I’ll get right to the point. Things are just better since Steve Hogan moved into the Aurora mayor’s office five months ago.

Being coy is not one of my strengths.

I don’t mean any of this as a slam against Ed Tauer, who was mayor here for the previous eight years. I admired Tauer as being a smart, creative guy who wasn’t afraid to think big thoughts. Where Tauer and I got sideways was in how he wanted to implement all of his ideas. We disagreed, frequently, about what details and discussions were best presented to the public, and what should be assembled behind the scenes or even closed doors.

In the case of Aurora’s poor image as a crime-ridden town of sprawl and mall, Tauer and others were able to persuade his lawmaking peers and coerce key city employees into ignoring, denying or arguing that Aurora’s image was irrelevant.

To this day, I shudder when I recall a story from about a year ago focusing on the city’s image. Reporter Brandon Johansson interviewed former City Manager Ron Miller who said that in the nearly 13 years he was city manager in Aurora, he was never aware that folks had something bad to say about A-Town.

It was that kind of ridiculousness that helped keep the city and its image from gaining ground for more than a decade.

Worse than a doctrine of publicly denying and ignoring Aurora’s shortcomings was an institutional effort to ensure that all legislative differences were aired and solved behind the scenes, giving the impression that Aurora and its government are a bastion of consensus.

Whether that deeply flawed philosophy came from an era of “not airing your dirty laundry” or whatever, for the past few thousand years, such policies have been nothing more than a recipe for failed governments. Such nonsense comes from wanting to control the message in hopes of controlling what people think.

It has never and will never work. Despite that, there are thousands of paid media-relations types who dish out that craziness to receptive ears every single day.

My experience is the truth will out, whether you want it to or not. If the real story doesn’t make the papers, it makes the gossip circle every single time. Then it makes the news, and usually as a cover-up story.

So now Hogan is the perceived head of Aurora’s city hall. Because of the structure of the city’s government, the mayor actually has no real power here. But outside of the city’s charter, he really does set the tone and pace for what the city gets done.

Hogan was a good choice for Aurora. Immediately, the scope and content of city council’s closed meetings has changed. Hogan has been able to persuade his peers that public meetings is where the public’s business needs to take place.

Just as important, Hogan has abruptly ended the long-standing tradition of ignoring the city’s blemishes and image problems. Few things will do more good for Aurora and everyone who lives here than that single change in attitude policy.

Aurora, like most places people call home in Colorado, isn’t nirvana. It’s just a town. But Aurora is a big, big town with a population larger than that of Iceland.

Hogan openly talks about the gravely mistaken impression that there’s more crime here than in other metro communities. There is not. The place is just big, much bigger than most people realize. There’s a gigantic Air Force base tucked in the center of the city. One of the country’s largest medical and research campuses is set in a corner of the city. There are just about as many homes here as there are in the whole state of Wyoming.

Not that there aren’t real problems here in Aurora. The city has pathetically small cultural offerings for a community its size. The city council is stingy and oppressive when it comes to allowing residents to just have a life. No backyard chickens. Watch where you park your trailer. The city even controls what you can and can’t plant in your yard. Aurora is fast becoming the grumpy old man in the community, barking at everyone to “get off my lawn.”

It’s too bad, because in my experience, that’s not representative of the people who live here. It’s time for Aurora to loosen up, poke a little fun at itself and flex its political muscle when it counts. And I’m guessing that the guy in the mayor’s office with the brown suit and wing-tipped shoes is just colorful enough to pull it off.

Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com.