Abbott sends a strong message to Austin
Governor Greg Abbott this week has sent a strong message to Austin about public safety from the issue of defunding police.
“Fulfill their duty to keep their residents safe or lose access to all of their tax revenue,” says Abbott. To the years-long issue of homelessness in the more recent issue of camp sites around the city, “that will be addressed, this session that will include a ban on camping.”
They are key concerns that he won’t allow to fester any longer. Abbott says he’ll continue to keep up the pressure on lawmakers to make it fiscally impossible for Austin or any Texas city, for that matter, to cut funding to police. And as for the ban on camping, he says that wouldn’t just be for Austin, but rather every city across the state of Texas.
Austin homeless policies
Austin’s Mayor says the homeless policies enacted by his city council have not been working. Mayor Steve Adler tells KXAN what the city has been doing is not good enough. The city had repealed the local camping ban and pressed forward on re-housing those living on the street, but says it’s just not working the way it should. However, he isn’t endorsing bringing back the camping ban.
“Going back to where we were before where we were just hiding people that were experiencing homelessness and the numbers were growing exponentially is absolutely the wrong solution. It’s inhumane,” Adler says.
He says the city needs to do a better job on re housing, transparency and establishing benchmarks.
Alot of activist groups strongly opposed the effort to roll back public camping in Austin. A local nonprofits Save Austin Now this week did submit what it believes to be more than 24,000 valid signatures to get the issue on the ballot and give voters an opportunity to decide whether they want to roll back the camping ban this year.
Meantime, there’s a new coalition called Austin is Safer When. It’s collecting signatures to protect the current ordinance and keep public camping in place. As well as garner more support for things like police defunding.
APD funding
Some Austin City Council members don’t believe that the public support is necessarily there for the full funding of a police department. Greg Casar tells CBS Austin the public doesn’t really want that. And he says the governor doesn’t know the first thing about what Austin needs.
“The governor is continuing to do political theater and talk about Austin, trying to beat up Austin to win political points. When we’re trying to focus on civil rights and public safety,” says Casar.
He says the city has answered the call of thousands of people who do want police funds reallocated elsewhere to prevent things like officer involved shootings.
You may have noticed new fencing popping up around police headquarters in downtown Austin. The department says it’s part of security upgrades that started months ago and not a direct response to any protests. Officials say the fencing will help keep AP D employees safer.
COVID-19 update
The past 24 hours have shown some or signs of promise for Travis County’s coronavirus numbers. 589 people are hospitalized today, and that’s a drop of 25. 167 people are now in the ICU. The number had been holding fairly steady this week in the mid 180s. Active cases have increased by six up to 5,920. Overall since back in March of last year, 63,751 cases were found, with 57,208 recoveries.
Austin schools reopened
The Austin school district has kept its campus is closed for the past couple of weeks, but Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde says campuses will be reopened for students on Monday, although parents can still keep their kids home to learn virtually since closing campuses, Elizalde says the positivity rate of testing has plunged in the district by more than 40%.
Vaccines for Eanes
Employees of the Eanes school district have started getting their coronavirus vaccines, Superintendent Tom Leonard tells FOX 7 it’s not just teachers, but also bus drivers and custodians or anyone else who keeps the district operating.
“You know, obviously it’s just the first dose, and they’ve only had a couple of days in this situation, but I think they see the light at the end of the tunnel,” says Leonard.
More than 10% of employees have now gotten their first dose.
Bastrop vaccination hub
Now that it’s a state vaccination hub, Bastrop County believes it can achieve a very big feat to vaccinate everyone in the county in the next month and a half. County Judge Paul Pape says the swift vaccination of all residents is the quickest way to save lives. Preregistration can now be done online or by phone,
ICU bed capacity has grown just a bit in Williamson County, which is reporting 10% of its ICU beds now available. That’s up from 8% yesterday. 2,177 cases are active out of 28,384 confirmed and 26,227 recoveries.
This news and more on News Radio KLBJ:
https://omny.fm/shows/klbjam-flash-briefing-1/am-newscast-1-22-21
