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September 11, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Austin City Council Meeting today @10AM // Video Link (ATXN1) + Agenda Link

🟪 U.S. marks 24th anniversary of 9/11 terror attacks (NPR)

🟪 'Never should have been changed' | APD say error occurred with emergency alert system (KVUE)

🟪 Round Rock Chamber partners with venture capital firm gener8tor for early-stage startup accelerator (Community Impact)

🟪 Southwestern taps Austin developer to build a mini city of sorts (Austin Businesss Journal)

🟪 Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and voice for young conservatives, dies at age 31 (NPR)

🟪 Inflation likely rose last month as Trump’s sweeping tariffs boost goods prices (Associated Press)

READ ON!

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ [NEW] City Memo: Short-Term Rental Regulations – Upcoming Action Item (Development Services Department)

🏛️ 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]

✅ 'Never should have been changed' | APD say error occurred with emergency alert system (KVUE)

The Austin Police Department says their emergency alert system failed, after prematurely downgrading a "Shelter in Place" alert just less than an hour of it being issued, while a suspect who shot an officer was still at large.

On Wednesday morning at around 4 a.m., while APD officers were working a park curfew check around Zilker Park, they came across a car that had been reported stolen. When a tow truck came to take the car, officers say a man and woman walked out of a wooded area nearby. 

An APD officer called out to those people but the man ended up raising a gun and shooting the woman standing in front of him. The shots also hit the APD officer, who was taken to the hospital and is expected to recover. APD said the woman was seriously injured and may not survive.

The suspect then ran off into the Barton Hills Community. At around 5:30 a.m., APD sent out a "Shelter in Place" alert to people living nearby. 

After about 50 minutes of the shelter in place alert being issued, it was downgraded to an "Avoid the Area" notice. APD quickly issued a correction on social media, stating that the shelter order was still in effect… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Round Rock Chamber partners with venture capital firm gener8tor for early-stage startup accelerator (Community Impact)

The Round Rock Chamber is partnering with venture capital firm gener8tor to launch a new program to support startups in their earliest stages.

The chamber's gBETA Round Rock program is a free seven-week no equity accelerator offering one-on-one coaching and tailored programming to participants, as well as a network of potential mentors, customers and investors, according to a news release shared Sept. 10. Participation in this program is intended to set up a pathway for startups to engage in equity-based accelerator programs and investment opportunities.

The program is open to early-stage startups in Central Texas, strengthening Round Rock's pipeline of entrepreneurs and fueling long-term economic growth, according to the chamber's announcement… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Southwestern taps Austin developer to build a mini city of sorts (Austin Businesss Journal)

When Southwestern University President Laura Skandera Trombley was interviewing for the job in spring 2020, a school trustee made an off-hand remark about the university's large real estate portfolio. It wasn't until she took the job and commissioned an audit of all of the school's holdings that she found that total was well into the thousands of acres.

"I think we were all surprised by the time that we had calculated this because we knew we had a lot of property, just nobody had ever kinda added it all it up," Skandera Trombley said. "Then we realized, my gosh, based on what we could find, we have more than any other private higher ed institution."

The 185-year-old university has opted to sell off much of those holdings since, particularly the ones that were not contiguous to its Georgetown campus. But it strategically held on to a 560-acre plot directly east of campus that stakeholders aim to turn into an ambitious mixed-use project. They view it as a mini city that reflects the school's liberal arts values while also creating more amenities and emphasizing sustainability and business.

Southwestern has tapped Austin-based Banbury Development LLC, formerly Arterra Development LLC, to do the work as master developer. The planners there helped bring to life the massive Mueller neighborhood in East Austin, which for perspective is about 700 acres. Plans and costs for the 560 acres in Georgetown are still being finalized but the first phase is expected to head to the planning and zoning commission this month… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ U.S. marks 24th anniversary of 9/11 terror attacks (NPR)

In all, the attacks by al-Qaida militants killed 2,977 people, including many financial workers at the World Trade Center and firefighters and police officers who had rushed to the burning buildings trying to save lives.

The attacks reverberated globally and altered the course of U.S. policy, both domestically and overseas. It led to the " Global War on Terrorism " and the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and related conflicts that killed hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians.

While the hijackers died in the attacks, the U.S. government has struggled to conclude its long-running legal case against the man accused of masterminding the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The former al-Qaida leader was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and later taken to a U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but has never received a trial… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ The cost of owning a home in Texas is on the rise, census shows (Texas Tribune)

The cost of owning a home in Texas grew in 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, even as state lawmakers have taken steps to dramatically cut property taxes.

