Saturday
September 26, 2026
Today at a glance
- Weather 97° / 74°Hot, but normal for us. The evening walk is the good one.
- Air quality 47 · GoodClear air. A great day to be outside.
- Lake Travis 90% fullThe lake is close to full — good for boats and for the summer water supply. Down a touch from last week.
- Allergies HighElm and ragweed and grasses are heavy today. Windows closed, meds early.
- Power grid NormalA busy afternoon: demand near 79,200 megawatts, with 105,400 on hand.
- Sunrise 7:21 a.m.Twelve hours and one minute of daylight. The evening end is the good part.
Good morning, Austin. Ninety-seven today and a hundred tomorrow, which is not the September anyone ordered, though the mornings have at least stopped hitting you like a wall on the way to the car. Sun up at 7:21, down at 7:22. Elm and ragweed are still heavy, so the porch coffee has a cost. The lake is holding near full. Keep an eye on Tuesday night: the first real rain chance in weeks, and behind it the front people have been promising for a week.
The Briefing
Hundreds of homes cleared paperwork this week. None has broken ground.
Austin City Council gave final approval Thursday to rezoning the old Rosedale School at 2117 W. 49th St., which clears the way for a 435-unit, six-story building after three postponements since May. The vote was the easy part. Austin Independent School District (AISD) agreed last year to sell the closed campus for $26 million, money it needs against a shortfall that had it planning to borrow $140 million in October to make payroll, and the sale still turns on the district beating a neighborhood lawsuit over a 1938 deed restriction. No trial date is set.
"I'm disappointed that even though today we're going to approve zoning for the former Rosedale School, that will not lead to housing being built," District 7 Council Member Mike Siegel said. Rosedale resident Daniel Ray, a defendant in the district's suit, told council that neighbors are prepared to carry the fight to the next stage.
The St. John site had a different obstacle: money, not paper. The land at 800 E. St. John Ave. has been city-owned since 2013 and empty for close to two decades, with 201 affordable units stalled about five years behind a funding gap. Airbnb said Friday it is putting $6.4 million in to close that gap.
What's next: The Rosedale sale waits on Travis County District Court, where the district's suit over the 1938 deed restriction has no trial date. The rest of the week's city money is in Money & bills, and the rest of its building decisions in Growth & infrastructure.
Sources: Community Impact (the Rosedale rezoning), FOX 7 Austin (the Airbnb investment), Austin Current (the district's borrowing plan)
City Desk
Money & bills
Council put $2.18 million behind small business lending
Three contracts advanced Thursday: up to $1.5 million for a loan interest buydown pilot run by the Austin nonprofit PeopleFund, $432,000 for the San Francisco nonprofit Kiva to match crowdfunded microloans, and $250,000 for a pitch competition with the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Economic Development Director Mac Cummins said access to capital is still the biggest obstacle local businesses face. Community Impact
A downtown high-rise has been dark for nine days, and the tenants want rent credits
The Bowie at 311 Bowie St. has been without power since an electrical fire in a hallway utility room on Sept. 17, which the Austin Fire Department said Friday was caused by overheated wires. Power is estimated back Sept. 29. The Bowie Tenants Union, which is not affiliated with management, said residents are being paid for hotels and meals in Travis County but are getting no rent credits. KVUE
Also
Council renewed two contracts with Catholic Charities of Central Texas for immigration legal services and filing fee assistance, together about $2.6 million, an increase of roughly $300,000 over last year. KXAN
City staff released memos the same day finding each Catholic Charities program met its performance expectations; the one compliance issue noted was difficulty reaching the clients the programs target. KXAN
Public safety & courts
A Wells Branch murder-suicide turned out to be a double homicide
The Travis County Sheriff's Office said Friday that ballistics and autopsy results contradicted its first reading of two deaths in the 3400 block of Shoreline Drive. Anecia Kay Thacker, 37, and Lamonica Webb, 32, both Austin residents, were found shot Wednesday morning after an apartment manager called 911. Deputies charged Michael Robinson, 24, of Vicksburg, Mississippi, with capital murder. KXAN
