BG Reads // October 8, 2025

Author

A.J. Bingham
October 08, 2025

faustin a

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www.binghamgp.com

October 8, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Austin police join forces with agencies to tackle repeat offenders at city parks (KVUE)

🟪 Phase 1 of Congress Avenue revamp slated to begin early 2026 (KXAN)

🟪 Millions now out the door for child care after Travis County voters approved tax rate hike (KXAN)

🟪 After 20 years of gains, San Antonio lost more workers than it attracted (San Antonio Express-News)

🟪 The government shutdown is snarling air travel. Officials say it could get worse (NPR)

🟪 ‘Enormous fear’: Trump’s threats against George Soros chill US non-profits (Financial Times)

READ ON!

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

CMO Executives and Advisors_July 2025.pdf519.20 KB • PDF File

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Austin police join forces with agencies to tackle repeat offenders at city parks (KVUE)

Austin police are tackling a monthslong growing problem in city parks through a new initiative. 

The department has teamed up with the Texas Department of Safety (DPS), the Travis County District Attorney's Office and the Travis County's Attorney Office to look into repeat offenders that are tied to a series of car break-ins at hot spots.

APD Cdr. Craig Smith said Mount Bonnell, Pease Park and Bull Creek Park have been hit the hardest by thieves looking to gain a cash flow. At Pease Park, there is a sign near the parking lot that shows the amount of days it's been since a vehicle break-in. On Tuesday, it showed it had been four days.

"It pains me to to see that people are just out there actively just targeting people for their belongings," said Smith.

The goal of the task force, as Smith called it, is to bring local and state agencies together to crack down on repeat offenders. The issue is a person gets arrested, bonds out then repeats the crime… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Phase 1 of Congress Avenue revamp slated to begin early 2026 (KXAN)

The Congress Avenue Urban Design Initiative (CAUDI) is preparing for the first construction phase to redesign Congress Avenue between Cesar Chavez and 7th Streets in downtown Austin.

The goal of the revamp is to refine and develop an urban design that will result in a “human-centric, multi-functional complete street with a clear and attractive identity,” the website said.

Next Tuesday, the CAUDI project will host a community open house to share project updates about the redesign. According to the project website, feedback collected in 2024-25 helped direct the initiative to begin the first phase to expand sidewalks and pedestrian zones, improve tree health, upgrade bikeway barriers and add key turn lanes for traffic operations. 

Funding for the revamp is from the city’s 2012 and 2020 bond programs. The city had $22 million available from the 2020 Active Transportation and Safety Board to cover portions of the first phase of work… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Millions now out the door for child care after Travis County voters approved tax rate hike (KXAN)

After Travis County residents overwhelmingly voted ‘yes’ on a tax rate hike to help the county create more affordable child care, Travis County Commissioners approved two contracts to get that voter-approved taxpayer money out the door Tuesday.

“The contracts will make a transformative $21+ million investment in Travis County’s child care infrastructure. They will expand child care scholarships and provide gap funding for sustained support,” a statement from the county said.

According to county staff, the first contract for child care scholarships will help 1,000 kids.

“An additional few kids will also be served through the gap funding on the second contract,” Pilar Sanchez, county executive of Health and Human Services, said. “Last month we approved funding for over 2,000 kids to get child care and out of school time services.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ New organization calls for AISD to push proposal date to next year (CBS Austin)

The opposition against Austin ISD's turnaround plan proposal is heating up across the community as parents, students, and teachers continue to push back on the possibility of closing 13 schools in the district and redefining most of the boundaries. A new organization, 'Let's Get It Right AISD', is working to get the board of trustees to delay the Nov. 20 vote to November 2026.

Adam Sparks is the father of a child at Maplewood Elementary, one of the 13 schools facing a possible closure. He created this organization in an attempt to have the district push the deadline back to vote on their proposed turnaround plan they Friday.

"We have to be the ones who democratically manage this district to ensure that they don't give us a C+ solution for the next 50 years of Austin. We deserve an A+ solution," he said.

When he and his family learned about the plan, he said the first thing that caught his attention was how fast the board of trustees would be voting on the proposal. AISD released the draft on Friday, October 3. They are set to vote on November 20… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Council looks to serve up more neighborhood coffee shops (Austin Monitor)

Coffee and cafes are on the City Council menu this week. This Thursday’s meeting will include a resolution that directs city staff to study how small hospitality businesses can open in residential neighborhoods more easily.

The proposal from District 5 Council Member Ryan Alter asks the city manager to conduct review of existing city codes and recommend changes that would lower barriers for neighborhood-scale cafés while preserving protections for nearby homes. The item cites Austin’s Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan’s goal of building “compact and connected communities” where more residents can meet daily needs without driving.

