The Austin Bulletin

The Austin Bulletin — Thursday, September 10, 2026

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

Good morning, Austin. The hundred is back, and the heat index will push it to 107, which is the kind of number that turns a parking lot into a decision. A few showers may bubble up late this afternoon, though most of us will watch them happen to somebody else. The sun came up at 7:12 and goes down at 7:42, and there is a little less of it every day now. Levitation starts tonight on Red River, so somewhere between the office and your front door there is a version of this evening that involves standing in a dark room listening to something very loud. Saturday will be hotter still. Drink water like it is your job.

The Briefing · About our reporting

The mayor's plan puts the takeover fight in parents' hands

Timeline: The Austin Bulletin · Austin Current and KUT

Mayor Kirk Watson asked parents at Burnet and Webb middle schools this week to petition the state to close their own campuses. The ask is strange. Both schools drew a fifth straight failing rating from the Texas Education Agency in August, which under state law obliges Commissioner Mike Morath to act. He can close the campuses, or he can replace the elected board of the Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) with appointees. Watson's argument is that a parent petition takes the second option off the table. The district has until Friday to appeal the ratings.

Two other things are true about the district those parents are being asked to save. Its buildings keep failing in the heat — Kealing Middle School has been fighting a broken chiller since last Thursday, the fourth campus with air conditioning trouble since Aug. 27. And it is $205 million into a round of cuts that took $1 million from Communities in Schools. Nonprofits are now raising what the budget no longer covers.

Parents at Webb answered the mayor in public. "Can the mayor make that statement in Spanish?" the campus parent-teacher association wrote.

What's next: Austin ISD's deadline to appeal the two preliminary ratings is tomorrow, Sept. 11.

Sources: Austin Current (the proposal, the ratings, the parents), KUT (the petition deadlines and Watson's own words), KVUE (Kealing), Austin Current (the cuts and the nonprofits)

City Desk

Money & bills

School property taxes on the average Texas home fell to $896 last year from $1,037 in 2024, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt told a Senate committee on Sept. 1. Community Impact

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · Sen. Paul Bettencourt's office, via Community Impact

Homeowners over 65 or with a disability saw the average bill fall to $380 from $565, Bettencourt said; his office surveyed appraisal districts in all 254 counties. Community Impact

Austin's active short-term rental listings dropped nearly 26% from August 2025, and the average daily rate fell 25% to $215 a night, AirDNA data shows. CBS Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/yoursweetdesire17 · Sept. 9

Austin Girlies ~ Nail Salon Rant/ Recommendations

Is anyone else fed up with the prices of manicures and pedicures? I just got a gel pedicure set and was charged $98. It was a $16 up charge because I got gel. And lo and behold the quality isn’t even that impressive. I am SO over these prices. Do any of y’all have any recommendation on nail salons near oak hill & Central C where the quality of the nails are great and the prices are a bit more affo

View on Reddit ↗

Public safety & courts

Two children were taken from a Ben White crash in critical condition

Austin police shut the northbound Interstate 35 service road at Woodward Street, near East Ben White Boulevard, after a crash called in about 7:40 a.m. Wednesday. Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services took two children to hospitals in critical condition and an adult with serious injuries that were not life-threatening. A county air rescue helicopter also responded. The intersection with westbound Ben White closed as well. KXAN

Also

Austin police charged John Vincent Stoker, 37, with murder in the Feb. 21 shooting of Joshua Baker, 44, who was found dead outside an apartment complex on East Rundberg Lane. KXAN

Attorneys argued Wednesday over the capital murder conviction of Michael Highfill, who is serving life for the 1998 death of Luis Flores in northeast Travis County. KXAN

The Texas Defender Service, which sought the hearings, argues Highfill's constitutional rights were violated at trial; he is not eligible for parole until 2038. KXAN

University of Texas at Austin police said Colton Banks was arrested again on Sept. 8 in the 2200 block of San Gabriel Street, accused of peeping into West Campus windows. CBS Austin

Growth & infrastructure

Lake Austin drops 10 feet next month, and the boat businesses found out in August

The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) will lower Lake Austin about a foot a week from Oct. 12 until it sits 10 feet down, refilling by Nov. 30. The city asked for the drawdown, and shoreline owners get exposed lakebed for repairs and dredging. Owners of boat rentals and lakeside restaurants say seven weeks was not enough warning for a fall that carries Austin City Limits, Formula 1 and football. KXAN

Video: CBS Austin — Lake Austin to drop TEN FEET

Also

Winter drawdowns ended after Winter Storm Uri so the Highland Lakes dams could supply the grid, and spring water demand rules out March and May, Austin Watershed Protection's Liz Johnston said. KXAN

A May agreement may exempt Dog's Head from a data center ban

City Council has begun banning data centers inside the city limits, but the development agreement it approved with Endeavor Real Estate Group on May 21 binds the 2,600-acre Dog's Head tract east of downtown to the rules in force that day. A city spokesperson told the Chronicle that the agreement's Exhibit B "includes uses that currently allow for data centers." Austin Chronicle

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport has more than a dozen projects under way, among them a $165 million West Gate expansion whose new gates have opened. CBS Austin

Southwest Airlines said on Sept. 2 that it will open a lounge at Austin-Bergstrom in late 2027, one of its first four; construction has already started. Community Impact

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/margotwest8 · Sept. 9

Dangerous drivers lately, why?

Today alone I encountered 8 folks straight up just take solid red lights, not yellow turning red. I mean solid red for at least 5-8 seconds red and folks just taking them like they were green. Why? Do people not understand how traffic lights work? Also 4 of those vehicles were teslas… I have a dash cam and seriously thinking about having a bad drivers in Austin page and just shame them at this poi

View on Reddit ↗

City Hall & county

City Council unanimously passed a resolution on Aug. 27 from District 2 Council Member Vanessa Fuentes directing staff to draft mold inspection and remediation rules for rental housing. The Daily Texan

People living outside with pets have few options at the city's cooling centers: Austin Public Library admits only service animals, two years after a city commission recommended allowing companion animals. KXAN

Schools

Watson asks Burnet and Webb parents to petition to close their schools

The mayor's proposal, released Wednesday, would have parents of a majority of students at either campus ask Commissioner Mike Morath to close it, which state law generally requires him to grant. Watson wants the district to then open a new school that keeps each community together. Parents must file by Oct. 15, and the superintendent forwards a validated petition by Dec. 1. Austin Current

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/Professional-Pen2703 · Sept. 9

Kealing Middle School been w/o AC for weeks.

My daughter is a student there. Several parents continue to put in service orders and contact district to no avail. Papers are drenched and the kids smelllll. Come on public education! We can do better!!! Editing to say our principal and school staff are amazing. This is absolutely a AISD/Matias Segura issue.

View on Reddit ↗

Also

Kealing Middle School's chiller failed last Thursday and crews were installing a new pump on Wednesday, Principal Timothy Estes told families. KVUE

Austin Ed Fund, the district's philanthropic partner, awarded $350,000 this month for 48 teacher-led projects covering sustainability studies, literacy growth and student incentives. Austin Current

Video: CBS Austin — Can Austin limit AI usage in the classroom?

The University of Texas at Austin will lead a National Science Foundation center on how people and robots adapt to each other, funded at $6 million a year for five years. The Daily Texan

Business & street life

Levitation comes back to Red River tonight

The independent festival runs Thursday through Sunday at Far Out Lounge, Stubb's, Mohawk, 13th Floor, 29th Street Ballroom, Elysium, Hotel Vegas and Central Presbyterian Church. It spent last year at the Palmer Events Center and returns to Red River with Far Out as its hub. Bikini Kill, Die Spitz and Sleep headline. Festival Director Rob Fitzpatrick said this year leans heavier and darker. KXAN

Also

Studio Hill Austin, a recording studio on Hennig Drive founded by Grammy winner Sangeeta Kaur, opened Wednesday after three years in the works. KXAN

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/brain_spacey · Sept. 9

Chill Barton Evening 🤙

Enjoying the clearer water now that crowds are dying down 🏊

View on Reddit ↗

Thousands filled the Palmer Events Center on Saturday for the second ThrillerCon Austin, a vintage clothing and collectibles market with hundreds of vendors from around Texas. The Daily Texan

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/Vast-Intention · Sept. 9

Some picture I took of your beautiful city on my trip from Vancouver Canada

I’m not the greatest photographer however I really like the architecture of the city. It is also very clean and everyone I’ve met has been so nice!

View on Reddit ↗

Weather

Today: mostly sunny, high near 100, with heat index values as high as 107. South wind 0 to 5 miles per hour. No active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: partly cloudy, low around 78. Friday reaches 100, Saturday 102 and Sunday 100. National Weather Service

A handful of showers and weak storms should return late this afternoon, KXAN's forecasters said, with most areas staying dry and a lucky few picking up a few hundredths of an inch. Coverage falls below 10% Saturday and Sunday, and heat index values run 5 to 6 degrees above the air temperature into next week. KXAN

The Back Page

25 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.

At a table inside Epoch Coffee, two people in neon pink T-shirts are handing out cardboard boxes of warm-weather first aid kits — socks, snacks, sunscreen — and asking whoever walks past to carry one to somebody sleeping outside. One man on his way out took six. They belong to Street Medics Austin, a mutual aid nonprofit of 50 to 70 volunteers, many of them University of Texas students, some with medical training and some who simply showed up. Carissa Stephens, a pediatric nurse, heads the outreach team; the group has been at this since 2020. "The truth is that the more people that know how to save a life in an emergency, the better we are and the stronger we are as a community," said executive director Matthew Blaney. Austin Chronicle

The Austin Bulletin — Wednesday, September 9, 2026

2026-09-09T00:00:00Z

Good morning, Austin. Today is the one day this week the sky might do something for you. Forecasters put rain coverage around 20 percent, which is their way of saying somebody gets wet and it probably isn't you. The high is 101 again and the heat index will reach 108, so a shower, if it finds you, will steam back off the driveway before you have finished being grateful for it. The sun came up at 7:12 and goes down at 7:43. The evenings are getting shorter without making an announcement about it, so take the long way home while there is light in it.

The Briefing · About our reporting

Today's tax vote comes without an election

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · FOX 7 Austin

Central Health, the hospital district that taxes property owners across Travis County, sets its 2027 rate today. The board chooses between an increase of 6% to 8% and a "no-new-revenue" rate that would leave the average bill where it is. State law requires an election only above a certain threshold. This proposal sits below it, so nobody votes on it but the board.

The money has a destination. Central Health says the increase would raise $22.1 million toward inpatient behavioral health services the district does not currently offer, and toward a reserve for a mental health crisis center. President and chief executive Dr. Patrick Lee told the board's Sept. 2 meeting the goal is "to close those care gaps and build a system without edges where people can enter through any door." Lago Vista Mayor Shane Saum said most residents he talks to do not know they are in the taxing district at all. Matt Mackowiak of Save Austin Now said he supports helping people in crisis but wants an external audit before any increase.

Austin paychecks moved this year too. The payroll company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) put median gross pay growth in the Austin metro at 5.2% from August 2025 to August 2026, a higher rate than workers saw in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth or San Antonio.

What's next: Central Health's board votes on the fiscal 2027 tax rate and budget today, Sept. 9.

