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September 12, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Council OKs new rules for short-term rentals (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Austin plots creative fund to preserve older, affordable apartments (KVUE)

🟪 Dan Patrick turns up pressure on A&M president after viral video causes fallout (Houston Chronicle)

🟪 South Korea’s president says Georgia ICE raid could have ‘considerable impact’ on direct US investment from his country (CNN)

🟪 The rise of AI tools forces schools to reconsider what counts as cheating (Associated Press)

READ ON!

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ Actions taken by the City Council during the September 11, 2025 meeting

🏛️ 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]

✅ Council OKs new rules for short-term rentals (Austin Monitor)

City Council voted Thursday to approve a series of regulations for short-term rental properties, taking the next step in advancing changes that were kicked off by a February vote. The resolution, which collected several amendments and had others withdrawn or voted down, was approved 10-0, with Council Member Marc Duchen abstaining.

The new ordinance updates eligibility and licensing requirements and sets a new timeline for enforcement. Obligations for short-term rental (STR) platforms like Airbnb and VRBO such as requiring license numbers in listings and honoring delist notices, will now take effect July 1, 2026 — two months later than originally proposed. Other provisions, including licensing reforms and operator responsibilities, take effect Oct. 1, 2025… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin plots creative fund to preserve older, affordable apartments (KVUE)

Austin leaders are hoping to save older and affordable apartments through a new preservation fund.

Austin City Council member March Duchen spearheaded a resolution that was approved Thursday to create the "naturally occurring affordable housing," known as (NOAH), which will allow property owners access to money for repairs and upgrades while also keeping their units affordable. 

The idea mirrors a similar program in Dallas, where Duchen said the city was able to set a dollar amount of $6 million through investors, philanthropy and grant dollars, which has grown to $40 million over time. 

According to Austin's Assistant City Manager Eric Johnson, the city has a total of 28,375 units, which represent 789 buildings. 

"We would actually create a trifecta; the trifecta would be a grant based source for NOAH to help with capital improvements because the biggest issue in NOAH is actually ability to take care of the capital improvements," Johnson said during a work session on Tuesday. 

Duchen said the goal is to save as many units as possible, but noted the program won't be able to save every NOAH property… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Dan Patrick turns up pressure on A&M president after viral video causes fallout (Houston Chronicle)

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick upped the pressure on Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III on Thursday, saying it was “unacceptable” that he initially sided with a professor who kicked a student out of class after the student objected to a lesson teaching that there are more than two genders. Welsh removed a dean and English department head from their administrative positions after he learned that they approved plans to continue teaching material that was “not consistent” with the course description, he said. He later fired Melissa McCoul, who taught the children’s literature course, further eroding his reputation with many faculty members who support academic freedom.

Those removals ultimately failed to fully satisfy Patrick. “Most parents, students, and Aggie alumni expect Texas A&M to reflect the values of our state and our nation as well as A&M’s rich history,” he said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “If President Welsh will not or cannot reflect those values, then change needs to happen.”

McCoul's teaching about gender identity is not against the state's anti-diversity, equity and inclusion law, which exempts research and class instruction from a ban on DEI programs at Texas higher education institutions. McCoul has since appealed her termination, denying that she was ever asked to change her course content. The fallout stems from a video that state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, showing a student arguing with a professor in a summer class.

The student said that they were not sure that the professor’s presentation on gender and sexuality was legal because there are only two genders according to President Donald Trump. Recordings also released by Harrison showed the president telling a student that firing McCoul was “not happening” — a defense of the professor that Welsh later abandoned. Texas A&M officials have declined to share more information surrounding the incident. It is not clear what McCoul was specifically teaching before the video was taken, but Texas A&M System policies on academic freedom state that “each faculty member is entitled to full freedom in the classroom in discussing the subject that the faculty member teaches but should not introduce controversial matter that has no relation to the classroom subject.”

"It is essential that each faculty member be free to pursue scholarly inquiry and to voice and publish individual conclusions concerning the significance of evidence that the faculty member considers relevant," according to the policy. "Each faculty member must be free from the corrosive fear that others, inside or outside the academic community, because their vision may differ, may threaten the faculty member's professional career or the material benefits accruing from it."… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ PACs form to sway voters on Props A and B ahead of Spurs vote (San Antonio Report)

An otherwise sleepy, off-year November election is about to get a lot more attention. Political Action Committees (PACs) are gearing up to sway voters on two measures that would direct Bexar County venue tax dollars toward a year-round rodeo district on the East Side, known as Proposition A, and a new downtown NBA arena for the Spurs, known as Proposition B. The roughly $1.3 billion Spurs arena leans on funding from Bexar County, the team’s owners and the City of San Antonio. But the Nov. 4 ballot proposal is the first — and perhaps only — time that voters will be asked to weigh in on public funding. Against that backdrop, big money is being spent to rally supporters and opponents on the ballot initiatives.

