Monday
September 7, 2026
Today at a glance
- Weather 99° / 79°Hot, but normal for us. The evening walk is the good one.
- Air quality 48 · GoodCleanest air in days. The heat is the thing to plan around, not the air.
- Lake Travis 94.1% fullThe lake is close to full — good for boats and for the summer water supply. Down a touch from last week.
- Power grid NormalA busy afternoon: demand near 85,900 megawatts, with 109,400 on hand.
- Sunrise 7:11 a.m.Twelve hours and thirty-five minutes of daylight, and shrinking by about a minute a day.
Good morning, Austin. Labor Day, and the city has the good sense to be doing very little. The pools are open, the offices are not, and the recycling truck is coming anyway. It will get to about 99 and feel like 104, which is the kind of arithmetic that argues for a shady bench and a long lunch. Rain is technically possible before one o'clock. Do not build the day around it. The rest of the week runs in the hundreds, so spend this one gently.
The Briefing
Austin turned its cameras off. The data still arrives.
Austin has not run its own license plate cameras since July of last year. The pilot started in 2023 with 40 fixed cameras and nearly 500 mounted on city vehicles. Then a city audit found that 10% to 20% of officer searches carried no clear reason or case number, and City Manager T.C. Broadnax declined to bring a renewal to the council. The readers went dark. The data did not.
Assistant Police Chief JJ Schmidt told the Austin American-Statesman that Austin officers do not search a plate database themselves, but that a partner agency with lawful access may share results during a joint investigation. The department has no written agreements covering those exchanges and keeps no record of them, so nobody can say how often it happens or which agencies supplied what.
The question is live because the vendor is in trouble everywhere else. At least five Central Texas cities have moved to drop Flock Safety since Aug. 25, and Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered state agencies to stop spending money on the cameras. So Austin has to decide: buy a different system, or write rules for data its officers get from somewhere else. Mayor Kirk Watson said the conversation is not all-or-nothing. Three council members told the Statesman they would not run plate readers at all.
What's next: Any new plate reader contract needs council approval. The council's next regular meeting is Thursday, Sept. 10; speaker registration opens today at 10 a.m.
Sources: Austin American-Statesman (Austin's decision, audit, council positions), KXAN (the regional and federal fight), City of Austin (council calendar)
City Desk
Money & bills
Austin renters say the repairs pile up and the phone goes unanswered
Tenants at several Austin complexes told CBS Austin they cannot get air conditioning, wiring and appliances fixed, and cannot get anyone to write back. Collin Taylor, at Eastwood Apartments, said his air conditioning was out for three weeks this summer and his apartment sat above 80 degrees. G & B Property Management, which lists about 70 communities in Austin and San Antonio, declined an on-camera interview. CBS Austin
Also
The national average price of a gallon of diesel hit an all-time high Friday, the American Automobile Association said, up 58 percent from a year ago. KXAN
Overheard on Reddit
Garage door repair companies
Get ready guys, a LOT of these garage door repair companies out here are no longer local. Many of the names you know are now owned and operated by private equity and investment firms. Many of them have removed all the people who helped to build the brand, Nd those that know what to do when you call. They hire younger people that have maybe a month or 2 of training. What thus means for the public i
Tesla's Robotaxi app quoted $12.15 and a 40- to 50-minute wait Friday afternoon for a ride down South Congress Avenue; Uber quoted $7.96 and under 10 minutes for the same trip. Austin American-Statesman
The University of Texas at Austin covers full tuition for families making $65,000 or less through Promise Plus, funded by endowments of $167 million in 2019 and $300 million in 2022. The Daily Texan
Public safety & courts
Austin's council splits on ever running plate readers again
Council Members Mike Siegel, Vanessa Fuentes and Zo Qadri told the Austin American-Statesman they oppose automated license plate readers in any form. Chito Vela, who wrote the city's surveillance ordinance with Siegel, said he would still want them for a stolen car or a recent shooting, but with a retention window shorter than the seven days the old policy allowed. Michael Bullock, president of the Austin Police Association, said reasonable guardrails have never been a problem. Austin American-Statesman
A council member wants Lake Austin's jet ski ban made bigger
People who live along Lake Austin told KXAN the mix of boats and rented personal watercraft has made a bad collision feel like a matter of time. Council Member Marc Duchen said a jet ski recently struck a boat and hit a child, and that his office and the city's legal department are working to widen the ban to more hours and holidays. The police lake patrol runs one boat on weekends. KXAN
Also
The city's ban on personal watercraft on Lake Austin, which covers three weekends a year, holds until sunrise Tuesday. FOX 7 Austin
Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services took 13 people from Saturday's Texas football opener to hospitals, at least three with complaints that could be heat-related; the temperature reached 102. CBS Austin
U.S. Rep. Keith Self, a Texas Republican, filed a bill requiring federal agencies to get a warrant before pulling data from camera systems like Flock Safety's, and capping retention at 30 days. KXAN
Overheard on Reddit
DPS Now Using Cameras to Ticket No Parking Zones Around Capitol