Sources: FOX 7 Austin (the vote, the rate options, the quotes), KXAN (wage growth)

City Desk

Money & bills

Central Health's board votes today on its fiscal 2027 tax rate, choosing between an increase of 6% to 8% and a no-new-revenue rate. The district says the increase would bring in $22.1 million and add $36 to $44 a year to the average homeowner's Central Health line. It also holds $18.5 million from a Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) eminent domain settlement. FOX 7 Austin

Also

The proposed budget would fund 22 inpatient psychiatric beds and a 60-bed mental health crisis center, with a $7.3 million reserve set aside for the center's future operations. FOX 7 Austin

Video: CBS Austin — #LIVE: Travis County property tax rate increase

Workers in the Austin metro saw median base pay rise 3.2% and gross pay 5.2% between August 2025 and August 2026, ahead of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio, payroll company ADP reported. KXAN

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · ADP, via KXAN

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/helpppppp983726527 · Sept. 8

Charger $25 for placing 2nd bag on ground instead on top of bin.

The elevator in my building didn't work for 10 days. The automatic gate for 2 months (gate was just left open). I raised a service request for my fridge and no once ever came. I was charged $25 for putting the second bag next to the trash can instead of on top. This is a non-optional trash valet btw. HOW IS THIS LEGAL??

View on Reddit ↗

Public safety & courts

Immigration agents took two Cisco's workers from the lot

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested two workers outside Cisco's Restaurant Bakery and Bar early Monday at the request of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. DPS officials encountered Ramon Avilez-Frias and Maria Del Pilar Moreno-Loredo at an Austin traffic stop and called ICE. Both were offered voluntary departure the same day and stay in custody until removal. Austin American-Statesman

Also

Cisco's said on Instagram the two were long-standing employees parked for work at 6 a.m. Monday, and that it is devastated: "These are not only employees, but fathers, husbands and wives." Austin American-Statesman

The state's own camera network keeps running

DPS has no apparent plans to stop using its roadside cameras after Gov. Greg Abbott blocked state agencies from spending on Flock Safety equipment. An email a lawmaker posted on social media shows at least 940 DPS cameras had been installed. A Texas Tribune review of one month of searches found about 615,000 queries in June by 3,075 agencies, 2,679 of them from outside Texas. KXAN

Of those June searches, more than 58,000 listed traffic infractions such as running a stop sign or following too closely, and 111 cited immigration reasons including an "ICE deportation warrant." KXAN

Video: CBS Austin — DPS pauses new Flock camera installations after Abbott funding clarification

DPS said it will begin limiting access to its plate-reader data after the Tribune asked why more than 2,800 agencies had searched the network without signed agreements. KXAN

Travis County Emergency Services District No. 1 has 15 firefighters assigned to wildfires around the state, among them crew members who spent eight days on the Ross Fire. KXAN

Fans are asking for more water stations and medics at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR) after Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services took 13 people to hospitals from Saturday's opener. CBS Austin

Growth & infrastructure

Four Points wants to know what is going up on the old 3M campus

The city approved a permit to remodel the former 3M campus in Four Points as a technology research and development center, but a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from SB Energy lists the project, Cosmos, among its data centers. SB Energy says the chip company Graphcore will base its U.S. engineering headquarters there, and that phase one carries about 50 megawatts of capacity. KVUE

Also

Austin Development Services said site plan revisions carry no public notice requirement, so no formal public input process has happened; residents are organizing a town hall of their own. KVUE

TxDOT has reached substantial completion on Oak Hill Parkway, which rebuilt seven miles of highway into a six-lane divided road with new frontage roads and 14 miles of shared-use paths. Community Impact

Austin Transportation and Public Works is weighing vehicle-mounted plate readers for parking enforcement, saying its team fields about 5,000 service requests a month; a city commission is holding off pending a surveillance-rule review. CBS Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/hiddenorbit · Sept. 8

Parmer and Tech Ridge Area Intersection

i’ve been living in this area for about two months now and have to use this intersection more often now and have almost gotten hit twice by people coming from the road i circled in purple when the light circled in orange is green.

View on Reddit ↗

Austin Water will test the floodgate warning sirens at Longhorn Dam at 10 a.m. Tuesday, sounding once for five minutes. The sidewalk along Pleasant Valley Road closes during the test. City of Austin

City Hall & county

The Texas chapter of the American Planning Association gave the city's Equity-Based Preservation Plan a gold award. Planning Director Andrea Bates said more than 2,500 Austinites helped write it. City of Austin

The plan's 14 goals and 107 recommendations cover legacy businesses and murals, preservation tools meant to slow displacement of longtime residents, and streamlining regulatory review. City of Austin

Schools

A third campus lost its cooling, and the district is mid-cut

Lamar Middle School sent students home at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday so crews could install a temporary chiller, Principal Travis Brunner wrote to families. It was the third Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) campus with air conditioning trouble in under two weeks, after McCallum High on Aug. 27 and Anderson High on Sept. 1. The district is working through a $205 million reduction package. KXAN

Also

Austin Current reported the reduction package cut $1 million for Communities in Schools, which then opened a fundraiser with a $325,000 goal to keep its campus programs running. Austin Current

Parents, educators and community members launched Keep Austin Schools Independent, a coalition opposing a state takeover, a day before the Texas Education Agency (TEA) released its 2025-26 accountability ratings. Community Impact

The Texas comptroller's office asked lawmakers for more than $2 billion for education savings accounts, twice the $1 billion the Legislature allocated to launch the program this school year. Community Impact

Business & street life

Red River's board says the city left its promises unfinished

The Red River Cultural District's board sent an open letter Tuesday asking the city to enforce zoning rules meant to protect live music spaces, saying protections including the Red River Cultural District Overlay remain unfinished. It counted the closings of Empire Control Room & Garage, Marlow, Koriente and Feels So Good. "One closure is a headline. Two is a cause for concern," the letter said. KUT

Also

Council Member Zohaib "Zo" Qadri, who represents the district, said he will keep working with the board and directly with business owners to find resource options. KUT

Musician David Castro started a nonprofit Tuesday to raise money for Austin music, after emailing the Gus's Fried Chicken franchise taking Valhalla's building to ask it to join the scene instead. KXAN

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/klimly · Sept. 8

H Mart Burnet update

Looks like the buildout is in progress and they’ve got shelving in.

View on Reddit ↗

Mo Bamba Cards & Collectibles opens Friday at 2350 Guadalupe St., across from the University of Texas at Austin, selling sports cards, Pokémon and other trading card games. CBS Austin

The 16th Trash Makeover Challenge returns Sept. 26, with designers building outfits at least 90% from repurposed materials to raise money for Texas Campaign for the Environment. CBS Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/Darkrai_guy · Sept. 8

Are the grackles ok?

This is a serious question even if it is somewhat silly. Lately it feels like the number of grackles I have seen (and heard!!) are significantly less than in years past. The grackles I do see seem... sick? Many of them are losing feathers, or even have almost bald heads. The males are not nearly as shiny as normal either. Is there a plague? Rampant malnourishment?

View on Reddit ↗

Weather

Today: mostly sunny, high near 101, with heat index values as high as 108. South-southeast wind 0 to 5 miles per hour. No active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: partly cloudy, low around 77. Thursday reaches 100, Friday 101 and Saturday 102. National Weather Service

Today holds the best rain chance of the week, KXAN's forecasters said: a weak disturbance in the Gulf, the sea breeze and the afternoon heat should put isolated showers over about 20% of the area, with little accumulation. Coverage falls to 10% or below for the following week, favoring ground east of Interstate 35, and heat index values keep running 6 to 7 degrees above the thermometer. KXAN

The Back Page

26 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.

Once a month at the Howson Branch of the Austin Public Library in West Austin, people fill every table in the meeting room and then spill out between the bookshelves, and what they are doing there is scratching on old movies. Film Strip Club is free, and it hands you 16-millimeter film to draw on, paint on and gouge until something new sits on top of what was already there. Each session opens with last month's work shown on a projector. Justin Green, the branch's assistant manager, runs it with the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, which digitizes what everyone makes at no charge. "It's just an hour and a half where everybody just creates together and makes something new," said Jennifer Quarles, who has been coming for nearly a year. KUT

The Austin Bulletin — Tuesday, September 8, 2026

2026-09-08T00:00:00Z

Good morning, Austin. The city goes back to work with the thermostat unmoved. It will reach about 101, and the heat index will find 110 somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, which is a number you feel rather than read. There is a slight chance of a shower after four o'clock, and it will most likely happen to somebody else. The sun came up at 7:11 this morning, a few minutes later than last week, and that is so far the only hard evidence that September is real. Park in the shade if the shade will have you.

The Briefing · About our reporting

Austin's power bill is now a campaign promise

Timeline: The Austin Bulletin · The Texas Tribune

Gov. Greg Abbott wants Austin to stop owning its own electric company. His campaign proposed legislation on Aug. 3 to end the monopolies that Austin Energy and San Antonio's CPS Energy hold, promising 10% off the average bill and describing city-owned utilities as cartels that use ratepayers as a piggy bank. The cities disagree. Austin Energy transferred about $125 million to the city in 2025, money that pays for libraries, parks and first responders, and Mayor Kirk Watson said converting the utility would take years and cost over a billion dollars that customers would pay.

The argument lands in a month when nothing that burns or plugs in is getting cheaper. Regular unleaded in the Austin-San Marcos area is running about 98 cents a gallon above last year as conflict involving Iran disrupts shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The statewide average residential electricity rate has gone from 11.50 cents a kilowatt-hour in 2020 to 16.11 cents this year.

Austinites trying to bring that bill down themselves now have a state referee. Provisions of the Residential Solar Retailer Regulatory Act took effect Sept. 1, requiring solar retailers and salespeople to register with the state. Texans have filed more than 3,000 complaints about solar companies with the state attorney general's office since 2020.

What's next: Abbott's plan is a campaign proposal that the Legislature would have to enact. Texas votes Nov. 3, and the last day to register is Oct. 5.

Sources: The Texas Tribune (the proposal, the transfers, the rates), CBS Austin (fuel prices), KXAN (the solar law), Texas Secretary of State (election dates)

City Desk

Money & bills

The governor wants Austin out of the power business

Gov. Greg Abbott's campaign has proposed legislation ending the monopolies held by Austin Energy and San Antonio's CPS Energy, saying private competition would cut the average bill by 10%. Mayor Kirk Watson said deregulating the utility would take years and cost customers over a billion dollars. There are 72 city-owned utilities in Texas serving 5.1 million people. The Texas Tribune

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · ElectricChoice, via The Texas Tribune

Also

Rooftop solar retailers and their salespeople must now register with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR), which has signed up 18 retailers and 500 salespeople so far. KXAN

The same law gives buyers five days to cancel a solar purchase or lease without penalty, and sets fines of $50,000 to $100,000, higher when the customer is 65 or older. KXAN

Diesel is above $5 a gallon, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, and jet fuel has nearly doubled in a year as conflict involving Iran squeezes shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. CBS Austin

Beef prices are forecast to rise nearly 10% this year, fruits and vegetables 5.9% and sugary snacks 7.1%; eggs are forecast to fall about 30%. CBS Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/CriticalGoku · Sept. 7

Is something going on with Amazon deliveries here?

In the last several weeks/to a month we've noticed a very high uptick in Amazon not fulfilling orders correctly. Deliveries that were claimed to have been made with zero photo confirmation, and are nowhere in site (no porch pirate issues in this neighborhood far as I can tell), orders partially fulfilled with one item missing.

