Friday
September 18, 2026
Today at a glance
- Weather 100° / 75°Triple digits again. Water bottle, shade, and an early start.
- Air quality 52 · ModerateFine for most of us. If your lungs are touchy, take it a little easy.
- Lake Travis 91.7% fullThe lake is close to full — good for boats and for the summer water supply. Down a touch from last week.
- Allergies HighRagweed and elm and grasses are heavy today. Windows closed, meds early.
- Power grid NormalA busy afternoon: demand near 85,200 megawatts, with 113,000 on hand.
- Sunrise 7:17 a.m.The sun is up for 12 hours and 15 minutes today, and down by 7:32 p.m.
Good morning, Austin. A hundred again, though a drier one: the humidity backs off for a couple of days, so the heat index tops out near 102 instead of 110. Sun up at 7:17, down at 7:32. Ragweed is high, so the sneezing on the bus is not personal. More than thirty museums open free on Sunday, which is a fine excuse to stand in the air conditioning and look at something old. And somebody here has been collecting cracked pickleballs and turning them into a dress.
The Briefing
The filing says data center. The company says research campus.
Northwest Austin got its town hall Thursday night. Neighbors around the old 3M campus off River Place Boulevard wanted one thing from SB Energy: a name for what is rising behind the construction fence. The company calls it a research and development campus. Its own August filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission lists the Cosmos Technology Campus among data centers under construction, at roughly 50 megawatts of computing capacity. Two names, one site.
What the company added Thursday was detail. Graphcore, a British chip company owned by SoftBank Group, will run its U.S. engineering headquarters there, and more than 40 people already work on the property. The cooling is closed-loop: an initial fill of about 450,000 gallons, then recirculation. Austin Water said an earlier site plan it reviewed this summer mentioned no data center and reported no increase in water demand. A revised plan landed this week.
On who pays, the answers were specific. Austin Energy said large new customers pay for their own engineering studies and infrastructure upgrades, so existing ratepayers do not subsidize the hookup, and SB Energy said it is funding the substation work itself. That same Thursday morning, across town, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) sat its Large Load Working Group down over exactly that question for the whole state grid.
What's next: Austin Water said the project is expected to go through its water benchmarking review, and SB Energy has said operations at the campus start in spring 2027.
Sources: KVUE (the town hall, Graphcore, the chiller fill, Austin Water's records and Austin Energy's answers), KXAN (the address, the 156-acre site, the Aug. 31 filing and the spring 2027 start), CBS Austin (the Large Load Working Group meeting)
City Desk
Money & bills
Ending homeowners' school property taxes would cost the state $8.6 billion a year
Texas school districts collect about $29 billion a year in maintenance and operations taxes, and homeowners pay about $8.6 billion of that, Tetyana Melnyk, the comptroller's chief revenue estimator, told the House Ways and Means Committee on Sept. 15. The replacement cost reaches $12 billion a year by 2032. Gov. Greg Abbott has campaigned on ending the tax. Community Impact
Overheard on Reddit
Who else renting an apartment is noticing their COA trash fee went up a lot?
I asked my leasing office and they linked a CBS News article that stated COA is increasing their rates and people can expect to pay up to $137 more a year. I assumed that was for houses, but it doesn't make sense that my little 790sf apartment - on a rather large property - costs now $35.67/month when it was hanging out around $24.14 two months ago. This increase also surpasses that $137 increase
Also
Maximum Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits rise Oct. 1 with the annual cost-of-living adjustment: about $8 more a month for a single recipient and $29 for a household of four. KXAN
KVUE reported that diesel prices in Texas have climbed to record levels, squeezing farmers and local restaurants. KVUE
The federal government agreed to restore nearly $12 billion in Medicaid funding to Texas hospitals, Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday, ending a dispute that began when the money was halted Sept. 1. FOX 7 Austin
Public safety & courts
Austin police commission 38 cadets today and stay about 300 officers short
The Austin Police Department (APD) commissions 38 cadets Friday afternoon at Greater Mt. Zion Church, leaving the force nearly 300 below its authorized strength of 1,816 sworn officers. The class started with 57. Assistant Chief Lee Rogers said recruiting and retention have been rebuilt; Austin Police Association president Michael Bullock put the current count at around 1,500. CBS Austin
Police and medics carried Narcan into the Sixth Street bars
Austin police and Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services handed out the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, sold as Narcan, to bars in the downtown Entertainment District on Thursday, a day after five people overdosed outside a bar near East Sixth Street. Officials said the point is wider access, plus information for staff on spotting an overdose. KXAN
Also
A fire in a 33rd-floor utility closet at 311 Bowie St. drew crews overnight; the Austin Fire Department said the fire stayed in the closet, no apartments were damaged and nobody was hurt. CBS Austin
Overheard on Reddit
Small party at the Bowie
1130pm- looks like a little something going on at The Bowie!
At Gov. Greg Abbott's direction, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has stopped issuing permits for Flock Safety cameras and other license plate readers along state roads; cameras already installed are not affected. Texas Tribune
EFF Austin asked the city to spend on mental health services and jobs instead of restoring license plate readers; the Austin Police Oversight Commission meets Friday. CBS Austin
Two people were charged with murder in the June 11 overdose death of Ethan Westgard, a 19-year-old student found unresponsive in his St. Edward's University residence hall. FOX 7 Austin
Christopher Ramon, 43, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Travis County Jail Wednesday morning and pronounced dead; he had been booked a day earlier on a parole violation. CBS Austin
Police said Manuel Salgado, 22, killed Desiree Gauna, 27, at a home in the 700 block of West William Cannon Drive and Mariana Montoya Palacios, 20, in Bastrop, then shot himself. FOX 7 Austin
Jason Robert Villarreal, 48, was charged with aggravated assault and deadly conduct after police said he fired at cars outside an employment agency on North Lamar Boulevard on Sept. 12. KXAN
Growth & infrastructure
SB Energy tells Four Points what its 156 acres will hold
At a town hall Thursday, SB Energy said Graphcore, a British chip company owned by SoftBank Group, will run its U.S. engineering headquarters at the former 3M campus on River Place Boulevard, with more than 40 employees already there. Austin Water said an earlier site plan, reviewed this summer, listed no data center and no increase in water demand. KVUE
Also
ERCOT's Large Load Working Group met at its Austin office Thursday morning on how very large users connect, how they cut back in an emergency, and who pays for transmission upgrades. CBS Austin
Overheard on Reddit
Anyone else who experienced the broken stoplight at Parmer and McNeil during rush hour extremely disappointed in everyone?
