Photo by Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado
AURORA | Four at-large members of the Aurora City Council represent the entire city. This year two of those seats are up for election, currently held by Angela Lawson, who was elected in 2015, and Johnny Watson.
Watson, a former member of the planning commission, was appointed to the seat to fill a vacancy left by Bob LeGare, who was appointed to be mayor after the death of former Mayor Steve Hogan.
Four more candidates, who haven’t previously been elected, are hoping to snag the seat: Martha Lugo, who ran for Ward III in 2017; Curtis Gardner, the executive vice president at the Aurora Federal Credit Union; Thomas Mayes, who serves on the city’s Victims Witness Advisory board and the incident review board for the Aurora Police Department; and Leanne Wheeler, an Air Force veteran who owns her own consulting company.
Watch the televised debate of Aurora City Council at-large candidate forum
Like recent at-large races, the candidates are concerned with issues sweeping the city, from gentrification in north Aurora to suburban sprawl in the southeastern region. Lawson, who works at the Colorado Secretary of State’s office as a program manager for the lobbyist unit in the Elections Division, has been vocal about balancing city resources to make sure residents in older parts of the city aren’t left behind as the city grows.
She’s been supportive of affordable housing measures, putting the issue at the top of her priorities.
“Some options that the city is looking at is developing a housing policy, looking into community land trust options, and looking at options within our opportunity zones that could be used for housing,” she says on her website. “Another option is to look at properties that city owns from tax foreclosure and work to rehabilitate those properties with federal and block grant funds to support more affordable housing options. If we reduce some of the regulatory hurdles for developers and cut costs builders face during construction, developers may be more willing to work with the city to build more affordable housing options that can be passed on to buyers and renters.”
Mayes has also made affordable housing a top priority, saying the city should establish “rent control and encourage developers to give buyers incentives in reduced purchase price rather than upgrades.”
Candidates have also identified public safety as one of Aurora’s most pressing issues. Gardner, who was endorsed by the Aurora Police Association, said he wants to improve access to resources for police officers and firefighters. He stops short of supporting an independent police review structure, which the police department does not currently have to oversee police controversies.
“Because of the challenges and uniqueness of law enforcement, non-professional citizen review panels can have the unintended consequence of injecting politics into what should be a non-political review process,” he said in a Sentinel questionnaire.
Lawson and Lugo both said they support an independent review panel.
“APD currently has an incident review board. But it only reviews discipline issued as a result of decisions already made as far as conduct,” Mayes said. “APD needs an oversight committee to provide transparency, accountability and consequence. Accountability without consequence is not accountability at all.
The group is divided on providing incentives to big businesses that want to set up shop or expand in Aurora. Watson recently claimed the city was holding the Anschutz Medical Campus “hostage” for not designating some nearby land as blighted for the sake of future redevelopment.
The measure, like most things on city council, needed six votes.
Lugo and Wheeler say the city should prioritize existing business instead of granting incentives.
“Further, bringing in corporations that pay $12/hour is not helping our community, these are poverty wages and only perpetuates the problem for those who can’t afford to rent or buy a home among other things,” she said. “We should invest more in our communities with those tax breaks – we have plenty of ways in which we can enrich the lives of our residents than by bringing in large corporations that do not put people first.”
For Wheeler, who worked at Raytheon before starting her own company, believes growth will continue to happen without the use of incentives.
“And as we continue to give away the farm, we have failed to provide for road maintenance, robust and plentiful open spaces, aesthetically pleasing thoroughfares, and the like,” she said. “It feels like a race to see who can give more of our revenue, without a true understanding of the actual ROI (return on investment).”