View on Reddit ↗

Public safety & courts

Austin dropped Flock. The cameras never left town

The Austin Police Department (APD) has no Flock Safety contract and no access to the company's searchable database, but private Flock cameras run all over the city: at Barton Creek Square and the Domain, at Home Depot and Academy, at homeowners' associations. The Texas Department of Public Safety runs cameras on state roadways in Austin, shares that data with more than 200 Texas agencies, and passes some to APD case by case. KUT

Also

Gov. Greg Abbott paused state funding for new Flock cameras late last month and told Glenn Beck the cancellations amount to a crackdown. KUT

State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin denied four hemp companies' request to halt enforcement of Texas rules on delta-8 products while their lawsuit proceeds. Austin American-Statesman

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an audit query Sept. 3 into Tesla's certification that its Cybercab meets federal safety standards, days after the taxis began carrying passengers here. CBS Austin

Video: CBS Austin — #LIVE: Tesla Cybercabs undergoing federal safety audit after Austin launch

The Cybercabs have no steering wheel and no pedals; Tesla says each carries an emergency stop button, and the audit query lists about 1,000 vehicles. CBS Austin

Austin's fire department is among the Central Texas agencies sent under state mutual aid to wildfires in Palo Pinto and Sutton counties. The state deployment totals 634 personnel and 34 aircraft. FOX 7 Austin

Head coach Steve Sarkisian said Monday that the field at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR) reached 160 degrees during Saturday's home opener. The next home game kicks off at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. KXAN

City Hall & county

Texans have until Oct. 5 to register for the Nov. 3 election; early voting runs Oct. 19 through Oct. 30, and mail ballot applications must arrive by Oct. 23. Texas Secretary of State

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/myfrozeneggos · Sept. 7

Can we ban those ringing carts in Mueller Lake Park?

they make me want to do bad things

View on Reddit ↗

Schools

A state takeover would reach past Austin's classrooms

Mayor Kirk Watson said he wants to meet Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath about the Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD), which faces state intervention if preliminary failing ratings for two middle schools become final. Austin ISD recently rose to a B overall. Rachel White, a University of Texas at Austin education policy professor, said accountability ratings can affect property values and whether families stay. Austin Current

Also

Watson said one alternative to replacing the elected board would be closing Webb and reconfiguring Burnet, which is getting a $158 million rebuild under the 2022 bond program. Austin Current

The State Board of Education approved social studies standards Friday that teach radical Islam as the motivation for the Sept. 11 attacks. Muslim advocacy groups said they will work to overturn them. KUT

The U.S. Department of Education proposed a rule on Aug. 24 letting it cancel grants "for convenience" when they no longer match agency priorities, language that would reach university research money. The Daily Texan

The American Bar Association (ABA) council that accredits 198 law schools, the University of Texas at Austin's included, voted Aug. 21 to repeal diversity requirements. UT Law said it is unaffected. The Daily Texan

Business & street life

A vent hood fire closes Perla's, and its neighbors with it

Employees found flames in a kitchen vent hood at Perla's, 1400 S. Congress Ave., about 6:15 p.m. Sunday and got everyone out. The Austin Fire Department sent 14 units and more than 41 firefighters, and reported no injuries. A sign on the door says the restaurant is closed until further notice. Gelato Paradiso, attached to the same building, posted its own sign: "Closed Due to Fire Above." KXAN

Also

Sturgill Simpson, touring as Johnny Blue Skies, played the Moody Center on Friday, Sept. 4, taking the stage just after 8 p.m. and ending the first song at 8:14. Austin American-Statesman

Meanwhile Brewing Co. in South Austin held its fifth annual Lagers and Literature book fair Sunday, drawing several hundred people and more than 24 vendors, including BookPeople. The Daily Texan

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/skinnylegsandalll · Sept. 7

to the folks playing EDM at Zilker

you probably can’t hear, but the crickets are giving some nice triplets

View on Reddit ↗

Hole in the Wall, on the Drag, held its first Hole-O-Rama on Sunday, a variety show hosted by Paul the Selector with sets from Andrew Cashen, Bergman Beach and Brotha Trav. The Daily Texan

Filmmaker Mike Woolf is adding five documentaries to his 23rd Street Mural Project, which decodes the hidden figures painted into "Austintatious" just off the Drag five decades ago. Austin Chronicle

The Bends, who played Austin City Limits Music Festival last year, return Friday to the Historic Scoot Inn ahead of their first album, "If You Insist," out Sept. 18. The Daily Texan

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/serpentarian · Sept. 7

What brand of Austin snake is this?

Word has come down the wire to snake hq that there has been a bumper crop of Coachwhip sightings this year and reaidents are demanding answers. Who is this extra slinky fellow? What business does he have in that field? Did i just see him eating a crispy half-toad on the side of Bee Cave rd? It may come as no surprise to find out they are called coachwhips because they look like a whip.

View on Reddit ↗

Weather

Today: sunny, high near 101, with heat index values as high as 110 and a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after 4 p.m. South-southeast wind 0 to 5 miles per hour. No active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: mostly clear, low around 79. Wednesday reaches 100 with a heat index up to 109, Thursday 99, and Friday and Saturday both near 100. National Weather Service

Today is likely Austin's 40th triple-digit day of the year, KXAN's forecasters said. High pressure holds all week, keeping heat index values 6 to 7 degrees above the thermometer and rain coverage at or below 10 percent, with the better odds east of Interstate 35. KXAN

The Back Page

27 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.

Scott Cohen moved to Austin from New York, where wooded running trails are harder to come by, and the trail system here became his favorite place: somewhere to run, to walk, and mostly to think. His is the Onion Creek trail, where he spent years walking a French bulldog named Gracie, whom he called the bug. Gracie is gone. The trail is still there, and so are the three roosters who live beside it, waiting on the corn he brings. KUT

The Austin Bulletin — Monday, September 7, 2026

2026-09-07T00:00:00Z

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 · About our reporting

Austin turned its cameras off. The data still arrives.

Timeline: The Austin Bulletin · Austin American-Statesman

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

r/Austinu/Parrotoverhead · Sept. 7

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

View on Reddit ↗

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

r/Austinu/LipDoktor · Sept. 6

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

View on Reddit ↗

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

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · Austin American-Statesman, citing an SEC filing, S&P Global and Austin Energy

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

r/Austinu/RyanEagleMusica · Sept. 6

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 😂😂😂

View on Reddit ↗

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

r/Austinu/FarraroramaDaliLama · Sept. 6

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

View on Reddit ↗

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

The Austin Bulletin — Sunday, September 6, 2026

2026-09-06T00:00:00Z

Good morning, Austin. There is a real chance of a shower before lunch, which in September counts as an event around here. Take it if it comes. After that the heat index climbs back toward 106, and Monday looks hotter still, so whatever outdoor plans are left in this long weekend belong to the early morning or the hour after sunset. The lake is nearly full. The air is about as clean as it has been all week. Everything else can be done in the shade.

The Briefing · About our reporting

Tesla certified its own car. The council asked for a plan.

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · Austin American-Statesman and FOX 7 Austin, citing state registration figures

Dozens of gold Cybercabs began carrying passengers on Austin streets Thursday. They have no steering wheel, no pedals, no mirrors. Federal safety rules assume all three, so Tesla certified the vehicle itself, treating some of those standards as inapplicable. Late that night the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would audit how the company reached that conclusion, in a query covering about 1,000 vehicles. The service kept running. Tesla shares fell nearly 6 percent Friday.

Zoox, a competitor, asked for and won an exemption before it started commercial rides. Tesla did not. Three other federal investigations into Tesla's driving software were already open, one involving a crash that killed a pedestrian.

The other transportation decision Austin made this week was quieter. On Aug. 27 the City Council passed a resolution on the Lakeline commuter rail station, open since 2010, directing the city manager to study infrastructure and public uses on the vacant land around it. Council Member Krista Laine, who sponsored it, said 15 years have passed with a significant amount of that land undeveloped. A cost and a timeline for the work are not yet known.

What's next: Austin City Council's next regular meeting is Thursday, Sept. 10; speaker registration opens Monday at 10 a.m.

Sources: Austin American-Statesman (federal audit, fleet counts), FOX 7 Austin (Cybercabs registered), KXAN (Lakeline resolution), City of Austin (council calendar)

City Desk

Money & bills

Gov. Greg Abbott said in Lubbock on Friday he wants a limit on how much home values can rise each year for tax purposes and a two-thirds vote to approve property tax increases. KXAN

Texas drivers paid an average $3.68 a gallon Friday, about 92 cents more than a year ago, the American Automobile Association said; diesel averaged $5.46 across the state. FOX 7 Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/Comfortable-Owl-7557 · Sept. 5

Does anybody know where I can get a trim for less than $60?

I literally need an inch cut off of my hair no layers or anything else, it’s absurd how most places are charging $75 for this. Edit to add: I’m female and my hair is long, stops right around my waist

View on Reddit ↗

Public safety & courts

One killed in a single-motorcycle crash on Capital of Texas Highway

Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services said a collision involving a single motorcycle happened near the 1400 block of South Capital of Texas Highway in West Austin at around 10:50 p.m. Friday. One adult was pronounced dead at the scene. Officials said traffic delays were in place because of the crash. CBS Austin

Also

Austin police sent tactical officers and hostage negotiators to the 5700 block of Sunset Ridge before 11 p.m. Friday; the woman inside left safely and the man was located by 3:30 a.m. CBS Austin

A teenager was shot near the 1800 block of South Interstate 35 frontage road shortly before 4:30 a.m. Friday and taken to a hospital; police are still looking for a suspect. KVUE

A 72-year-old man last seen in west Austin on Friday was found safe, Austin Police said. KXAN

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/singletonaustin · Sept. 5

Two APD cruisers stopped at red light, car ignores red, they do nothing

This is why people run red lights, because there is no enforcement of traffic laws by APD. Waiting at red light at Manor and 51st, I get green, 2 seconds later guy ignores red light. Two APD cruisers stopped at same light do nothing. If you look closely at the start of the video you can see APD cruisers stopped at the left turn on 51st (left side of the video).

View on Reddit ↗

Three women banned from the Texas Capitol after an anti-redistricting protest sued the State Preservation Board; Gov. Greg Abbott moved Monday to dismiss, arguing their one-year trespass notices expired Aug. 19. KXAN

The Texas Supreme Court declined to revive an appeal over Major, a Belgian Malinois held nearly 17 months in an Austin shelter isolation kennel, leaving an order to euthanize him in place. Austin American-Statesman

Growth & infrastructure

Tesla's steering-wheel-free taxis start work in Austin

The company put gold two-seat Cybercabs into service in a limited area of the city Thursday, hailed through its Robotaxi app. Donald Slavik, a lawyer who represents people in crashes involving Tesla's driver-assistance systems, said camera-only sensing is not an accepted method across the rest of the industry. Austin resident Adrian Marquez said he is all for the cars, and that friends of his already use them. FOX 7 Austin

Video: CBS Austin — Tesla Cybercabs launch in Austin

The council asks for a plan around a rail stop that opened in 2010

Austin City Council passed a resolution Aug. 27 directing the city manager to evaluate infrastructure investment and public uses on the land around CapMetro's Lakeline commuter rail station in northwest Austin. Council Member Krista Laine, who sponsored it, expects the work to involve Williamson County and the Lower Colorado River Authority, which holds easements nearby. KXAN

City Hall & county

Austin's oldest known Black cemetery becomes a city landmark

City Council designated Bethany Cemetery on Springdale Road a City of Austin Landmark at its Aug. 27 meeting, following a January recommendation from the Historic Landmark Commission. City documents show the case was first opened in 1977 and stalled through a series of postponements, then returned in 2024 and timed out over missing materials. Preservation Austin brought the nomination forward with the cemetery association. KXAN

Timeline: The Austin Bulletin · KXAN, citing city documents and Preservation Austin

Also

Austin Public Health holds its free Fiesta de Salud health fair Sept. 19, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, with screenings and live entertainment. City of Austin

Montserrat Garibay, who came to the country undocumented and without English, is running in Texas House District 49, which covers downtown Austin and the University of Texas at Austin campus. The Daily Texan

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/BloodSimpleSyrup · Sept. 5

Has Anyone Volunteered at CASA of Travis County?