PACs are expected to report their fundraising and spending twice before the election, but the final totals won’t be known until semi-annual campaign finance reports are due in January. The San Antonio Spurs are spearheading the campaign to pass both Prop A and Prop B, through a PAC called Win Together. The Spurs are teaming up with the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo to support both initiatives because their respective projects each require voters to approve raising the county’s hotel tax from 2% to 3% and extending its rental car taxes. The Spurs hired longtime local political hand Andrew Solano to manage the campaign, as well as some other consultants, including MAP Strategies, which has worked on past bond election campaigns in San Antonio… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ South Korea’s president says Georgia ICE raid could have ‘considerable impact’ on direct US investment from his country (CNN)

The ICE raid on more than 300 South Korean workers in Georgia could impact future South Korean investment in the US, its president said on Thursday, adding the fallout had created a “very confusing” situation for Korean companies there. His comments come as South Korea reels from the raids – one of the largest by US immigration enforcement agencies in recent years, and which threatens to create a rift between two close partners that have long cooperated on military and economic matters. South Korean businesses in the US “need to build facilities, install equipment, and set up factories, which requires skilled technicians,” Lee Jae Myung said at a press conference that marked his 100th day in office. He added that confusion over the current visa situation for South Koreans would lead local companies to question “whether they should go at all.”

“This issue could have a considerable impact on foreign direct investment in the US,” he said. “We are urging the US side to normalize the visa process related to investment, whether by securing sufficient visa quotas or by creating a new category of visa.” Lee’s comments come as the South Korean workers detained in Georgia prepare to depart Atlanta on a Thursday flight and arrive in Seoul on Friday. They will return home to a country that has been dismayed on their behalf, with many viewing the images of shackled workers being marched onto buses as the betrayal of a bilateral friendship forged over more than seven decades since the end of the Korean War. On Thursday, South Korea’s foreign ministry said President Donald Trump had temporarily paused the deportation process to discuss the workers’ potential future in the US. “President Trump temporarily paused the procedure in order to listen to our position on whether it would be possible for our nationals, who’re all skilled workers, to continue working in the US,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “The South Korean side made it clear that under no circumstances should there be delays in their departure and return, and that swift and safe movement of our nationals should be ensured,” it said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ White House exerts enormous influence over F.B.I., lawsuit says (New York Times)

The White House has exerted extraordinary influence over decisions at the F.B.I., issuing political loyalty tests and directly ordering the firings of agents targeted by President Trump and his allies, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday by three former bureau officials who accused the administration of illegally dismissing them. The sprawling suit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, provides a disturbing account of what it describes as efforts by Mr. Trump’s top aides to strip the bureau of its century-long history of independence. It paints an unflattering portrait of the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, as a middleman executing the orders of top Justice Department and White House officials, including Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s chief domestic policy adviser. The former officials who brought the suit — Brian J. Driscoll Jr., Steven J. Jensen and Spencer L. Evans — once occupied senior positions in the F.B.I. They accused Mr. Patel of dismissing them as part of “a campaign of retribution” for their “failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty.”

“Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the F.B.I. over protecting the American people,” the lawsuit said. A spokesman for the F.B.I. did not immediately comment. A spokesman for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was named along with Mr. Patel as a defendant, did not have a comment. Over 68 pages, the suit describes previously unreported accounts about key Trump appointees, including Mr. Patel, Mr. Miller and Emil Bove III, a former senior Justice Department official recently named to serve as a federal appeals court judge. The New York Times was not able to independently verify some of the accounts, though they add new detail to the firings and ousters across the agency. The lawsuit describes Mr. Patel and his top deputy, Dan Bongino — right-wing influencers with far less experience than any of their predecessors — as almost cartoonish figures more interested in social media or handing out oversized “challenge coins” than in running the day-to-day operations of the nation’s flagship law enforcement agency.

The three former officials repeatedly accuse Mr. Patel of what, in their view, is a cardinal sin of bureau leadership: refusing to stand up for career field agents who make the bureau run. Their lawsuit detailed what they described as an episode of appalling cruelty: Mr. Patel’s firing of a veteran agent, Walter Giardina, who was forced to defend his reputation as his wife was dying of adrenal cancer. Mr. Patel, who as a podcaster and Trump campaign surrogate denounced the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the bureau, has been an enthusiastic public supporter of the F.B.I.’s work on a range of investigations since taking over its leadership. He has said any personnel changes have been to reform the bureau… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ The rise of AI tools forces schools to reconsider what counts as cheating (Associated Press)

The book report is now a thing of the past. Take-home tests and essays are becoming obsolete.

Student use of artificial intelligence has become so prevalent, high school and college educators say, that to assign writing outside of the classroom is like asking students to cheat.

“The cheating is off the charts. It’s the worst I’ve seen in my entire career,” says Casey Cuny, who has taught English for 23 years. Educators are no longer wondering if students will outsource schoolwork to AI chatbots. “Anything you send home, you have to assume is being AI’ed.”

The question now is how schools can adapt, because many of the teaching and assessment tools that have been used for generations are no longer effective. As AI technology rapidly improves and becomes more entwined with daily life, it is transforming how students learn and study and how teachers teach, and it’s creating new confusion over what constitutes academic dishonesty… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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