Texas homeowners saw relief on their property tax bill in 2024, according to figures the bureau released Thursday. That bill fell 6.6% from about $4,400 in 2023 to just over $4,100 in 2024, when adjusted for inflation. The typical homeowner paid less in property taxes last year than they did just before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Texas lawmakers have spent several years and billions of dollars trying to rein in Texans’ property tax bills, among the highest in the nation. But other homeownership costs, including expenses like insurance and utilities, ate into that tax relief. The median Texas homeowner in 2024 paid $1,452 in monthly costs, a 2.7% increase from the previous year. The spike is similar across the U.S., figures show… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ In Texas, a Senate race turns brutal before it’s even declared (New York Times)

For the past month, two Texas political titans — the attorney general Ken Paxton and the former congressman Beto O’Rourke — have been locked in an escalating legal drama, complete with threats of jail time, courtroom showdowns and the possible bankrupting of a Texas voter registration effort. The clashes have direct implications for the 2026 Senate race, given that Mr. Paxton is already a Republican candidate in the primary against Senator John Cornyn, and Mr. O’Rourke has been openly mulling a run as a Democrat. It has also served as an unusually direct example of how President Trump’s unapologetic use of government powers to pursue partisan ends has spread to political conflicts in the rest of the country.

More tangibly, the attorney general’s attacks threaten the future of Mr. O’Rourke’s political organization, Powered by People, which has spent nearly $400,000, about $100,000 a week, on litigation so far. “He may very well be able to bankrupt the most successful voter registration program in the state,” Mr. O’Rourke said in a telephone interview. “This is weaponizing the political system to persecute your political enemies.”

It started last month as an offshoot of Mr. Trump’s push to have Republicans redraw congressional lines in Texas. Mr. Paxton directed his office to investigate Mr. O’Rourke’s political organization over its role in raising money for Democratic state lawmakers who had staged a walkout to stymie the redistricting push. It quickly escalated to Mr. Paxton asking a Texas court to throw Mr. O’Rourke in jail. The legal wrangling has sprawled across the state to courtrooms in El Paso, Fort Worth and Austin. “No matter how much Beto and Powered by People try and take us down in court, I will continue to wage legal war,” Mr. Paxton said in a news release last month.

Mr. Paxton was not made available for an interview, but his office provided a statement: “Beto’s desperate, unprecedented legal maneuvers will not stand, and there will be accountability for the Beto Buyoff of Texas politicians,” he said. That was on top of at least 10 news releases his office has posted in four weeks related to the litigation with Mr. O’Rourke, not to mention the attorney general’s blustery social media posts. Though Mr. O’Rourke has not yet declared whether he’s going to run for Senate, he insisted the Paxton legal attacks were political. Mr. Paxton is “doing this because I’m a potential political opponent of his in the contest for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas,” he said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and voice for young conservatives, dies at age 31 (NPR)

Charlie Kirk was barely old enough to vote when, at the age of 18, he launched Turning Point USA. The goal: build an organization for young conservatives that would represent for them what groups like MoveOn.org meant for progressives.

"This was in the midst of the Obama presidency in the suburbs of Chicago where Obama was very well liked," Kirk recalled on his podcast last year. "In my local high school, progressive, left-wing Marxist ideas were widespread, and I looked around and I was unimpressed by the conservative organizations that were out there."

More than a decade later, Kirk not only met that goal, but he became perhaps the most influential voice in young conservatism, playing a crucial role in national politics, including President Trump's 2024 victory… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Inflation likely rose last month as Trump’s sweeping tariffs boost goods prices (Associated Press)

U.S. inflation likely ticked higher last month as the Trump administration’s import taxes have lifted the price of goods, potentially putting the Federal Reserve in a tough spot when it meets next week.

Economists forecast that consumer prices rose 2.9% in August from a year earlier, according to a survey of economists by data provider FactSet. That would be an increase from an annual pace of 2.7% in July. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, core inflation is expected to have increased 3.1%, the same as in July. Both figures are above the Fed’s 2% inflation target.

The potential increases, while modest, would underscore the challenges the Fed is facing as it experiences relentless pressure from President Donald Trump to reduce its short-term interest rate. Trump hopes that rate cuts will spur more borrowing and spending and boost the economy… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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