AURORA | Aurora voters may get the chance this November to grant the city’s mayor top executive powers while eliminating the city manager position, tightening term limits and adding another member to the City Council.
Suzanne Taheri, an attorney and former Republican candidate for the Colorado Senate, sent a copy of the draft City Charter amendment to Aurora’s city clerk earlier this month on behalf of Garrett Walls, a member of the Aurora Planning & Zoning Commission.
Walls did not respond to a request for comment. Proponents of the amendment will next have to gather at least 12,017 signatures from registered Aurora voters, equivalent to 5% of the number of voters registered as of the 2022 regular election, before the item can be placed on the Nov. 7 ballot.
Currently, the city government of Aurora is run by the 11-person City Council, consisting of six council members elected by each of the city’s six geographically-distinct wards, four council members elected by the city as a whole and a mayor who is also elected by the entire city.
The council appoints a city manager, who is responsible for implementing policies passed by the council as well as overseeing the day-to-day operations of the city. In general, the city manager is responsible for the hiring and firing of employees, and the council is limited to communicating with the city manager if they want city staffers to do something in particular.
The mayor wields little more power than other council members — the person is responsible for leading City Council meetings, breaking tie votes on ordinances and resolutions, and representing the City of Aurora at events.
This balance of power between an elected city council and an appointed city manager is common among Colorado cities and is known as a “council-manager” or “weak mayor” form of government.
It stands in contrast to the “council-mayor” or “strong mayor” form of government used in a few cities such as Denver, Pueblo and Colorado Springs, where the mayor has the power to veto legislation and direct city staffers.
Strong-mayor advocates say the system cuts down on bureaucracy and encourages a more focused city government while opponents say it promotes corruption and political spoils by eliminating checks and balances.
Pueblo is currently embroiled in a controversy over an attempt by residents to ask voters to end that city’s strong-mayor form of government, according to stories in the Pueblo Chieftain.
The charter amendment presented by Walls would eliminate the role of city manager and instead hand those responsibilities over to the mayor, who would serve a four-year term. The term limit for mayors and council members would also be lowered from three consecutive terms to two.
The mayor’s veto power would enable them to block ordinances unless a supermajority of eight council members voted to pass them.
An ordinance approved by the council would be sent to the mayor, who would have the option of signing it into law or sending it back to the council with their objections specified in writing. If eight council members again voted to pass the ordinance after receiving the mayor’s objections, it would become law.
If the mayor did not sign an ordinance but also declined to send objections within five days, it would pass into law by default.
The council’s power to appoint a city attorney, municipal judge and court administrator would be handed over to the mayor. Also, the mayor rather than the council would be responsible for providing resources and manpower to the Civil Service Commission.
In the event of “public danger or emergency,” the mayor would be given extraordinary powers to govern the city by proclamation and take command of the city’s police department.
The mayor’s role as chair of council meetings would be handed over to a “council president,” who would be elected by a simple majority of council members to lead their meetings. A “vice president” would be elected the same way. The mayor may attend council meetings “at his discretion” and “be heard at any meeting of council.”
In the event of a vacancy on the council, a tie vote on filling the council seat would be broken by the mayor. If the mayorship becomes vacant, the role would initially be filled by the mayor’s chief of staff — an administrator appointed by the mayor who would report directly to them. The chief of staff is not required to live in the city.
Council members would need to appoint a temporary replacement within 45 days of the seat opening up. If the appointment happened 90 or more days before a regular election, it would last only until that election. If it happened sooner, the appointee would continue until the subsequent election, unless the mayor’s current term would have expired with the pending election.
Other miscellaneous parts of the amendment would eliminate emergency ordinances as a category of legislation, along with the council’s contingent fund. The mayor’s new powers would go into effect at the first regular City Council meeting in December 2023.
The city’s current mayor, Mike Coffman, told a Denver TV news station in December that he would be running for re-election but declined to comment on the proposed charter amendment, saying in an email that he would wait to see if it gathered enough signatures.
Councilmember Juan Marcano, who has filed paperwork to challenge Coffman for the mayorship, said he opposes the amendment and strong mayor governments in general.
“I don’t think strong executives are a good arrangement for a functioning democracy, period. I think they consolidate way too much power in one position,” Marcano said.
“There’s a lot of advantage to having a council-manager form of government, where the council who comes from diverse life circumstances, educational backgrounds and political beliefs gets to set the direction for the city, and it’s up to a professional administrator to implement that vision of the council.”
He said he worried that leaving the hiring and firing of city staffers in the hands of an elected mayor could invite nepotism and create instability within the organization of the city.
Marcano also disagreed with how the chief of staff role was defined, objecting to the idea that an unelected administrator living outside of the city could step into the mayor role in the event of a vacancy.
Besides empowering the mayor, another major change accomplished by the amendment would be adding a fifth at-large council member.
Marcano said he disliked the idea of adding another at-large representative, as the existence of those seats has granted an outsized amount of influence to the city’s affluent southeastern ward, with four council members hailing from Ward VI.
