support. “There’s tremendous growth potential.”

Lithium mining is one of several mineral industries emerging in Texas as part of broad federal efforts to urgently establish American production of the materials required for advanced manufacturing, from batteries and solar cells to wind turbines, microchips and cruise missiles. Competition with China looms over this effort. For much of this year, the world’s two largest economies have been locked in trade tensions— and much of the ire is linked to minerals used in technology.

This month, China announced new export controls on critical mineral products, including lithium battery components. President Trump, in social media posts, described China as “very hostile” and threatened to impose export controls on critical software and add 100% tariffs to Chinese imports. Near Texarkana, the chase for lithium is backed with robust federal support. Liang’s TerraVolta received $225 million from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2024 for its lithium refinery complex. This year the project was selected for fast-tracked permit review. It will pump up the naturally metallic super-salty fluids from the Smackover, extract lithium and other minerals and then inject the leftover liquids back underground… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ After Kerrville floods, effort to fund emergency radios failed despite history of issues (Dallas Morning News)

On the morning of July 4, Texas Department of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd drove 90 minutes to Kerrville after first learning about the devastation of overnight floods. When he arrived, he found some San Antonio Fire Department firefighters who were part of the Texas A&M Task Force 1 urban search and rescue team. He asked to be patched into the local first responders’ radio system, only to find that San Antonio and Kerr County radio systems could not communicate.

State first responders resorted to using “cheap Chinese radios,” Kidd said, to communicate as they surveyed the aftermath of one of the most devastating and deadly floods in state history. The Motorola walkie-talkies were supposed to be a temporary stopgap while communications were synchronized.

However, the technical obstacle lasted at least two days and required state authorities from two agencies to dispatch their own IT personnel to the area to reprogram radios, according to testimony from state and local officials. Kidd recounted his frustration to lawmakers less than three weeks later. “We can do better than that, and we need to,” he said at a July 23 hearing in Austin. The technical obstacle created a hindrance, one the state has faced in response to manmade and natural disasters dating back at least 20 years. In almost every instance, law enforcement, emergency personnel and lawmakers have walked away from the aftermath knowing the radio systems should be updated and unified, and that doing so could save lives.

First responders call it radio interoperability – the ability for disparate radio systems to communicate with each other. After-action reports for the 2023 Robb Elementary School shooting and the 2024 Smokehouse Creek fires in the Panhandle highlighted the radio interoperability issues that first responders faced… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ The day Amazon broke the Internet for millions of Americans (Wall Street Journal)

A glitch with an obscure Amazon database disrupted life for millions of people across the U.S. as core internet services failed to function for an array of companies. Alexa devices couldn’t hear. Corporate Slack messages wouldn’t post. Students couldn’t turn in assignments or access materials from courses. Financial trades were impossible on certain platforms. Users of Zoom, Venmo, Instacart and a host of other services faced prolonged outages that rippled through homes and businesses. The trouble started a few hours after midnight on the East Coast.

A minor update to what’s called the Domain Name System—the kind of software tweak that happens millions of times a day on the internet—sent the well-oiled machine that underpins the modern web careening toward a crash. DNS acts as a kind of telephone directory for the internet, instructing machines on how to find each other. The faulty update gave the wrong information for DynamoDB, an Amazon Web Services product that has become one of the world’s most important databases.

Suddenly, machines on the East Coast that tried to process trillions of requests were getting the internet’s equivalent of a wrong number. Amazon services were some of the first to feel the effects. At around 2 a.m. on Monday morning, the systems that help Amazon sort packages onto trucks and guide drivers on the road went down, according to an internal message viewed by The Wall Street Journal. By 3 a.m., the outage’s blast radius had spread far beyond Amazon, cascading across the internet, delaying more than 4,000 flights, knocking out news websites such as The Wall Street Journal, affecting financial transactions and extending into everyday life.

The episode, which turned into one of the most prolonged daily outages for Amazon Web Services, offered a reminder of the fragility of global connectivity, which has gone dark a number of times in recent years after seemingly minor software updates. By late afternoon Monday, Amazon said it had restored much of the service that had been knocked offline… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump can send troops to Portland, appeals court says (Washington Post)

A federal appeals court Monday said President Donald Trump could deploy the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, blocking a judge’s ruling that prohibited his administration from sending troops into the city.

The decision from a divided three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit authorizes, for now, Trump’s efforts to place the military in Oregon’s largest city, one of several places where he has sent troops or vowed to do so, including Los Angeles, Chicago and D.C. In an order released Monday afternoon, a 2-1 majority on the panel said it was likely that Trump acted lawfully in federalizing the National Guard during protests in Portland over immigration enforcement. The order said the judge who blocked Trump from deploying troops there “accorded no deference to the President’s determination that he could not execute federal laws with regular forces.”

Trump’s statements about deploying troops have prompted intense opposition from many state and local leaders. Some have gone to court to challenge such actions, accusing the administration of violating the law and inflaming situations in their communities. A federal judge in Chicago has blocked Trump’s push to deploy troops in Illinois, saying she found a “lack of credibility” in federal officials’ contentions in that case. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to pause that decision and allow the troop deployment in Illinois. The justices have not yet ruled in that case; a decision could come this week. In Oregon, officials wrote in court filings that the Trump administration’s efforts to deploy troops were infringing on the state’s “sovereign power to manage its own law enforcement activity and its own National Guard.”

The Trump administration wrote in its filings that the president acted lawfully, saying troops were needed in Portland because immigration “officers and property were the subject of regular, often-violent protests.” Demonstrations have unfolded for weeks at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland. The Trump administration has said in court papers that the facility was “the target of actual and threatened violence.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Wide-ranging group of US officials pursues Trump's fight against ‘Deep State’ (Reuters)

A group of dozens of officials from across the federal government, including U.S. intelligence officers, has been helping to steer President Donald Trump's drive for retribution against his perceived enemies, according to government records and a source familiar with the effort. The Interagency Weaponization Working Group, which has been meeting since at least May, has drawn officials from the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Justice and Defense Departments, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Communications Commission, among other agencies, two of the documents show.

Trump issued an executive order on his inauguration day in January instructing the attorney general to work with other federal agencies “to identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the federal government related to the weaponization of law enforcement and the weaponization of the Intelligence Community.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this year announced groups within their agencies to “root out” those who they say misused government power against Trump. Shortly after Reuters asked the agencies for comment on Monday, Fox News reported the existence of the group, citing Gabbard as saying she "stood up this working group." Key details in the Reuters story are previously unreported. Several U.S. officials confirmed the existence of the Interagency Weaponization Working Group to Reuters in response to the questions and said the group's purpose was to carry out Trump’s executive order.

“None of this reporting is new,” said a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity. ODNI spokeswoman Olivia Coleman said, “Americans deserve a government committed to deweaponizing, depoliticizing and ensuring that power is never again turned against the people it’s meant to serve.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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