Photo by Roschetzky Photography
The Austin Chamber of Commerce has a few more suggestions for local leaders and the Opening Central Texas for Business Task Force. The new chamber’s CEO Laura Huffman says they found some businesses are getting behind the idea of optional contact tracing.
“That might be going into a restaurant and signing in as a customer and then signing back out so that the restaurants are aware of who’s been in and out. Some businesses are offering to do that,” Huffman says.
She is also recommending there be a vast improvement to worker access to the internet and childcare, noting these two problems spread across all industries.
The Texas Restaurant Association is calling out Mayor Steve Adler over his call for businesses to track customers. President and CEO Emily Williams Knight tells KXAN it’s an unfair burden to load onto the backs of small business owners.
“For a place like Austin, which is all about keeping Austin weird, supporting local independence; It just feels very different than what we’ve experienced before. I felt as an association we had to step forward and just say it’s simply not right,” Knight says.
There are also big privacy concerns and the restaurant association has sent a letter to the mayor denouncing his plan.
2,717 cases of coronavirus had been found across Travis County. Austin Public Health says five more people have died, bringing that number out now up to 65. 87 people are in the hospital which is a drop from yesterday. At least 720 patients have recovered from the virus.
The latest model shows Austin hospitals have remained very well equipped both in capacity and ventilator usage. Mayor Steve Adler says he does expect the numbers to rise in about a week when they start to reflect the impact of reopening the private sector. He says the city will determine a threshold for new hospitalizations per day. If that number is surpassed, that will likely trigger the city to take action. Although what specific action is still yet to be determined.
The wave of closures involving longtime Austin businesses continues with the announcement that Shady Grove is locking its doors for good. The restaurant has been in operation for 28 years on Barton Springs Road. Management says that even with curbside or delivery service, the costs have become too high to continue.
The COTA food drive that was held over the weekend at Circuit of the Americas collected more than 1.6 million meals and $200,000 for the Central Texas Food Bank. The track was opened up to the public for the first time ever and more than 20,000 people turned up.
The National Multifamily Housing Council says 80% of Americans made rent payments this month, and that isn’t far off from what we’ve seen here locally. Emily Blair, with the Austin Department Association tells KVUE it’s really anybody’s guess if that high percentage will continue into next month.
“It’s so rapidly changing,” says Blair, “it’s really impossible to foresee what would happen for June.”
The number showed landlords are working with tenants and that local state and federal aid is helping quite a few people.
The Salvation Army in Austin is now requiring daily screenings of all staff and shelter residents before allowing anyone inside. That includes the Downtown Shelter, the Shelter for Women and Children and the new Rathgeber Center. Anyone with a temperature higher than 100.4 will be considered for placement in an alternative isolation facility.
Austin’s airport has seen a slight increase in passengers over the past week. Spokesman Bryce Dubee tells CBS Austin as few as 500 people a day were passing through the airport in mid April, but yesterday was one of the busiest days since then.
“We seem to have a new baseline of between 1,500-1800 passengers, at least outbound flying every day,” Dubee says.
It is a far cry from what it was a year ago, when the number was more than 2.6 million. Right now, overall passenger traffic is about 8% of that.
On Monday, Buda will reopen City Hall and the Public Safety Building, which includes the police department. Capacity is limited. City employees will have to wear masks and socially distance. You won’t be required to wear a mask, but the city is highly recommending that you do.
This news and more at News Radio KLBJ:
https://omny.fm/shows/klbjam-flash-briefing-1/am-newscast-5-12-20