I'm considering signing up and I have a few questions if anyone is open to DMing!

View on Reddit ↗

Schools

Two nonprofits cover what the school district's budget cannot

Communities In Schools of Central Texas closed its Refuse to Lose campaign Aug. 31 with more than $354,200 raised, and Austin Ed Fund began delivering $350,000 to 48 teacher-led projects across Austin Independent School District campuses on Sept. 2. The district is working through a $205 million reduction package for 2026-27. Chief executive Sharon Vigil said 19 of the group's 110 campuses faced funding gaps. Community Impact

Also

University of Texas at Austin researchers have joined a climate network with universities in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to study hurricane risk, landslides and farming there. The Daily Texan

Business & street life

Austin Pets Alive took in about 15 dogs and all 20 cats from a Livingston shelter wrecked by Tropical Storm Edouard flooding, and says kittens and small dogs still need foster homes. CBS Austin

Neko Yubu, a Dallas restaurant serving Korean and Japanese-inspired stuffed tofu skins, opened its first Austin location Aug. 1 at 1910 Guadalupe St. in West Campus. Community Impact

Terrible Love Coffee owner Brian Knowles opened a neighborhood wine bar Aug. 1 at the shop's Hyde Park address, 3908 Ave. B, pouring classic and natural wines alongside the day's espresso. Community Impact

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/Ktrayne · Sept. 5

What Austin clubs / groups are actually worth joining? (Question & my recommendations)

Hey everyone! I am a big clubs, classes, and activities person. I think they’re one of the best ways to socialize, and right now I’m looking to expand my roster of recurring activities to meet more people. I’m looking for something with a friendly group where you see the same people regularly. Ideally, it’s large enough that you’re meeting a good number of people, but not so large that it’s overwh

View on Reddit ↗

El Alma, the Mexican restaurant chef Alma Alcocer has run on Barton Springs Road for 15 years, has spent the last three years building a second audience in South Austin. Community Impact

Austin filmmaker James Ross II's first feature, the horror film Parasomnia, is streaming on Shudder ahead of a screening at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar on Sept. 11. Austin Chronicle

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/xHollyWiredx · Sept. 5

Trying to find an old Austin newspaper photo of my dad from the late 1970s/early 1980s

This is a long shot, but I'm hoping someone here who has access to old Austin newspaper archives might enjoy helping me solve a little family mystery. My dad grew up around Holly Street in East Austin. When he was young, he rode his bicycle all over Austin, and he did something pretty unusual for the time: he carried a spare bicycle tire with him on his bike. At some point, a newspaper photographe

View on Reddit ↗

Weather

Today: partly sunny, high near 97, heat index as high as 106, with a 40 percent chance of showers before 1 p.m. and of showers and thunderstorms after. South-southeast wind under 5 miles per hour. No active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: mostly clear, low around 78. Labor Day is forecast mostly sunny and near 99, with a heat index up to 109, and Tuesday sunny and near 101. National Weather Service

Rain chances stay low, around 20 percent, KXAN's forecasters say, with widely scattered showers and storms possible in the middle and late afternoon. They put Labor Day near the century mark, with rain chances around 10 percent and mostly east of Interstate 35 through the workweek. KXAN

Meteorological summer finished 11th hottest on record in Austin, averaging 86.3 degrees, 1.2 degrees above normal. August did most of the work: it was the fifth hottest August on record, with highs of 100 or better on all but two days. The season also came in 25th wettest, at 11.14 inches. KXAN

The Back Page

25 days until private planes start paying to land · Austin-Bergstrom International Airport's $50 fee for noncommercial aircraft can take effect as early as Oct. 1.

Sunday Paper: Three pieces from this week worth the long read. The Austin American-Statesman put a price on the city's first months of encampment management. KUT looked at what Texas data centers take from the water and power supply. And in a column, the Austin Chronicle's Michael King worked through the national profiles of part-time Austinite Joe Lonsdale and his homelessness lobbying.

The Austin Chronicle turned 45 this week and decided not to make much of it. No blowout issue, no long look back — they are saving that for 50. Instead the paper ran yearbook photos of its own staff, shot by a photographer the publisher found because the line for her camera at a book fair was too long to ignore. The mission statement is the one from 1981: still free, still independent, still progressive, still a community newspaper. In the same issue the Chronicle published a newsroom policy on artificial intelligence, promising its editors will not use it to write stories or headlines and its production department will not use it to make photographs or illustrations. "As a paper that's always valued creativity and artists' rights, we were always going to come down on the side of humans," Kimberley Jones wrote in the column. Forty-five years of a free weekly that a city actually picks up is not nothing. Austin Chronicle

The Austin Bulletin — Saturday, September 5, 2026

2026-09-05T00:00:00Z

Good morning, Austin. Ninety-eight and mostly sunny, which the calendar keeps insisting is September. If you are walking toward campus this afternoon, the shade on Guadalupe is not decoration — take it, and take water with you. There is a small chance of a shower late in the day, which is the kind of number to hold loosely. The lake is nearly full, the air is clean, and the whole long weekend is sitting there in front of us. Go slow with it.

The Briefing · About our reporting

The budget passed last month. The bills arrived this week.

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · Austin Independent School District data, via Community Impact

Austin City Council adopted a $6.6 billion budget in August. This week four institutions showed what that arithmetic does downstream, and none of them answered the same way.

The Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) told its board Aug. 27 that last year's deficit closed at $105 million, against $19 million at adoption. Revenue came in $132 million short, mostly from property value protests and a delayed land sale. Its state financial rating dropped to a B, the first time since at least 2017. The district absorbs it.

Farmshare Austin has no such cushion. The nonprofit says city cuts take about $510,000 out of its Fresh for Less produce program over two years, starting in November, and it is asking the public to cover the gap. The city had been paying roughly 64 percent of that program.

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport went looking for someone else to charge. As early as Oct. 1, private and other noncommercial aircraft face a $50 landing fee, and $100 on Formula 1, South by Southwest and University of Texas home game weekends. Council Member Vanessa Fuentes said the aim is to make "private wealth work for public good." Recreational pilots and flight students pay the same fee.

What's next: Central Health's board adopts its fiscal 2027 tax rate and budget Wednesday, Sept. 9.

Sources: Community Impact (Austin ISD deficit), KVUE (Farmshare funding), Austin Current (airport fees), KXAN (Central Health budget), City of Austin (adopted budget)

City Desk

Money & bills

Central Health puts a price list behind its tax question

The hospital district's board weighed three paths at a Wednesday hearing: a 6 or 8 percent property tax rate increase, or a no-new-revenue rate that holds bills flat. A raise would add $22.1 million for mental health, which the district would pair with $18.5 million from a Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) settlement. President and chief executive Dr. Patrick Lee said every additional dollar goes to mental health. KXAN

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · Central Health budget presentation, via KXAN

The school district ends the year $86 million past its own budget

Superintendent Matias Segura and chief financial officer Katrina Montgomery told trustees Aug. 27 that the 2025-26 shortfall finished $86 million above what the board adopted, at $105 million, and the fund balance fell to 8.8 percent against a 15.21 percent target. Required spending rose a net $41 million on teacher retirement costs and new state funding rules. Montgomery said one pass-fail staffing measure cost the rating. Community Impact

Also

Austin plans to charge noncommercial aircraft a $50 landing fee at the airport as early as Oct. 1, raise hangar rents 3 percent and lift the fuel fee to 12 cents. Austin Current

Farmshare Austin says city cuts starting in November take about $510,000 from a produce program it says reaches roughly 33,000 Austinites; it is fundraising to keep its staff. KVUE

Diesel in the Austin area hit a record $5.51 a gallon Friday and regular averaged $3.74, with the American Automobile Association's Doug Johnson saying the Iran conflict has made prices hard to predict. CBS Austin

Video: CBS Austin — Austin diesel hits record $5.51 as AUS enters peak Labor Day travel day

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/forchinski · Sept. 4

P. Terry's switch to worker ownership happened a few months ago now

And it was a pretty big story at the time. For any pterrys employees, how has the switch affected you? Have you started receiving any financial benefits from the transition yet? What is the attitude/worker environment like in the wake of the transition?

View on Reddit ↗

Public safety & courts

The Texas Department of Public Safety paused new Flock Safety license plate camera installations statewide after Gov. Greg Abbott's office said agency money cannot fund them; about 900 cameras already operate. CBS Austin

Texas Department of Public Safety troopers arrested Brandon Andrew Miller, 36, of Whitney on a third-degree felony charge over threatening voicemails left at the governor's office on Aug. 21; his attorney declined to comment. KXAN

Personal watercraft, wet bikes and motorized surfboards are banned on Lake Austin from sunset Friday to sunrise Tuesday under the city's annual ordinance; kayaks, canoes and paddleboards are still allowed. City of Austin

Growth & infrastructure

CapMetro's bus contractor and its drivers settle a three-year contract

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1091 and Keolis, the subcontractor that employs CapMetro's bus operators and maintenance workers, reached a collective bargaining agreement covering 2026 through 2028. It raises wages 3 percent this year, 4 percent next year and 5 percent in 2028, pays a $1,500 ratification bonus and adds time-and-a-half during declared emergencies. It still needs to be ratified. KXAN

Also

Austin holds an open house Wednesday on the Lake Austin drawdown, which lowers the lake about 10 feet from Oct. 12 through Nov. 30; Austin Riverboats says it has already cancelled six weddings. KVUE

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/The_5star_Golden_God · Sept. 4

How often are you jabronis getting flat tires or slow leaks from crap on the roads in this city?

In the last year I have had to have multiple tires replaced because of nails and screws in them. Fortunately all have been under warranty at discount tire but damn this really feels excessive vs. other major cities I have lived in. It’s gotten so bad that I bought an automatic sealing and inflating kit to keep in my car so I don’t have to risk my life changing a tire on the side of the road.

View on Reddit ↗

City code inspectors mailed a notice of violation Wednesday to the owner of Noble 2500 on San Gabriel Street after residents reported a gnat infestation; pest control is scheduled Tuesday. KVUE

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/Used-Raccoon6284 · Sept. 4

Management Company destroyed Federally Protected Barn Swallow Nests at my Apartment Complex

These beautiful Barn Swallows has 2 clutches of 10+ hatchlings in the few months I’ve been here. In just this one nest above my door. There were nests everywhere, we live right off the Violet Crown trail at Nichols Park newly managed by Embrey Management services. And in their haste to beautify the area with power washing their active nests were destroyed. I would say good morning and good night t

View on Reddit ↗

City Hall & county

City Council set new review rules Aug. 27 for parkland other governments move to condemn; sponsor Ryan Alter said Austin ISD has taken nearly 100 acres at 11 campuses since 2020. Community Impact

City crews made hundreds of site visits in the first month of Austin's new encampment management program, Homeless Strategy Officer David Gray told Council on Sept. 2; only May-to-June results have been released. Community Impact

City offices, courts, libraries, museums and recreation and senior centers close Monday for Labor Day; curbside collection runs on schedule and parks, golf courses and year-round pools stay open. City of Austin

Schools

The State Board of Education gave final approval Friday to revised high school standards in U.S. history, government and world geography, including language saying radical Islam motivated the Sept. 11 attacks. Muslim speakers had objected that the early Islam section dwells on military campaigns, slavery and female captives. Board member Julie Pickren, who worked on the underlying law, called the vote "such a huge accomplishment." FOX 7 Austin

Also

Texas approved Alpha School, the Austin-founded network whose artificial intelligence software teaches lessons in two hours a day, for its voucher program after the state board rejected its charter bid. KXAN

The University of Texas at Austin hired more than 20 faculty for national security work and opened a Defense Technology Fellowship pairing science students with Austin defense employers. The Daily Texan

Business & street life

Bars around campus spent months preparing for Saturday's 2:30 p.m. Longhorns home opener; Cain and Abel's manager Jaxen Bailey said the kitchen added burgers over the summer. KVUE

The Boardwalk Cleaning Co., which Paula Jones and Jessica Duarte started in Austin in 2003 after leaving tech jobs, won a $25,000 grant from the software company Jobber, one of nine awarded. KXAN

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/ph0replay · Sept. 4

Even with the changes to ordering, I've been an Alamo Drafthouse apologist...until now.

