AURORA VOTE 2021: Leadership style and critical issues dominate at-large race for city council

Two of four total at-large Aurora City Council seats are up for election this cycle. Neither of the two eligible at-large representatives, Allison Hiltz and Dave Gruber, opted to run for their seat again. At-large members of the city council represent the entire city of Aurora and may reside anywhere in the city. There are six candidates vying for the two open seats. The top two vote-getters will be elected.

There will for sure be at least two new faces on the Aurora City Council dais after this election. Council members Allison Hiltz and Dave Gruber, both elected in 2017, decided against vying for a second term. The slate running to fill their seats is diverse and filled with candidates with an array of experience.

The candidates are: Becky Hogan, Hanna Bogale, Candice Bailey, Danielle Jurinsky, John Ronquillo and Dustin Zvonek. Bailey, Zvonek and Jurinsky have served on the city’s citizen advisory budget committee.

Hogan is the widow of former Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan, who died in 2018 after being diagnosed with cancer, and sits on the city’s planning and zoning commission. She is also Chair of Korean Committee-Aurora Sister Cities International. Bogale, an Ethiopian immigrant, hasn’t sat on any local boards or commissions and says she is an entrepreneur.

Ronquillo is a former state house candidate and assistant professor at CU Denver’s School of Public Affairs. He’s served on a variety of civic organization boards as well.

It was originally unknown if Bailey would even make the ballot. The community activist who has called Aurora home all her life sued the city for its rule barring people with previous felonies from becoming municipal candidates. A judge ultimately agreed the rule violated the state Constitution allowing Bailey, whose conviction dates back to 1999, a shot at becoming an elected city council member.

The two at-large seats have a chance of tipping the Aurora City Council to a majority for both liberal and conservative factions. Since the Ward II vacancy earlier this summer, several important measures have been deadlocked at a 5-5 vote.

Among those is an urban camping ban proposal from Mayor Mike Coffman, who vowed to bring back the item early next year. While all candidates agree that the city should do more to reduce visible homelssness throughout the city, they differ in approach.

Hogan, Zvonek, who worked in Coffman’s congressional office, and Jurinsky would support the ban in some capacity. Bailey and Ronquillo said they would not.

New at-large members would also join a city council tasked with leading a city still recovering from the pandemic, rising crime rates and a police department under extreme scrutiny for its interactions with the community, particularly people of color.

Jurinsky, who owns two restaurant businesses and served most of her military career at then Buckley Air Force Base, said her professional experience makes the ideal candidate on pressing city issues. She’s also been endorsed by the Aurora Police Association and local chapter of Fraternal Orders of Police.

During a September candidate forum, she said that in order to reduce workload on an already thinly-stretched police department they should stop responding to “bad parenting calls.”

“They’re literally being called out because somebody can’t get their kid to go to bed,” Jurinsky said. “That’s where we could utilize a social worker, a counselor, something like that.”

She added that she’d look into better pay and better benefits for officers if elected.

At the same forum, Ronquillo said expanding programs that send mental health specialists instead of armed officers to non-violent calls is a good use of city resources and looks forward to furthering an existing pilot program.

Ronquillo also pitched a retention program to keep police officers from leaving the city to work at other departments. “The amount of money we spend to train these officers and fire personnel is a sunk cost when they decide to leave the city for other departments, and we can’t afford that,” he said.

Bailey may have the most insight into a bevy of reforms headed toward the Aurora Police department, having served on the recently-established Community Police Task Force, which was assembled in response to calls to improve the police department after the death of Elijah McClain.

“Aurora must redistribute some of the almost $60 million dollars in public safety to relinquish the police’s requirement to carry the weight of the community’s needs,” she said in her candidate survey, and echoed during a candidate forum.

“We must continue to uphold and execute the office of police accountability, transparency and transformation,” she said. “…this is going to help us in a million different ways in looking at the calls that officers are receiving, the way that things are being handled and not reacting to crime, but preventing things from happening.”

Out of the six candidates, the top two vote-getters will be elected to the Aurora City Council.

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