I pulled over in a No Parking Zone on W. 14th to meet a family member who works for state government and to drop off some car keys. About a 10 days later, I got a letter from DPS w/ a $25 citation. They attached photos taken by cameras in newly installed bollards located there. The cameras log date and time you stop and leave. According to the log, I was stopped for 1 minute and 32 seconds! Driver
A federal court in Austin sentenced Kamo Kirakosyan to 26 months for routing semiconductor and industrial parts from three U.S. companies, one of them in Austin, to a sanctioned Russian manufacturer. Austin American-Statesman
KXAN investigators Grace Reader and Josh Hinkle traced what happened to Liam Tadeo, a 5-year-old taken into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Austin in August and later deported with his father. KXAN
Growth & infrastructure
The old 3M campus is headed for data center work
SE Cosmos, a unit of SB Energy affiliated with SoftBank Group, told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Sept. 1 that it will turn the 107-acre former 3M campus in northwest Austin into a research and data center site, with nearly $1 billion in financing. S&P Global said the filing describes 50 megawatts of critical information technology load. City Council has directed staff to draft data center limits. Austin American-Statesman
City Hall & county
City administrative offices, the Municipal and Community courts, libraries, museums, recreation centers and the animal shelter are closed today; curbside collection runs its normal schedule. City of Austin
The City Council's Tuesday work session is cancelled, and speaker registration for Thursday's regular meeting opens today at 10 a.m. City of Austin
Texans have until Oct. 5 to register for the Nov. 3 election; early voting runs Oct. 19 through Oct. 30, and registered voters may use any polling place in their county. Austin American-Statesman
Schools
The University of Texas at Austin added a shuttle in August linking Garrison Hall to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, running every 30 minutes from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. The Daily Texan
Students told The Daily Texan that campus lore holds that spotting one of the university's white fox squirrels means acing the next test, and that stepping into Littlefield Fountain early delays graduation. The Daily Texan
Business & street life
Two more Red River rooms have landlords looking for the exit
The building at 701-713 Red River St., home to Elysium since 2001 and The 13th Floor since 2022, went on the market Sept. 1, its first listing in more than 80 years. Across the street Valhalla closes in late October after 17 years and will be replaced by the chain Gus's Fried Chicken. Mohawk owner James Moody said Elysium owner John Wickham is the heart and soul of the street. Austin American-Statesman
Overheard on Reddit
If you want to verify whether someone is from Austin or not, ask them to sing the Mr. Gatti's jingle on command. Bonus points if they know the extended version.
If you grew up here this jingle was unavoidable and very catchy. Every school pizza party had a gatti's pizza. Gatti Land was lit af as kid. I personally thought it was better than Chuck E. Cheese. Gatti's was marketed so heavily in Austin, I assumed everybody in the United States knew they could get a pizza real fresh and real fast if they just dialed 459-2222 😂😂😂
Also
The partners behind Hold Out Brewing and Better Half have taken over Turnstile at 10025 Burnet Road and will rebrand it as Never Better and Hold Out Bar & Grill starting Sept. 14. Austin American-Statesman
Joshua Weissman, the Austin cook with more than 10 million YouTube subscribers, opens his first restaurant, the fried chicken counter Ben & Lynn's, at 2600 E. Cesar Chavez St. on Sept. 12. Austin American-Statesman
Malcolm Todd played a sold-out Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater on Saturday, his first Austin show since the 2024 Austin City Limits Music Festival. The Daily Texan
Overheard on Reddit
Good morning beloved citizens, enjoy this with your Sunday brunch
Lest we forget why we choose to live here, or perhaps you're just feeling down and blue, there is some Spidey Ju-Ju waiting for you at the corner of Wm Cannon and Westgate
Weather
Today: mostly sunny, high near 99, heat index as high as 104, with a slight chance of showers between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and of showers and thunderstorms after. South wind 0 to 5 miles per hour. No active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: mostly clear, low around 79. Tuesday is sunny and near 100 with a heat index up to 106, and Wednesday and Thursday sit near 100 as well, with Friday at 101 and Saturday at 102. National Weather Service
Rain coverage this afternoon should stay under 10 percent, KXAN's forecasters say. High pressure builds through the week, holding highs at 100 or better on most days and feels-like readings between 104 and 107, with the few showers that do turn up mostly east of Interstate 35. KXAN
The Back Page
28 days until the voter registration deadline · Texans must be registered by Oct. 5 to vote in the Nov. 3 election; early voting runs Oct. 19 through Oct. 30.
A bar changing hands in this town usually means somebody's favorite room is about to become something else. Not this one. The partners behind Hold Out Brewing and Better Half are taking over Turnstile on Burnet Road, and the first thing they said about the deal was that the staff stays — all of them, founder Mark Harris included. "We were already longtime regulars and big fans of what they'd built, especially the close connection between their regulars and staff," co-founder Matt Wright said. The coffee will start earlier, the beer list will get longer, and the people behind the bar will be the same people. Austin American-Statesman