So a major intersection had a broken stoplight during rush hour today and it was absolutely chaos. Instead of treating it like a stop sign, you’d have 6 rows of cars going at once, trying to navigate past each other like those videos of traffic in parts of India, or using the bike and emergency lanes to pass all the traffic, etc. I’d be shocked to learn that there wasn’t a fender bender during tha
The Texas General Land Office said Sept. 15 it is asking developers and energy producers for proposals to build geothermal, small nuclear and natural gas projects on the 13 million acres it manages. KXAN
Overheard on Reddit
Power outage in Allandale
Been about to minutes, a few attempts to get it going (it flickered) and then nothing... Anyone else?
City Hall & county
Five candidates are running in City Council District 3, which covers parts of East and South Austin: incumbent José Velásquez, Eduardo "Lalito" Romero, Brock Skinner, Gavin Fernandez Jr. and Neha Shah. Community Impact
An ERCOT board presentation listed up to $6.4 million in potential 2027 pay for chief executive Pablo Vegas; after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick objected, Vegas said the contract will not be executed. CBS Austin
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visits Austin on Friday to tour Capital Factory and Saronic Technologies and to swear in recruits at the Austin Armed Forces Reserve Center. KXAN
Schools
The University of Texas at Austin weighs pulling 113 courses out of its core
Emails obtained by The Daily Texan show the provost's office is reviewing 113 topics courses, most of them in liberal arts, fine arts and communication, for removal from the core curriculum beginning spring 2027. Colleges had until Sept. 16 to apply to keep a course, and decisions are due Sept. 21. Black Political Thought is among them. The Daily Texan
Overheard on Reddit
AISD parent here. I looked into spending data for every ISD in Texas after being told AISD spends more than most districts. TLDR; it doesn't, but I found one district that really does.
Hey ya'll, I'm back at it 😂: I kept hearing that AISD's budget problems come from overspending. So I pulled the per-pupil data from TEA for every ISD in the state. AISD spends ~$13,308 per student against a state median of ~$13,737: right in the middle, not in the top percentile. When looking through ISDs that are in the top 1% spenders per student, I did find an actual outlier. South Texas ISD
Also
The university will publish the full spring 2027 course schedule Oct. 1, after the provost's office finishes ruling on which courses keep their core designation. The Daily Texan
Integrative biology professor Timothy Keitt and associate professor Srinkanta Mishra won Fulbright U.S. Scholar awards for this academic year, for work in Ecuador and India. The Daily Texan
Business & street life
Pecan Street Festival organizers cut the rap trio FreeBloo&theFreak off four songs early Sept. 12. Chief executive Luis Zapata said profanity forced it; the group said it suspects its political lyrics did. Austin Chronicle
More than 30 museums across the Austin area open free on Sunday for the 29th Austin Museum Day, among them the Blanton, the Bullock, the Harry Ransom Center and the Austin History Center. KXAN
The Bins, a Houston-area pay-by-the-pound thrift store, opens Sept. 25 at 2915 Guadalupe St. in the old Flamingos Vintage Pound space, with clothing at $10 a pound opening day. Community Impact
Ben & Lynn's, the first restaurant from online cook Joshua Weissman, opened Sept. 12 at 2600 E. Cesar Chavez St.; Mendocino Farms opens a South Lamar Boulevard shop Sept. 22. Community Impact
Big Slick, a 22-seat steakhouse cooking over a wood-burning hearth, opened Aug. 29 at 1017 E. Sixth St. Community Impact
Weather
Today: sunny, with a high near 100 and a heat index as high as 102. East wind 0 to 5 miles per hour. Tonight: mostly clear, low around 75. No weather alerts are active this morning. National Weather Service
Humidity drops over the next 48 hours, which trims the heat index without touching the temperature; it is not fall yet. KXAN
Saturday is sunny and near 99, Sunday mostly sunny and near 100, and Monday mostly sunny and near 100 again. National Weather Service
The Back Page
17 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 pickleball cracks and it is trash. That was the problem Karen Hoisington, who co-owns The Picklr Austin West, kept looking at: more than a hundred players a day, and garbage bags filling up with split plastic balls. She tried making Christmas ornaments out of them last year and called the result a complete mess, but she still would not throw them out. Then Joanne Cabarrus turned up. Cabarrus is part of Austin Trash Fashion Designers, a group of artists who work in discarded material, and she had been calling around pickleball courts looking for exactly this. She cut the balls apart and built them into wearable pieces, learning as she went that a dress made of pickleballs gets heavy fast. Some of the balls still had club members' names written on them in marker, and instead of hiding those, she turned them face out. The pieces are on display at the courts now, and she is taking a look to Austin Creative Reuse's Reuse on the Runway at Branch Park Pavilion on Oct. 17. Hoisington, asked whether another artist could come get some of the surplus, said absolutely: you will have to fight Joan for them, but yes. CBS Austin