I was at Lakeline last night for an early evening show. I had a guy in front of me full-tilt, maximum brightness, texting and browsing for 10 minutes at eye level. Not even an attempt to hide it. So I reported it in the app. A manager walks up the stairs to the top, clearly sees this is going on, watches it for 3 or 4 minutes, then just leaves without addressing it. Continued to happen for the res

View on Reddit ↗

Steve Jones brings the Sex Pistols to Emo's on Sept. 12, the band's first Austin show; on its 1978 Southern tour it got no closer than Randy's Rodeo in San Antonio. Austin Chronicle

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/-prettytothink- · Sept. 4

Austin shop pets are why I leave my house

I regularly go to the Vortex just to see what Smokey is up to and I'm confident I'm not the only one. https://liteandbriteatx.com/2026/09/02/lite-brites-guide-to-austin-store-pets/

View on Reddit ↗

Weather

Today: mostly sunny, high near 98, heat index up to 102, with south-southeast wind under 5 miles per hour. No active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: partly cloudy, low around 78. National Weather Service

A few showers and storms pop up late this afternoon over about a tenth of the area, KXAN's forecasters say, with better chances Sunday as moisture from a tropical wave along the northern Gulf moves in. Labor Day dries out, and highs climb back toward triple digits through the week. KXAN

Meteorological summer ended Sept. 1 with one of Austin's longest triple-digit streaks on record, and a wet June and July that included dam operations at Tom Miller Dam on June 14 and days of heavy rain across South-Central Texas starting July 11. CBS Austin

The Back Page

37 days until Lake Austin comes down · The lake drops about 10 feet from Oct. 12 through Nov. 30, with an open house Wednesday, Sept. 9.

Austin Smiles has been sending volunteer surgical teams out of this city for more than forty years, repairing cleft lip and palate for children in Central Texas and across Latin America. The condition affects about one in every 700 children and shapes how a child eats, speaks and grows. Dr. Carolyn Biebas, who has been going on the trips for decades, said the moment that stays with her is not the surgery. It is handing the baby back afterward. "The stories of people traveling great distances and enduring great hardship just to get there to see us," she said. Dr. Stan Eckert said the work reaches well past appearance. Forty years of Austin doctors spending their vacation days on other people's children is a quiet thing for a city to be able to say about itself. CBS Austin

The Austin Bulletin — Friday, September 4, 2026

2026-09-04T00:00:00Z

Good morning, Austin. There is rain in the forecast, which after this summer feels like being handed something. Showers come through early, another round is possible late in the afternoon, and the high stops at 96, which lately counts as mild. If you are flying out today the airport wants you there two and a half to three hours early, and it means it. Everyone else: the ground is going to take whatever it gets, and so should you.

The Briefing · About our reporting

The machines arrive first, the rulebook second

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · Pew Research Center, via The Texas Tribune

Dozens of gold Cybercabs went into service on Austin streets Thursday. They seat two, they are hailed through Tesla's Robotaxi app, and they have no steering wheel and no pedals, so a passenger who wants to intervene has nothing to reach for. Austin has had Tesla robotaxis since June of last year. Those cars kept their controls.

The same afternoon, at a news conference and a City Council mobility committee meeting, Austin police set out what they now expect of a very different machine. After a review with Austin Transportation and Public Works and the city attorney's office, the city concluded that e-motos (pedal-less electric bikes with motors of 750 watts or more) are motor vehicles under state law. Riders need registration, insurance and a license. No sidewalks, no Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail. Officers will warn first.

Two machines, one rulebook, and in both cases the machine got here first. Assistant Chief Mike Chancellor said his officers are called out to children riding e-motos through neighborhoods at 40 to 50 miles an hour. He said the department has no figures yet on how many citations it has written since the campaign began this spring.

What's next: State troopers run Operation CARE, the Crash Awareness Reduction Effort, on Texas highways from Friday through Monday.

Sources: The Texas Tribune (Cybercab launch), CBS Austin (Cybercabs in Austin), Community Impact (e-moto briefing), KXAN (e-moto rules), KXAN (Operation CARE)

City Desk

Money & bills

Austin puts its adult leagues back on the schedule

The Parks and Recreation Department will keep running adult indoor basketball and volleyball at the Austin Recreation Center after players objected, then hand them to an outside company later. It had announced the cancellation after the city adopted its budget last month, alongside cuts to youth outreach, senior programs and the lending library. "The city needs additional time to find a suitable third-party vendor," the city said. Austin Current

Also

Texas Comptroller Don Huffines asked lawmakers to add $1 billion to the private school voucher program for 2028-29, which would take it past $2 billion. The Texas Tribune

Public safety & courts

City leaders say the immigration arrests in North Austin have not let up

Mayor Pro Tem Chito Vela told the Austin Chronicle there has been a sustained increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in the North Lamar and Rundberg areas, and that the city had heard nothing from ICE or the Department of Homeland Security about it. U.S. Rep. Greg Casar said at an Aug. 14 news conference in Rundberg that government sources had described arrests running three to four times higher. Austin Chronicle

Texas keeps its own camera network switched on

Gov. Greg Abbott blocked state agencies from spending on Flock Safety cameras on Aug. 27, but the Department of Public Safety (DPS) said it will keep using the ones already installed and only stop adding more. The Texas Tribune reviewed a month of searches on the network and found 48 percent came from outside Texas. After those questions, DPS said Thursday it will restrict searches to agencies that have signed agreements with it. The Texas Tribune

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · Texas Tribune review of a month of DPS search records

Also

Austin police said e-motos count as motor vehicles under state law, so riders need registration, insurance and a license, and officers will warn before citing. CBS Austin

Video: CBS Austin — #LIVE: E-motorcycle safety in Austin

Austin police asked for help finding Uralene Davis-Williams, 86, last seen about 5:30 p.m. Thursday near the 1400 block of Bradbury Lane, and said she has medical and cognitive conditions. CBS Austin

Detectives released security images of a man they are trying to identify in an Aug. 29 auto theft in the 2300 block of Carson Ridge. City of Austin

State troopers run Operation CARE, their holiday traffic campaign, from Friday through Monday; last year's Labor Day version produced more than 63,015 citations and warnings. KXAN

Growth & infrastructure

Tesla's driverless two-seaters start picking up riders

The company put dozens of gold Cybercabs into service in limited areas of Austin on Thursday, hailed through its Robotaxi app. The cars have no steering wheel, no pedals, no back seat and no rear windshield. Kara Kockelman, a transportation engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said she would ride in one, though a Waymo is safer because it adds radar and laser sensing to its cameras. CBS Austin

Overheard on X

mantequilla 🧈@gheeunit · Sept. 4

I was fortunate enough to ride in a Cybercab in Austin after the launch event this afternoon 🙏

Got the perfect golden hour backdrop at one of my favorite places in town, Home Slice Pizza on South Congress! pic.twitter.com/A5dsszl5GQ

View on X ↗10 likes

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/Munchlaxatives · Sept. 3

Tesla has a Robotaxi unveiling tonight downtown. Here’s one blocking traffic.

It just stopped at the intersection and put its hazard lights on for no reason.

View on Reddit ↗

Also

Austin City Council moved to let houseplex projects of up to four units be built under the International Residential Code, which is simpler and cheaper than the code they use now. KXAN

The council also started work on Austin's first mold rules, directing the city manager to draft code amendments on inspection and remediation; the property maintenance code has none. KXAN

Lane closures at East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Interstate 35 are lifted for Saturday's game, with the Texas Department of Transportation's (TxDOT) bridge work far enough along to reopen them. KXAN

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport asked departing travelers to arrive two and a half to three hours early on Friday, its second such day running, expecting more than 35,000 to fly out. CBS Austin

Parking at Commons Ford Ranch Metropolitan Park is limited to marked areas from Saturday through Monday, with towing outside the gate and no entry once the park is full. City of Austin

Schools

A university department proposes cutting two programs and building one

The University of Texas at Austin's new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis proposed eliminating the race, indigeneity and migration major and the LGBTQ studies minor and creating a six-track interdisciplinary major, according to internal documents obtained by The Daily Texan. The documents say the two overlap other offerings. The university and the department chair did not answer the paper's requests for comment. The Daily Texan

Also

About 100 Texans testified Aug. 31 on how Islam and Christianity appear in new high school social studies standards, which the State Board of Education approved on first reading Sept. 1. Community Impact

Business & street life

The tallest building in Texas opens its first big tenant

1 Hotel Austin has opened inside Waterline, with restaurants, a rooftop pool and more than 300 jobs. Instead of cutting a ribbon the staff planted a tree. Raul Leal, chief executive of Starwood Hotels, said the company had been working on an Austin property since 2018, and Tom Noonan of Visit Austin said the opening lands before a busy season of festivals and big events. CBS Austin

Also

MML Hospitality and the owners of Bartlett's expect to start building a second location in the old Threadgill's space in south Austin in early 2027, at a cost of about $4 million. Community Impact

Bat Fest turns 20 on the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge on Saturday, running 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., with the bats due out sometime after 7. KXAN

Video: CBS Austin — Things to do in central Texas this Labor Day weekend!

The Austin Tattoo Invitational runs Friday through Sunday at the Palmer Events Center, with more than 350 artists showing work and tattooing on site. KXAN

The Bullock Texas State History Museum is free from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, with water-themed activities, a story time and a film. CBS Austin

Overheard on X

Chris Walker@WalkerATX · Sept. 4

It's Labor Day weekend 1981 in Austin and you're at Barton Springs Pool👙🩲 pic.twitter.com/p4MblLSEha

View on X ↗42 likes

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/RiversRubin · Sept. 3

Making friends with other child-free couples?

My wife and I are in our early 30s and have made the decision to not have kids; we’ve got our hands full with plenty of rescue dogs, anyway! As many of our friends opt for parenthood (happy for them; love being the fun aunt/uncle) it would be nice to broaden our social circle and make friends with other child free folks in Austin. …

View on Reddit ↗

Weather

Today: a chance of showers before 1 p.m., then a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms until 4 p.m. Partly sunny, high near 96, heat index up to 104, with rainfall under a tenth of an inch. No active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: mostly clear, low around 77. National Weather Service

The first round of showers comes early and a second is possible late in the day, KXAN's forecasters say, with a 1-out-of-4 flood risk for Friday. Rain chances thin out to about 10 percent over the holiday weekend, and temperatures stay off triple digits before the upper 90s return next week. KXAN

August's heat and lack of rain dried the soil around Austin foundations faster than the soil beneath them, and the uneven stress cracks drywall and sticks doors. Repair firms disagree over whether watering a foundation helps. KXAN

The Back Page

1 day until Texas football · Texas State at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR), Sept. 5, 2:30 p.m.

