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- BG Reads // October 7, 2025
BG Reads // October 7, 2025
A.J. Bingham
October 07, 2025
faustin a
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www.binghamgp.com
October 6, 2025
✅ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 AISD real estate could be up for grabs as district evaluates closing some campuses (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 Proposition Q campaigns heat up on both sides (Austin Monitor)
🟪 Government shutdown adds pressure to busy October at Austin's airport (KUT)
🟪 San Antonio-Austin: Texas’ next great metro area faces big challenges (Texas Public Radio)
🟪 Texas selects company that will help develop its school voucher program (Texas Tribune)
🟪 Trump’s use of the National Guard sets up a legal clash testing presidential power (Associated Press)
READ ON!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🏛️ City Memo: Short-Term Rental Regulations – Upcoming Action Item (Development Services Department)
🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart
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[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
✅ AISD real estate could be up for grabs as district evaluates closing some campuses (Austin Business Journal)
The proposed school closures could be finalized during the AISD's Nov. 20 board meeting.
The plan outlines three options for each of the sites under consideration for closure — reuse, lease or sell.
Under the reuse option, AISD could repurpose some of the sites to meet other district needs, although they wouldn't serve K-12 grades. For the lease option, AISD would maintain ownership but lease the sites to third-parties and potentially yield community benefits, such as the district's lease with the nonprofit United Way for Greater Austin that turned the previously closed Pease Elementary School into a child care center and hub for early education. Under the sale option, the AISD would issue a call for offers and then sell a closed campus to the highest bidder.
"Each campus will be reviewed in terms of how it supports the district’s overall strategy to best serve students and staff," the consolidation plan states.
A framework will be created to recommend the best option for each site that ends up closing, the district said, and then the AISD's board would be asked to sign off on the subsequent real estate decisions. Factors that will come into play when sites are being considered for repurposing, leasing or a sale include adjacent land uses, deed restrictions, facility conditions, projected area growth rates and estimated market values.
According to the consolidation plan, AISD staff will start the process of exploring the options for the sites in January and will make recommendations to the board by the end of the current school year — the last day of which is May 28… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Proposition Q campaigns heat up on both sides (Austin Monitor)
In an expensive city like Austin, it’s a tough time to raise property taxes — especially on top of rising gas bills and a county tax hike to fund disaster relief for the July floods. Yet that is what the City is asking the voters to approve this November in order to help make up for the state’s inaction in the face of the federal government’s millions in cuts to grants that fund city services.
Should it pass in November, Proposition Q would increase taxes for the average home valued at $500,000 by about $300 per year. With or without the tax rate increase, that bill will still increase by around $100, in order to pay for city services like trash and water.
In 2019, the Texas State Legislature passed a law prohibiting cities from raising taxes by more than 3.5 percent per year without voter approval. That law, along with the federal cuts and lower than expected sales tax revenue, has led to the current election… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Government shutdown adds pressure to busy October at Austin's airport (KUT)
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is entering one of the busiest stretches of the year just as a partial shutdown of the federal government threatens to slow TSA screening lines.
Airport officials expect more than 35,000 departing passengers on multiple days before, during and after the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which kicks off Friday and runs Oct. 3-5 and Oct. 10-12 at Zilker Park.
In recent years, the Monday after ACL's second weekend ranked among ABIA's 10 busiest days with well over 38,000 people clearing security.
But ACL is just the warmup.
The U.S. Grand Prix returns to Austin Oct. 17-19 this year, bringing tens of thousands of fans to Circuit of the Americas. The Monday after the race was the busiest day ever recorded at ABIA for the last three years in a row.
Last year, that translated to more than 44,000 departing passengers. For comparison, on Wednesday, a relatively calm day at ABIA, the TSA was expecting to screen about half that number.
ABIA officials are bracing for a new all-time passenger record on October 20.