A 17-year-old is charged in Wednesday's East Austin killing
Austin police charged Jorge Garza with murder on Friday in the shooting of Jacob Villanueva, 29, inside an apartment in the 1000 block of Springdale Road. Investigators said the woman who lived there had argued with Garza, her boyfriend, then called Villanueva, her former boyfriend, who asked Garza to leave. The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force made the arrest. It is Austin's 42nd homicide of 2026. CBS Austin
Also
Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said Wilber Garcés Pérez left Dell Seton Medical Center about four hours after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot him Sunday, bullet still in his back. KUT
The Department of Homeland Security said Garcés Pérez was the subject of a targeted vehicle stop and tried to evade arrest; he and his lawyer describe an unprovoked encounter. KUT
Ascension Seton, which operates Dell Seton, said its procedures for interactions with law enforcement are the same for every agency and were strictly followed; it would not describe them. KUT
Representatives for ICE and for the hospital have disputed the claim that Garcés Pérez was not given adequate care. KUT
Emergency physician Amy Zeidan, who researches care for immigration detainees, told KUT that sending a patient home with a bullet still in them is not necessarily a red flag. KUT
U.S. Rep. Greg Casar said Wednesday he wants transparency about what officers said and did to take a man out of a hospital while he was still bleeding. KUT
Growth & infrastructure
Council rezoned the old Rosedale School for 435 apartments
The 4.62-acre property at 2117 W. 49th St. goes from single-family to multifamily zoning with a 75-foot height limit, approved on all three readings Thursday. Neighbors filed a valid petition, so it needed a council supermajority. District 7 Council Member Mike Siegel added a direction to consider street impact fees for safety work at 49th Street and Burnet Road. Community Impact
Airbnb is putting $6.4 million into a city lot that has sat empty for two decades
The St. John redevelopment at 800 E. St. John Ave. is meant to hold 201 affordable units and a companion project of 325 mixed-income homes, plus retail, a park and public art. The city has owned the land since 2013. Airbnb said a funding gap had held up construction about five years despite community support and state tax incentives. FOX 7 Austin
Overheard on Reddit
AUS airport Uber/Lyft pickup with elderly parents - any way to avoid the long walk?
Hey everyone, I’m flying from-to Austin soon with my parents, and they aren’t able to walk long distances. From what I understand, after arriving at AUS, getting to the Uber/Lyft pickup area involves quite a bit of walking. I’m wondering if there’s any easier option for elderly passengers. Is there any way to get an Uber/Lyft closer to the terminal or avoid the long walk somehow?
Also
Zilker Botanical Garden, 2220 Barton Springs Road, closes Thursday for abatement, renovation and maintenance, and is set to reopen Oct. 16, though its main building may stay shut longer. City of Austin
The Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) board dropped a $47 million plan to move into 100 Congress Ave. and will expand next door at 201 Colorado St., about $500,000 a year cheaper by KUT's arithmetic. KUT
Overheard on Reddit
City Waste District Coming to West Campus
It looks like the City is interested in doing something similar to what it does downtown in the CBD, but in the West Campus area. https://publicinput.com/westcampuswmd
The state's 2027 Unified Transportation Program puts more than $1.5 billion into Austin-area projects, including work on Interstate 35 in Travis County, out of $138 billion statewide. Community Impact
City Hall & county
Travis County got a year of delayed voter registrations dumped on it this week
Voter Registrar Celia Israel said the county received about 32,000 backlogged applications from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) on Tuesday, on top of 3,000 outside the backlog; FOX 7 Austin put the delayed total near 36,000. DPS said it found the problem in late August and blamed an outside vendor whose 2025 software update cut off parts of each record. KUT
Also
Registration for the Nov. 3 election closes Oct. 5, and early voting in Travis County runs Oct. 19 through Oct. 30; the Bulletin's Vote 2026 page carries the official links. Travis County Elections
Overheard on Reddit
When does early voting start?