Two council members and the mayor live in Ward V, located next to Ward VI in south Aurora. The remaining four wards have a single representative each, even though the geography contains a majority of the city’s population, encompassing the central and northern parts of the city.
Marcano also questioned the extent to which Coffman was promoting the amendment behind the scenes, saying the mayor mentioned during an unrelated executive session earlier in the year that he planned to send a strong-mayor amendment to voters, after which Coffman backtracked and said that he planned to support a citizen-led amendment. Coffman later declined to comment on Marcano’s description of the conversation.
Once the sponsors of the amendment submit their signed petitions to the city clerk’s office, the clerk will have 30 days to determine whether the petitions are sufficient. If the clerk finds that they are, opponents will have 20 days to protest the finding of sufficiency. After that, the item may be placed on the November ballot.
Coffman out here trying to make himself King – what a joke.
Imagine the ridiculous and totally possible future world where Coffman runs this Kingmaking hogwash and then loses his own race for Mayor – making Marcano into King instead, and that guy doesn’t even want it. What a mess.
As bumbling as Coffman is in public, Aurorans need to realize avowed Socialist comrade Marcano in a strong seat would be a disaster.
This is the guy that’s been behind attempts to rezone established single-family neighborhoods to multi-family, business-stifling wage/benefit mandates, the enabling of homeless squalor, criminal-apologist, victim-blaming policies, handouts, anti-police legislation, and the characterization of all Republicans as “a sadistic death cult.”
Strong mayors are well-documented to invite corruption and cronyism. Cities like Chicago, San Francisco, L.A., and the city to our west prove that.
Neither candidate deserves more power. Vote your heart but vote DOWN a strong mayor if it makes the ballot. And leave the administration in the hands of democracy and those qualified to run a city.
Coffman tried to take our health care away over & over, supporting trump in the effort. He cares nothing for his constituents.
Don’t give this asshat more power.
What a joke. Because putting more power in one person has worked so well in so many other elected offices? No way. No King Coffman or King Marcano or King/Queen anyone. I hope the sponsors can’t even get enough signatures to get this crap on the ballot. Denver is trying to move away from a strong mayor government while some people in Aurora want to move toward one? Comical. The grass is always apparently greener… Pretty sure both ends of the extremely divided political spectrum in Aurora can agree that this measure deserves to fail resoundingly.
During my long time with APD, we tried to bring problems and solutions to the City Manager that dealt with the police department. Many of the things wrong within the department were ignored by the different city managers. Watching the actions of the City Manager in the last few years, I have to say that competence in that area is sadly lacking. The City is paying out millions for a flawed consent decree that is based upon ridiculous goals. Even when told that Chief Wilson had no plan or ability when it came to crowd control, the City did nothing. The City’s buildings were badly damaged and Chief Wilson overreacted to one public gathering and completely under reacted to other situations. She allowed poorly guided officers to take action in Denver and that resulted in millions of dollars in lawsuits that are now being squabbled over by Denver and Aurora. What I have seen through the years is a constant inability to manage situations even when clearly warned. Unfortunately, that is the trend in America. There is a sad lack of integrity and the strength to stand up for any solid principle. I imagine much has to do with the inability to stand up to Council.
That said, I fear that putting real power in the hands of an elected official has the potential for worse abuse. The public has shown themselves uninformed on most issues and will elect someone based upon petty likes. Facts or the person’s ethical conduct seem to have little bearing. The idea of Council Person Marcano, with his wildly liberal ideas, being a powerful Mayor is frightening. But then again, I don’t want Trump to be president again, even though he was right on some issues. I expect that an emotional public will decide.
I could only support this if the title of the new position was either Generalisimo, Strongman, or Grand Omnipotent Stomper.
✅
Would the Generalisimo’s approach be heralded by coronets? Would his Office have a Nuncio rather than a Public Information Officer? Would he have an official security detail, including a driver? Can we anticipate an inaugural ball?
There is very good reason to believe that Coffman is behind this in some capacity. Aurora’s voters might benefit from a deeper look into that aspect of this ballot measure effort, and this newspaper might consider utilizing CORA requests and other investigative tactics to dig deeper.
never vote for that with coffman in charge
This is an incredibly regressive effort to undermine sound, professional management of one of the 49th largest city in the nation. Cities are extremely complex organizations that deserve professional management that comes with years of training and experience, continuing education requirements, executive-level peer networks and a very strict professional code of ethics. They also provide objective leadership that is insulated from personal and ward politics – something an elected official by nature cannot do. Keep in mind, too, that City Managers work for the City Council, and can be dismissed as that Council chooses.
Don’t go backward, Aurora. Embrace and support the Council-Manager structure and not city “management” by whomever can scrape up the most votes, regardless of qualifications.
Mayor makes, what? $90,000? The CM makes _260k?
Just what we need, another Desantis dictatorship
“In the event of “public danger or emergency,” the mayor would be given extraordinary powers to govern the city by proclamation and take command of the city’s police department.”