A small rescue group in Livingston, out east where the last of Edouard put water where it had no business being, called Austin on Wednesday night and said its foster homes were flooding. Austin Pets Alive! sent for them: 15 cats, nine Chihuahuas and about a dozen mid-sized dogs, including one that had been frightened enough by the storm to jump through a closed window and needed a vet before it could travel. The transport was due at the shelter on Thursday afternoon. The shelter's ask of the city was simple — come and foster them, and if you cannot, foster or adopt one of the animals already here so there is room. Intake will be slow, the group warned, because the animals are likely to be rattled. CBS Austin

The Austin Bulletin — Thursday, September 3, 2026

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Good morning, Austin. The last of Edouard is still hanging around over Texas, which buys us a 20 percent chance of a shower after four o'clock and not one degree of relief before it — the high is 102 and the heat index goes to 108. If you are flying out today, the airport is asking for three hours, and it is not being dramatic. Everyone else: the shade on the east side of the street is the good shade this afternoon, and the rain, if it finds you, will be over before you have finished being glad about it.

The Briefing · About our reporting

The county's health tax comes in three sizes

Chart: The Austin Bulletin · Central Health budget figures, via KVUE

Central Health, the Travis County healthcare district, has set an 8 percent increase over the no-new-revenue rate as the ceiling for what it may charge next year. It has not chosen. On a median county homestead valued at $372,638, the three rates still on the table come to roughly $470, $496 or $504 a year, and the top one raises about $49.3 million more than the rate that would collect the same money from the same houses.

What the district says the money buys: $27.3 million in mental health spending, new inpatient behavioral beds, and a $7.3 million reserve toward a crisis center it is discussing with the city, the county and Integral Care. "The place where we deliver the most mental healthcare in our community is actually the jail," chief executive Dr. Pat Lee said, "and our police officers are struggling to try to get people care that just doesn't exist in our community."

The ask lands while hospital money is short. Washington is holding back the supplemental Medicaid payments that match what local hospital taxing districts like this one collect, and Texas hospitals have gone without since Tuesday. Matt Mackowiak of Save Austin Now said the separate asks look small one at a time. "It's $1,500 more than it was three years ago from all the entities for if you live in the city of Austin," he said.

What's next: Central Health's board adopts its fiscal 2027 budget and rate Wednesday, Sept. 9; Travis County commissioners take up the proposal the following week.

Sources: KVUE (Central Health budget hearing), The Texas Tribune (Medicaid hold), Travis County (rate notice)

City Desk

Money & bills

Abbott's office presses Washington over the hospital money Texas is not getting

Texas hospitals have been going without nearly $10 billion in supplemental Medicaid payments since the state fiscal year began Tuesday, a delay the Texas Hospital Association puts at about $27 million a day. Gov. Greg Abbott's spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said Wednesday that the state's financing "fully complies with federal law." The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it is working with states on compliance. The Texas Tribune

Public safety & courts

DNA held for a quarter century closes two Austin sexual assault cases

Michael Lance Gamez was sentenced Aug. 3 to 15 years in prison, and the Austin Police Department (APD) said Wednesday it has closed both cases. A woman was attacked at the Capital Metro Pavilion Park and Ride on Research Boulevard in September 1999; another was attacked inside her Northgate Boulevard apartment five months later. State lab work tied the two scenes to one man, unnamed until 2023. City of Austin / CBS Austin

A Fort Worth man is charged with threatening to kill James Talarico

The Texas Department of Public Safety arrested Billy James McFatridge, 29, of River Oaks on Aug. 25 on two misdemeanor counts of terroristic threat against a public servant, according to an affidavit filed with Travis County courts. It quotes emailed and Instagram messages sent to the campaign and office of state Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, after he answered a question about reparations at a July town hall. KXAN

Video: CBS Austin — Fort Worth man charged with threatening to kill U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico

Also

Fourteen of the 15 nurses from Eloise House, the Austin clinic whose forensic nursing funding ended in June, have opened a nurse-run nonprofit, Central Texas Forensic Care, to carry on the work. Austin Chronicle

Austin school district police charged students with riot over an Aug. 25 cafeteria fight at Akins Early College High School that the principal says is believed to be gang related. FOX 7 Austin

Brian Davis, 43, was sentenced to 60 years for the murder of John Walker Oden, 53, who was attacked and run over in north Austin in October 2023, prosecutors said. KXAN

A man was found badly hurt outside the H-E-B at 9414 N. Lamar Blvd. early Wednesday after an aggravated robbery, Austin police said, and one man is in custody. FOX 7 Austin

Police are looking for a man who pulled a knife and took a mountain bike in the 200 block of West Elliot Street around 5 a.m. on Aug. 19. CBS Austin

Growth & infrastructure

The airport's $165 million west gates are nearly done

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport expects to finish its West Gate Expansion this fall. It adds three net-new gates, bigger restrooms, a nursing room, a pet relief area, the airport's first playscape and an upstairs patio looking out on the runways. The airport says no taxpayer money is in it. The gates also have to exist before Concourse B and its tunnel can be built. KVUE

Also

The airport asked travelers to arrive two and a half to three hours early Thursday, when it expects more than 35,000 departing passengers and long lines at security and ticket counters. CBS Austin

Southwest Airlines will put one of its first four lounges at Austin-Bergstrom, in the West Infill Mezzanine across from Gate 22, opening in late 2027. FOX 7 Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/Plenty_Late · Sept. 2

What are these waymos doing

turning a less than 5 minute drive into a 15 minute drive. does anyone know why they are navigating like this? they've all been like this lately and werent like this before

View on Reddit ↗

Austin police are in early talks with other city departments about congestion on Rainey Street, where Commander Christopher Juusola said the two-lane road makes it hard to get emergency vehicles through. KXAN

The city cleared "Crosswalk on the Lake" from Lake Austin Boulevard, the last of more than a dozen pavement art works removed this year under a Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) standard. Community Impact

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/euphorbiaceae_512 · Sept. 2

New Development, is this normal or safe? (SE Atx)

Hey y’all! My wife and i moved into this house in a new development back in Spring. I noticed this on the outside of our retaining wall this morning. A few days ago i noticed a gap in the soil near some of the fence posts opposite this area. Theres also a large 2” wide crack in the soil running parallel to the tallest part of the wall. Is this just normal settling of the ground in a new developme

View on Reddit ↗

City Hall & county

Austin Climate Action and Resilience awarded $102,000 across 34 community projects through its Food and Climate Equity grants, which give up to $3,000 each for local food and climate work. City of Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/katla_olafsdottir · Sept. 2

Lights Out for Birds, Austin!

Travis Audubon and a coalition of other local and state organizations want us to flip the switch for birds this fall! Nearly two billion birds migrate across Central Texas skies each spring and fall, and many of them fly at night. Fall migration is already underway and we want to make their journey as safe as possible. Artificial lighting can cause birds to be disoriented and collide with building

View on Reddit ↗

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/NicolitaSanchez · Sept. 2

Where are the birds?!

I am the crazy lady that leaves water bowls outside of my office for the wildlife. Our building is surrounded by trees that hosts squirrels, birds and whatever else. I left the animals clean water on Monday to return to untouched water Tuesday. Prior to this the water would be dirty from the birds bathing in a day. The trees are eerily quiet and I haven’t even seen the squirrels. Have they already

View on Reddit ↗

Schools

Two Austin campuses hit the fifth failing grade that can trigger a state takeover

Two Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) campuses earned a fifth straight failing grade in the preliminary 2026 accountability ratings — the point at which state law requires the education commissioner either to close a school or to replace a district's elected trustees with an appointed board for at least two years. Nine more Austin ISD campuses sit at four. Districts have until Sept. 11 to appeal a rating. Austin Current

Also

McCallum High School took in 23 donated fans after air conditioning failed in classrooms and portables last week, and Anderson High School's chiller was repaired Wednesday, the district said. KXAN

Business & street life

Taste of Ethiopia leaves South Congress, and the avenue keeps turning over

The restaurant's owners said they will not renew when the lease expires Sept. 30, after 12 years, because of what it costs to operate there. Vespaio, Chapulin Cantina, Prototype Vintage and Tiny Grocer all closed South Congress locations this year; Monkey See Monkey Do moved to South Lamar Boulevard after 20 years. Wrangler and three other retailers are taking the old Vespaio block. KVUE

Timeline: The Austin Bulletin · Business openings and closings reported by KVUE

Also

The Code, a hotel and residential building, is filling its ground floor: the hat shop Manhattan Cowgirl this fall, then Pure Sweat + Float Studio and a strength-training gym in the winter. Community Impact

Reginald Adams's "Absolute Equality: Unity Tunnel," shaped by more than 250 Austin residents, won best collaboration at this year's CODAawards, judged from 302 entries in 19 countries. City of Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/WarpFact0r10 · Sept. 2

Door in but still no Micro Center sign up yet.

Parking lot needs to be resurfaced as well.

View on Reddit ↗

Austin Parks Foundation's free "In the Park" series runs September through November, with basketball clinics, story times, art sessions, movies and 10K training at parks around the city. KXAN

Registration is open for the 32nd Lake Travis Cleanup on Sept. 20, which puts divers, shoreline crews and park volunteers at 14 sites across seven Travis County parks. KXAN

The Austin Chronicle marked 45 years in print with this week's issue, which carries an anniversary yearbook of the paper's run. Austin Chronicle

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/ExLaxMarksTheSpot · Sept. 2

Been months since the bats have come this close to my balcony

Forgive my terrible camera work. I was just so excited to see them close again I was all over the place. I will lock in next time.

View on Reddit ↗

Weather

Today: mostly sunny with a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after 4 p.m., a high near 102 and heat index values as high as 108. There are no active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: partly cloudy, low around 78. National Weather Service

The remnants of Edouard hold enough moisture over Texas for spotty rain this afternoon and a better chance on Friday, KXAN's forecasters say, before coverage thins out over the holiday weekend. KXAN

August was the fifth-hottest August on record at Camp Mabry, where records go back to the 1890s, with a mean temperature of 89.4 degrees. Every warmer-than-normal day in the month reached at least 100. KXAN

The Back Page

2 days until Texas football · Texas State at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR), Sept. 5, 2:30 p.m.

A group of University of Texas at Austin students spent two semesters trying to make a fabric coating out of corn protein and beeswax, and it works: water beads up on a treated cotton swatch and rolls off. The point is what it replaces. The chemicals that make clothes water- and stain-resistant are usually per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which do not break down and which the students wanted out of the equation. Theirs does break down. "Essentially it creates a sort of waterproof finish," said Joanna Du, a junior chemistry major. The team came out of the university's Sustainable Fashion Materials research stream, where undergraduates get two semesters to chase an idea and see what happens, and they recently took the Outstanding Science Award at the Biodesign Challenge in New York, an international competition in biotechnology, design and sustainability — won this year, in that category, by a handful of Austin undergraduates and a jar of beeswax. KXAN

The Austin Bulletin — Wednesday, September 2, 2026

2026-09-02T00:00:00Z

Good morning, Austin. What is left of Edouard is drifting over us today as a smear of tropical moisture, which in practice means one neighborhood gets a loud twenty minutes and the rest of us watch it happen on the radar. The high is 100 again. September has arrived on the calendar and nowhere else. Take the shade side of the street this afternoon, and take water with you — the pickup lines and the bus stops are long right now, and standing still in this is the part that gets people.