"It's an all hands on deck operation," ABIA spokesperson Samantha Rojas told KUT News. "We have extra employees from finance, HR that [will come into the terminal] for line management, queuing, questions, anything that passengers need."… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ San Antonio-Austin: Texas’ next great metro area faces big challenges (Texas Public Radio)
The stretch of Central Texas between San Antonio and Austin — once separated by 80 miles of farmland and Spanish oak-covered hills — is rapidly transforming into one continuous metroplex.
From the booming suburbs of New Braunfels and San Marcos to smaller towns like Kyle and Buda, growth along the crowded Interstate 35 corridor is rewriting the economy of Texas.
The U.S. Census Bureau lists both Austin and San Antonio among the nation’s fastest-growing large cities.
New Braunfels has grown by more than 50 percent since 2010, while Hays County has doubled in population. Economists predict that by 2040, the two metro areas will effectively merge into a “San-Austin Corridor"—home to more than six million people.
But this rapid expansion is straining the region’s infrastructure and natural resources. Water scarcity is one of the most pressing concerns.
Both cities depend on the Edwards Aquifer and a patchwork of regional water projects to meet future demand. Environmental groups warn that unchecked development threatens recharge zones and springs that sustain local rivers and endangered species. Meanwhile, traffic congestion has become a daily ordeal, with I-35 ranked among the most gridlocked highways in the country… 🟪 (READ MORE)
[TEXAS/US NEWS]
✅ Texas selects company that will help develop its school voucher program (Texas Tribune)
Texas’ chief financial officer on Monday named the organization that will help the state build the school voucher program lawmakers approved earlier this year.
Odyssey, a technology company, will work with the comptroller’s office, which oversees finances for all of Texas state government, to design the process through which Texas families can apply to receive thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds to cover their children’s private or home-schooling costs. Odyssey will also develop a system for those families to shop for educational products and pay tuition.
Applications for Texans to participate in the program are expected to open at some point early next year. The program, named “Texas Education Freedom Accounts,” will then launch at the beginning of the 2026-27 school year.
“We’re moving quickly to launch this program, keeping the end goal in sight every step of the way — giving parents the freedom to choose the best educational path for their children to reach their God-given potential,” said Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock in a statement. “This is about empowering families, expanding opportunity and making sure every child can learn in the environment that works best for them.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt announces run for U.S. Senate, joining Cornyn, Paxton in primary (Texas Tribune)
Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, entered the Republican primary for U.S. Senate on Monday, complicating an already contentious race between two of the biggest names in Texas Republican politics.
Hunt, a close ally of President Donald Trump, has laid the groundwork for a potential run for months. While the second-term congressman spent the summer publicly avoiding the fray between Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, groups affiliated with Hunt dropped some $6 million on ads boosting his profile around the state. And Hunt’s allies have been busy pressing the case that he would carry stronger appeal than Cornyn among the MAGA-dominated primary base, while bringing none of Paxton’s political baggage to the general election.
"The U.S. Senate race in Texas must be about more than a petty feud between two men who have spent months trading barbs," Hunt said in a statement. “With my candidacy, this race will finally be about what's most important: Texas."
A 43-year old former Army captain, Hunt will need to quickly familiarize himself to voters outside his Houston district, as he looks to outpace two opponents who have been elected statewide numerous times. He will also have to overcome the war chest of groups like the National Republican Senatorial Committee — Senate Republicans’ multimillion-dollar campaign arm — which is backing Cornyn and recently discouraged Hunt from entering the race… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Trump’s use of the National Guard sets up a legal clash testing presidential power (Associated Press)
President Donald Trump’s latest bid to deploy the military on U.S. soil over local opposition is triggering a new conflict with blue state governors that is playing out in the courts as Trump envisages a country where armed soldiers patrol U.S. streets.
Trump has already pushed traditional boundaries by using the National Guard domestically, envisioning a muscular role for the U.S. military in targeting illegal immigration and crime in American cities.
His attempt to deploy California National Guard members to Oregon and Texas Guardsmen to Illinois is a sprawling use of presidential power. Next steps in lawsuits filed by Democrat-led states will likely address significant questions of constitutional law, federalism and the separation of powers — setting up a potential collision between the courts and Trump’s aggressive use of the National Guard… 🟪 (READ MORE)
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