Alter said the idea grew from observing how other cities integrate small coffee or breakfast spots into walkable areas and attributed their comparative absence in Austin to a lack of appropriate zoning designations… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ After 20 years of gains, San Antonio lost more workers than it attracted (San Antonio Express-News)

Despite being the nation’s fastest-growing big city in 2023, new data shows San Antonio lost jobs that year for the first time in decades. It was a notable shift: The city had been a jobs magnet for most of the previous 20-plus years, consistently attracting more workers than it lost since 2001 – even weathering and bouncing back quickly from economic downturns like the recession of 2008. But the post-pandemic years brought a striking paradox. Even as San Antonio added 22,000 residents in 2023, it suffered the unprecedented net loss of workers. The rise of remote work – which boomed during the pandemic – helps to explain some of that disconnect. People can now move to the San Antonio area for its affordability and quality of life while working in jobs that are based elsewhere.

Because employment data tracks where jobs are based and not where workers actually live, remote workers moving to San Antonio could boost population tallies without adding to the local employment pool. Combined with the regular flow of San Antonio-based workers pulling up stakes for work in other Texas metros, that could help drive the loss. The data suggest San Antonio's worker losses came primarily from a reversal in out-of-state migration patterns.

The city's worker exchanges with employers in Houston, Dallas and Austin have been mixed over the years with San Antonio winning the battle for jobs in some years and losing in others. But the metro area still maintained steady gains from an influx of out-of-state workers until that trend reversed in 2023. The Express-News’ analysis uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau to explore job movement in the San Antonio metropolitan area. The net job flow, calculated by subtracting departures from arrivals, shows positive numbers when more people are coming to San Antonio for work and negative numbers when more are leaving. This census data is reported quarterly, but we examined annual aggregates from 2001 to 2023, the latest full year of data available… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ The government shutdown is snarling air travel. Officials say it could get worse (NPR)

Travelers across the U.S. are beginning to feel the impacts of the government shutdown, as air traffic control staffing shortages disrupt flights across the country.

A dozen Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities saw staffing shortages on Monday, according to an evening advisory from the agency.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy held a press conference at one of them, Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, where he blamed the nationwide delays on a "slight tick-up in sick calls" by air traffic control workers.

Duffy said controllers are concerned about working without pay during the shutdown, with some considering taking on second jobs, like calling in sick to drive for Uber. And he warned that disruptions could worsen until the government reopens.

"If we see there's issues in the tower that are affecting controllers' ability to effectively control the airspace, we'll reduce the rate, and you'll see more delays or you might see a cancellation," Duffy said. "I'm willing to do that before we're willing to risk anyone's life in the air."

In a statement shared with NPR, the FAA says it "slows traffic into some airports to ensure safe operations" when there are increased staffing shortages. It directs travelers to its website for real-time flight impacts for every U.S. airport… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ ‘Enormous fear’: Trump’s threats against George Soros chill US non-profits (Financial Times)

Donald Trump has made no secret of his plan to go after George Soros. Last month he escalated his rhetoric against the billionaire philanthropist, signing a memo that encouraged the US justice department, the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service to investigate funders of “domestic terrorism”, and naming Soros as a potential target. His administration has also suggested it could revoke the tax exemption enjoyed by non-profit groups that administer gender-affirming care to children or assist “illegal immigration”.

Soros’s Open Society Foundations, now run by his son Alex, sits on $25bn in assets and funds hundreds of non-governmental organisations in the US and around the world. It strongly refutes all allegations of supporting violence or illegality and has vowed to fight “politically motivated attacks on civil society”.

But the White House’s threats are having a chilling effect on the hundreds of thousands of smaller charities and organisations that receive funding from the likes of OSF but lack the resources to take on the Trump administration on their own, several groups told the Financial Times. “We should all be disturbed that the executive branch has weaponised its power against the charitable non-profit sector,” said Akilah Watkins, president of Independent Sector, which represents a range of non-profits.

“There’s downstream effect. If you are a small community organisation that doesn’t align with the priorities of this administration, you don’t have the high-powered lawyers to defend yourself.” The groups under threat run the gamut from human rights and pro-democracy campaigners, criminal justice reform advocates, media outlets and providers of public health solutions to marginalised communities.

Some have lost staff who quit out of fear of being targeted, or are having trouble recruiting more personnel. Others have rapidly removed references to certain progressive causes from their websites. “There’s enormous fear right now,” said Sarah Saadian, a senior vice-president at the National Council of Nonprofits. “We’re definitely hearing from non-profits who are really concerned, who are making changes to what they’re saying publicly.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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