The Briefing · About our reporting

The budget cut has a walking route

Timeline: The Austin Bulletin · Austin ISD figures, via KUT and Community Impact

The Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) replaced neighborhood bus stops for high schoolers this year with hubs at elementary schools, transit stops and community centers. The change saves an estimated $2.3 million. It also left Margaret, a freshman at Anderson High School, with three ways home: the shoulder of Loop 360 with no sidewalk, a trail that takes more than an hour, or a scramble down a concrete embankment and across Bull Creek. She said she nearly had heatstroke the first time. Her mother, Daphne Harrington, left work early to collect her, which cut her pay. "I realize there's budget cuts, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the safety of our children," Harrington said.

The district has been adjusting. Kris Hafezizadeh, who runs Austin ISD transportation, said his team read more than 3,500 comments and has gone from 98 hubs to 108, shortening the average walk from 2.5 miles to about 1.5. Every added stop costs. A new route runs about $65,000 a year, he said.

Anderson itself lost its cooling on Tuesday. The chiller was reaching 40 percent of the campus and classrooms were hitting the mid-80s, so Principal Brian Lancaster released students at 12:15 p.m., and a 400-ton rental chiller went in overnight.

What's next: Hafezizadeh said a stop will be added by the Harrington family's apartment complex as soon as Friday.

Sources: KUT (bus hubs), KXAN (Anderson High), Community Impact (nonprofit fundraising)

City Desk

Money & bills

Texas collected $4.62 billion in state sales tax in August, up 7.1 percent from a year earlier, Comptroller Don Huffines said Tuesday; online shopping receipts rose more than 20 percent. FOX 7 Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/No_Economics_3411 · Sept. 1

Rent fees in Austin out of control

Anyone else have over $250 in fees alone...on top of their rent? This just seems wildly obnoxious. Not letting post a screenshot, so here it is in text format: 09/01/2026 - Rent-Lease Charges - $1,277.00 09/01/2026 - Sub-metered Sewer - $31.86 09/01/2026 - Community Amenity Fee - $25.00 09/01/2026 - RPMIS Insurance Fee - $25.00 09/01/2026 - Valet Trash - $25.00 09/01/2026 - Trash - $24.61 09/01/

View on Reddit ↗

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/Brief_Specific_3074 · Sept. 1

Diabolical Austin energy bill??

Is anyone's bill this month astronomical?! I know it's summer but bruh lol last year my bill was $75. This year it's almost $300 and Austin energy keeps telling me they don't know why. How can they charge these wiiiiiild figures without being able to explain why? I'm so annoyed

View on Reddit ↗

Public safety & courts

A deported Austin man, a citizen by birth, is allowed back into the country

Brian José Morales García, 25, who lived and worked in Austin, returned to Texas on Sunday, his lawyers said, after the federal government agreed to let him re-enter while his lawsuit proceeds. He was deported to Mexico in April following a traffic stop near Fredericksburg. The Department of Homeland Security disputed his account and said he entered the country illegally; his lawyers submitted his Colorado birth record. The Texas Tribune / KUT

A murder charge in the Timber Heights Drive shooting

Joitorian Bouye, 21, faces a first-degree felony murder count in the death of Tyrell Pordia, who was shot Aug. 29 at a home in the 11700 block of Timber Heights Drive, Austin police said. An arrest warrant affidavit says Bouye told a detective he shot Pordia with a rifle and that he has schizophrenia and paranoia. He had no attorney listed Tuesday. KXAN

Also

Austin police arrested Elizabeth Rozo, 42, on Aug. 25 and seized thousands of pieces of stolen mail, about 400 suspected stolen bank cards and 17 stolen postal keys. KXAN

Austin police are looking for a man accused of assaulting a security officer at Huston-Tillotson University, 900 Chicon Street, on Aug. 1 as the officer escorted him off the property. City of Austin

Austin police are investigating five reports of tire slashing during August in the southeast Austin neighborhood between Burleson Road and Ben White Boulevard, east of Interstate 35. KXAN

Lee Anthony Chavez-Avera died Aug. 26 when a vehicle struck the scooter he was riding against traffic in the 4600 block of northbound MoPac (Loop 1), Austin police said. City of Austin

A detection camera alerted Travis County Fire Rescue to a 10-acre brush fire sparked Monday by a mower, before any 911 calls; the county's rescue helicopter made 12 water drops. CBS Austin

Growth & infrastructure

Lake Austin drops a dozen feet in October, and the marinas are counting

The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) will lower Lake Austin about a dozen feet between Oct. 12 and Nov. 30 at the city's request, closing public boat ramps and swimming at Emma Long Metro Park. David Callejas, who owns Float On Boat Rentals, said October is one of his best months, and estimated he will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars and put about 20 employees out of work. FOX 7 Austin

Timeline: The Austin Bulletin · City of Austin memo and LCRA schedule, via FOX 7 Austin

Council landmarks a 140-year-old east Austin house over its owner's objection

The Austin City Council voted unanimously last week to make the original front portion of the Goins-Versea-Nitschke House at 907 E. 13th Street a city landmark, blocking the demolition its owner, the Dallas developer Eureka Holdings, had applied for. Preservation Austin says it is the sixth property the council has designated over an owner's objection. Eureka's attorney, Blayre Peña, said the building is structurally failing. KXAN

Video: CBS Austin — Edouard makes landfall, Flock cameras, and a historic Austin home is saved

Also

State senators pressed agencies Tuesday on how much water data centers use; the Texas Water Development Board sent mandatory surveys to 324 of them and fewer than a third answered. CBS Austin

The city's Living Streets program is taking applications for the fall, and its GoGrant program is offering employers help with commutes disrupted by construction. City of Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/bUTful · Sept. 1

PSA: Zilker Park Closure

September 21 - October 18, 2026 (or beyond sometimes). Then maybe a little bit of time before the Trail of Lights closure.

View on Reddit ↗

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/justinrose99 · Sept. 1

What is your least favorite traffic light in Austin?

Which light do you find that you hit the most and takes the longest?

View on Reddit ↗

City Hall & county

Democrat Pooja Sethi and Republican Jennifer Mushtaler are on the Nov. 3 ballot for Texas House District 47, which covers parts of northwest, west and southwest Austin. Community Impact

Austin Emergency Management is marking National Preparedness Month with two September events, including its fifth annual Get Ready Central Texas preparedness fair. City of Austin

Schools

An Austin school Texas rejected as a charter is now taking voucher money

Alpha School, founded in Austin, was turned down by the State Board of Education last summer when it sought to run charter campuses on a model where software teaches lessons in two hours a day and adults handle motivation. It has since roughly quadrupled to more than 30 Texas campuses, most of them accepted into the state's voucher program by the comptroller's office, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. The Texas Tribune

Also

The State Board of Education debated amendments Tuesday to more than 700 pages of high school social studies standards, with a final vote expected later this week. KXAN

The Architecture, Construction and Engineering (ACE) Mentor Program of Austin, a free 16-week after-school course, is enrolling ninth through 12th graders on a first-come basis. KVUE

Business & street life

Red River loses Valhalla, and the block across the street goes up for sale

Valhalla, the metal bar at 710 Red River Street, is set to close Oct. 26 after its building sold to a franchise of Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken, whose owner Janet Hickerson said her lease near the convention center is not being renewed. Across the street, the building holding Elysium and the 13th Floor was listed Tuesday at $4.1 million, which the listing says is its first time up for sale in 80 years. Austin American-Statesman / Austin Chronicle

Also

Marlow, a cocktail bar that spent three years in the Red River Cultural District, held its last night Aug. 29. Austin Chronicle

The city dedicated a marker reading "As Queer As You Want To Be" at Fourth and Colorado streets on Aug. 21, where the rainbow crosswalks were painted over in July. The Daily Texan

Austin Parks and Recreation will cap parking at Commons Ford Ranch Metropolitan Park from Saturday for the holiday weekend, and will tow vehicles left outside the gated entrance. City of Austin

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/tiMartyn · Sept. 1

It's absurd that Austin's public pools are only open a few months and close mid-August

There are a handful of things in Austin - especially related to the summertime - that feel like they could easily be better for everyone. But whether it's the Bullock Museum IMAX Theater's seating dilemma or restaurants that should have stronger AC, I think this might be the most obvious thing in our city worth improving. It’s impractical that Austin’s most accessible neighborhood pools shut down

View on Reddit ↗

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/JumpOutJonas929 · Sept. 1

Parrots spotted in the city.

Upwards of 10 parrots were flying about in Austin. These parrots were spotted right off Ben White directly across 290 from Palazio’s. Are these escapees who mated or did someone really have all these parrots? Or were they just trying to enjoy an after hours show. Naughty birds.

View on Reddit ↗

Weather

Today: mostly sunny, then a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms, with a high near 100. There are no active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: partly cloudy, low around 79. National Weather Service

Edouard, now a tropical depression creeping north across east Texas, keeps enough moisture nearby for spotty afternoon showers through Friday, KXAN's forecasters say, with the heaviest rain staying east of us. KXAN

Edouard came ashore in Louisiana on Tuesday and knocked out power across several Southeast Texas counties as it moved inland. KXAN

The Back Page

3 days until Texas football · Texas State at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR), Sept. 5, 2:30 p.m.

Kelly Shaw taught preschool in Austin and, before that, wrote for late-night television, which meant parents kept asking her the same question: what should my kids be watching? She had no answer. "Eventually I just heard it so much, and I was like, 'I should just make something,'" she said. So she did. "All Aboard! with Ms. Kelly" premiered Saturday — a slow, well-researched children's show built out of live lessons, music and singing, in the shape of the programs she grew up on. It took years. Funding fell through, studios changed, and the thing sat half-built until she brought in the Austin filmmakers Grace and Emily Potter to direct, a connection that traces back to one friendship one of them made as a radio-television-film major at the University of Texas. "It was just me for a long time," Shaw said, "and the moment we brought the Potter sisters on to direct, it just changed everything. They came with so much more optimism and hope, and that Austin filmmaker mentality of 'We can just make it, and we'll just get it done.'" The Daily Texan

The Austin Bulletin — Tuesday, September 1, 2026

2026-09-01T00:00:00Z

Good morning, Austin. It is September, and for the first time in a long while the forecast has something in it besides sun. Tropical Storm Edouard is coming ashore down the coast, and the ragged western edge of it may drag a shower over us after lunch. Most of the rain falls east of Interstate 35, so do not plan around it. But the sky will do something today, and after seventeen straight afternoons of triple digits, a gray hour counts as an event. Carry the umbrella you almost certainly will not need.

The Briefing · About our reporting

Cheaper rent, fuller eviction court

Timeline: The Austin Bulletin · Eviction Lab and Realtor.com figures, via CBS Austin

Austin renters are paying less than they were a year ago. Realtor.com put the median asking rent at $1,371 in June, down 4.3 percent, and the Austin Apartment Association credits about 86,000 rental units added since 2023 for the slide. Eviction court has not noticed.

CBS Austin reported Monday that Travis County logged more than 15,600 eviction filings over the most recent 12 months, 35 percent above the 2023-24 average and about one case for every 20 renter households. More than a quarter of the judgments landlords ask for are under $2,000, said Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA), an Austin tenant group. "This should not be happening," said Abia Bakay, its research and policy director.

Emily Blair, who runs the Austin Apartment Association, said rent is the one line in a household budget that has come down. "Household expenses on rent are actually going down right now and have over the last few years, but every other cost has gone up," Blair said. She said rental assistance programs have shrunk since the pandemic, and that eviction is usually a last step. The rules around that step changed on Jan. 1: Senate Bill 38 limits local courts from requiring mediation or a pretrial conference before an eviction goes to trial.