State Rep. John H. Bucy III of Austin said on X that counties need resources to clear the backlog and that the state owes an account of why it went uncaught. KUT
Schools
Webb parents have about three weeks to ask the state to close their own school
Superintendent Matias Segura told families Thursday that a parent petition is the one lever they hold after five straight failing ratings, the alternative being a state-appointed board of managers with full control of AISD. Segura said a board of managers could close Webb Middle School anyway. Eighty-six percent of Webb students are Hispanic. KUT
Also
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled Thursday that the University of Texas at Austin did not violate Ammer Qaddumi's First Amendment rights by canceling an April 2024 pro-Palestinian protest and suspending him. KXAN
Pitman also criticized the university's rushed handling of that protest and said Qaddumi had valid reasons to believe his rights were violated; the three-semester suspension stays on his record. KXAN
AISD opened a Verizon Innovative Learning Lab at Gus Garcia Young Men's Leadership Academy, 7414 Johnny Morris Road, with augmented and virtual reality tools, 3D printing and artificial intelligence software. Community Impact
Business & street life
The racetrack's theme park opens today, with a scale at the drop tower gate
COTALAND, at Circuit of the Americas in southeast Austin, opens to the public Saturday with more than 30 rides. Its drop tower, Downforce, which drops riders 173 feet, comes from the Austrian maker a Florida jury found negligent after 14-year-old Tyre Sampson fell to his death from a similar ride in 2022. KXAN found the Austin version does not tilt, adds seatbelts and weighs each rider at the gate. KXAN
Also
Grand opening tickets are $99 for Saturday evening, which includes food, a first-ride ceremony and fireworks, and $65 for Sunday, when the park runs 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. CBS Austin
The AT&T Hotel and Conference Center at 1900 University Ave. finished more than $35 million in renovations, adding a junior ballroom and redoing the presidential suites across its 297 rooms. Community Impact
Overheard on Reddit
Weird bananas at HEB
The last couple times I got bananas at HEB, they tasted weird. I've always put them in my smoothies but this last couple times I had to throw the smoothies out. Has anyone else noticed this?
Alloy Autohaus, a coffee bar and vintage car showroom at 2706 S. Lamar Blvd., soft opened Sept. 5 with Second Wind Coffee Co. and held its grand opening Sept. 19. Community Impact
Overheard on Reddit
Wat da fak lol, “Austin AI Film Festival”.
Inspired by this, I’m announcing the first annual Pflugerville AI Poetry Festival. Read riveting poems generated by Chat GPT, Siri, and Windows Copilot. Attend our workshops on how to type “generate a poem for me” into an AI chatbot.
Weather
Today: partly sunny, high near 97, southeast wind 0 to 5 miles per hour. Tonight: mostly clear, low around 74. No alerts are active this morning. National Weather Service
Sunday is the hotter half of the weekend: mostly sunny, high near 100, with heat index values as high as 103. National Weather Service
The forecast holds in the high 90s through Tuesday, when gusts to 25 miles per hour arrive ahead of a 30% rain chance after 1 a.m. Wednesday. National Weather Service
KVUE's forecasters call it more of the same this weekend and a pattern shift next week. KVUE
The Back Page
6 days until the Austin City Limits (ACL) Festival's first weekend · The Great Lawn at Zilker Park is closed for build-out; the festival runs Oct. 2-4 and Oct. 9-11.
The Seaholm Intake Facility spent decades pumping lake water to the downtown power plant, and for most of the years since it has been a gray mid-century box that people jog past without looking up. Emily Eisenhart looked up. She was on an architectural boat tour of Lady Bird Lake three years ago when she noticed the freshly cleaned concrete catching the spring light, and thought it was "a beacon that was waiting for art." Because the building is historic, nothing permanent was possible, so she floated the idea of projecting onto it instead. That show is tonight. WaterWork, produced by the nonprofit Design Austin with the Trail Conservancy, projects two-minute films from 22 artists onto the old intake, free, starting at 8:30. The invitation is to watch from a paddleboard or a kayak, with the art coming back up off the water; if you would rather stay dry, the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge and Auditorium Shores both look straight at it. KUT