AURORA | In another mark of unprecedented times during the coronavirus pandemic, the Aurora City Council held a remote meeting Monday, with all council members video-chatting in to make votes.
The mayor, city clerk and a few other city staff, sitting far apart, ran the meeting from a city conference room usually buzzing on a Monday evening.
The members agreed to suspend rules to allow for the teleconference meetings. The big change was how public comment was conducted. Because the municipal building is closed to the public, people can now email their comments to the city and they’ll be read by city staff.
The council narrowly approved a resolution to support so-called Dreamers, who were illegally brought to the country at a young age, and people living in the U.S under the Temporary Protected Status Program. The resolution, sponsored by Councilmember Allison Hiltz, makes no legal binding action, but declares support through “affirmative Congressional action.
“The City Council believes that legislation adopted by Congress is the right way to accomplish this goal and protect the beneficiaries of both programs.
The resolution passed on a 6-4 vote, with council members Marsha Berzins, Francoise Bergan, Curtis Gardner and Dave Gruber voting against. Many of the opposed council members said their vote didn’t reflect their view on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program, but they didn’t feel that the city council should be taking up the federal issue.
Gruber said he would have supported the resolution if it would have included language about comprehensive immigration reform.
The body unanimously approved a resolution requesting “all banks, mortgage companies and the financial industry, as well as all rental property owners, landlords and rental businesses, to consider the financial impact the threat of the spread of the COVID-19 virus is having on the citizens of the city and asks everybody to provide reasonable accommodations and leniency and consider delaying, rents, mortgages, foreclosures, evictions and utility shut-offs to everyone affected by the crisis.”
The resolution was only a request and has no binding power.
The resolution also asked for federal action to provide assistance to small businesses and self-employed workers affected by the crisis.
Council members also agreed to renew the disaster declaration put in place last week by Aurora City Manager Jim Twombly.
The state of disaster will end when the city manager “finds that the threat of danger has passed or the disaster has been dealt with to the extend that disaster conditions no longer exist.”