What's next: The Austin City Council next meets Sept. 10, and speaker registration for that meeting opens Sept. 7 at 10 a.m.

Sources: CBS Austin (eviction filings and rents), City of Austin (council meeting schedule)

City Desk

Money & bills

Austin-area home sales rose 7 percent, and the listings are still piling up

Homes.com put the Austin metro's median home price at $439,995 in July, up 0.6 percent from a year earlier, with sales up 7 percent. There were 14,200 homes listed in July, against a pre-pandemic average of 11,700. Senior market analyst Israel Linares said builders in the outer suburbs are discounting hard to clear inventory, and that buyers are returning. KXAN

Texas hospitals start the fiscal year down $27 million a day

The state's fiscal year began Tuesday, and Texas hospitals expect to lose $27 million a day in additional Medicaid money after the Trump administration withheld approval for about $9.8 billion, most of it from the Comprehensive Hospital Increase Reimbursement Program (CHIRP). Local governments collect about $4 billion a year in taxes from hospitals, and the federal government matches that money under the program. Four million Texans are on Medicaid. The Texas Tribune

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/RockMo-DZine · Aug. 31

Follow up to post of 08/22 "Does HEB have a problem with Austin?" regarding HEB price difference for Milk in different major towns.

As some of you may recall, the post was about how we were paying a lot more for milk in Austin compared to San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas. As of today, in-store pricing for HEB and HCF 1 gallon jugs of milk are lower by $1.21 That's a big price drop. I don't know if was due to the reddit post, or other Austinites complaining to HEB Corporate, but either way, I like to think we all (collectively

View on Reddit ↗

Also

New Texas laws Tuesday require solar panel sellers to register with the state, open electronics parts and repair manuals to independent shops, and recognize gold and silver as legal tender. FOX 7 Austin

Sen. Ted Cruz and Michael Dell met business leaders in downtown Austin on Monday about "Trump accounts," tax-advantaged investment accounts that employers may fund up to $2,500 a year for an employee's child. CBS Austin

Public safety & courts

Six months after the Buford's shooting, Rudy Garza is home

Rodolfo "Rudy" Garza Jr. was shot in the head on March 1 at Buford's on West Sixth Street, two months short of a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Texas at Austin. He spent four months in and out of the hospital and has now returned home to rehabilitation and therapy. Three people were killed and 14 injured; police shot the gunman at the scene. KUT

Also

Worth Ross Management Company said the window that fell from The Modern Austin Residences on Friday, damaging a resident's car below, is suspected to have come from a confirmed microburst two days earlier. KXAN

Everett Driscol, 42, faces two aggravated robbery counts and a felon-in-possession charge after an Aug. 28 armed robbery at the High Octane Game Room on Research Boulevard, Austin police said Monday. KXAN

Growth & infrastructure

The city will rent evidence space while its $32.2 million warehouse sits unfinished

Austin's Public Safety Warehouse on McAngus Road, bought with about $46 million in 2024, still has a leaky roof and unresolved subsurface conditions, and the city has no completion date. With forensic evidence storage at two other sites near capacity, Council advanced a lease of up to five years and $3.35 million for 44,000 square feet on Springdale Road on Aug. 27. Community Impact

Also

City planners held a weekend open house on the East Riverside corridor, where residents asked mostly about the Project Connect rail line and the 125-acre Grove-Riverside site now used for city offices. KXAN

Map: Google · City of Austin planning documents, via KXAN

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/allthemoo · Sept. 1

Light out on 620 and Anderson Mill AGAIN

This is the 2nd time the light was out, but this time they have police guiding traffic. If you're commuting this AM, leave early!!

View on Reddit ↗

The Texas Senate's water committee takes public testimony at the Capitol on Tuesday morning on how much water data center cooling uses and whether local water providers should have to disclose it. CBS Austin

Waller Creek at 23rd Street exceeded safe fecal bacteria levels on five of nine testing days in 2024 and 2025, an Aug. 20 Environment Texas study found. The Daily Texan

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Project Watershed 250 in Austin on Monday, a six-month pilot offering free cybersecurity assessments and defenses to local water utilities across Texas. KXAN

Jesse Alba, who bought one of the last two houses on Rainey Street in 1966 for $3,750 and refused every offer since, died Aug. 21; his family has not decided its fate. KXAN

Video: FOX 7 Austin — Future of last house on Rainey Street unclear after owner's death | FOX 7 Austin

City Hall & county

The Texas Tribune published the full 2026 general election ballot for the Nov. 3 election, covering statewide offices, Congress, the Legislature and the courts. The Texas Tribune

Community Impact published questionnaires from the candidates for Texas attorney general ahead of Nov. 3; early voting runs Oct. 19-30. Community Impact

Austin's Office of Climate Action and Resilience awarded $102,000 on Tuesday to 34 community projects, from clinic gardens to school Green Teams, through grants capped at $3,000 each. City of Austin

Schools

The State Board of Education takes final votes this week on high school history, government and geography standards, after adopting kindergarten through eighth grade standards in June. The draft teaches early Islam through "the Prophet Mohammed's brutal military campaigns"; Muslim Texans asked the board for lessons on the faith's teachings. Board member Julie Pickren said the Bible is "an accurate historical text for cultural relevancy." The Texas Tribune / FOX 7 Austin

Video: FOX 7 Austin — Texas State Board of Ed takes aim at social studies | FOX 7 Austin

Also

At least 14 Texas districts have a campus with a fourth straight failing rating, one year from the takeover trigger the state is already weighing at Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD). The Texas Tribune

Abbott asked the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to draw up a framework for three-year bachelor's degrees by Dec. 31, writing that every extra semester adds tuition and living costs. The Daily Texan

Operation Naloxone, a College of Pharmacy project, trained dozens of University of Texas students on Aug. 28 to recognize an opioid overdose and administer Narcan, the nasal form of naloxone. The Daily Texan

Business & street life

Roger Beasley, who founded the Roger Beasley Auto Group in 1972 with three employees and grew it to 11 dealerships and more than 600 staff, died at his Austin home Aug. 28 at 87. KXAN

KVUE reported that Taste of Ethiopia is closing its South Congress location after 12 years because the owners say the area has grown too expensive, and that the restaurant is not leaving Austin. KVUE

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/SJdport57 · Aug. 31

More Austin Birds in American Traditional

Featured species: red-winged blackbird, blue jay, northern cardinal, yellow-billed cuckoo (on Texas purple sage). Disclaimer: I am not a tattoo artist, just a guy who likes the style!

View on Reddit ↗

Chris Stapleton plays a free 7 p.m. concert on the Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) Lawn on Sept. 10, open only to University of Texas students holding the Big Ticket sports pass. Austin American-Statesman

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/ultimateweirdone · Aug. 31

To the kind stranger

I was walking the trail on lady bird lake for an hour or so and stopped by a small area to look at the water and started getting emotional. I want to say thank you to the man who gave me kind words and advice. I didn't get ur name but I'd love to buy u coffee or tea sometime if ur okay with it before I leave. Please reach out to me if ur comfortable. not a romance thing, just trying to say thank

View on Reddit ↗

Weather

Today: mostly sunny with a high near 99 and heat index values as high as 104, and a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1 p.m. There are no active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: partly cloudy, low around 78. Wednesday and Thursday both carry a 30 to 40 percent chance of rain. National Weather Service

Tropical Storm Edouard was expected to make landfall on the Texas coast by midday Tuesday. KXAN's forecasters expect Austin's rain to start after noon and end near sundown, with most of it east of Interstate 35, and up to an inch possible in the eastern counties on Wednesday. KXAN

Gov. Greg Abbott activated state search-and-rescue, swiftwater and aviation teams ahead of the storm, and the National Weather Service issued a tropical storm warning and a flood watch for the coast. The Texas Tribune

Video: CBS Austin — Will Tropical Storm Edouard provide reprieve after one of Austin's driest Augusts on record?

Overheard on Reddit

r/Austinu/OldYellersLastHandy · Aug. 31

This is the hardest part of summer

You can just barely see “fall“ on the horizon. The summer is always a drag, but Texas fall is the best week of the year. Hang in there.

View on Reddit ↗

The Back Page

4 days until Texas football · Texas State at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR), Sept. 5, 2:30 p.m.

Jason Neulander invented a genre in a rehearsal room in Austin and then took it around the world: the live-action graphic novel, where voice actors and a live sound-effects table perform in front of an enormous screen of projected comic panels. It is what entertainment might have become if radio and comic books had caught on and movies never had. He toured "The Intergalactic Nemesis" through most of the 2010s, then came off the road for a few years. What brought him back was a bike ride with an old touring friend who asked whether he had thought about a new show. He went looking for a public-domain story with a title people would recognize, made a list of fifteen, and brought it home. His daughter Scarlett, then 18, told him it had to be "Treasure Island" — he had read it aloud to her when she was nine, and they had both fallen for it. "Everything that you think of when you think of pirates comes from Treasure Island," Neulander said. "And everybody knows the title, but very few people know the story, and the story is fantastic." KUT

The Austin Bulletin

The Austin Bulletin — Thursday, September 10, 2026

The Briefing · About our reporting

The mayor's plan puts the takeover fight in parents' hands

City Desk

Money & bills

Public safety & courts

Two children were taken from a Ben White crash in critical condition

Growth & infrastructure

Lake Austin drops 10 feet next month, and the boat businesses found out in August

A May agreement may exempt Dog's Head from a data center ban

City Hall & county

Schools

Watson asks Burnet and Webb parents to petition to close their schools

Business & street life

Levitation comes back to Red River tonight

Weather

The Back Page

The Austin Bulletin — Wednesday, September 9, 2026

The Briefing · About our reporting

Today's tax vote comes without an election

City Desk

Money & bills

Central Health decides today what its share of your tax bill is

Public safety & courts

Immigration agents took two Cisco's workers from the lot

The state's own camera network keeps running

Growth & infrastructure

Four Points wants to know what is going up on the old 3M campus

City Hall & county

Schools

A third campus lost its cooling, and the district is mid-cut

Business & street life

Red River's board says the city left its promises unfinished

Weather

The Back Page

The Austin Bulletin — Tuesday, September 8, 2026

The Briefing · About our reporting

Austin's power bill is now a campaign promise

City Desk

Money & bills

The governor wants Austin out of the power business

Public safety & courts

Austin dropped Flock. The cameras never left town

City Hall & county

Schools

A state takeover would reach past Austin's classrooms

Business & street life

A vent hood fire closes Perla's, and its neighbors with it

Weather

The Back Page

The Austin Bulletin — Monday, September 7, 2026

The Briefing · About our reporting

Austin turned its cameras off. The data still arrives.

City Desk

Money & bills

Austin renters say the repairs pile up and the phone goes unanswered

Public safety & courts

Austin's council splits on ever running plate readers again

A council member wants Lake Austin's jet ski ban made bigger

Growth & infrastructure

The old 3M campus is headed for data center work

City Hall & county

Schools

Business & street life

Two more Red River rooms have landlords looking for the exit

Weather

The Back Page

The Austin Bulletin — Sunday, September 6, 2026

The Briefing · About our reporting

Tesla certified its own car. The council asked for a plan.

City Desk

Money & bills

Public safety & courts

One killed in a single-motorcycle crash on Capital of Texas Highway

Growth & infrastructure

Tesla's steering-wheel-free taxis start work in Austin

The council asks for a plan around a rail stop that opened in 2010

City Hall & county

Austin's oldest known Black cemetery becomes a city landmark