AURORA | After months of wrangling, City Council policy changes about who gets to publicly address the council and for how long came closer to becoming law Monday, but some rulemaking over council decorum changes got pushed back again.
City council members, primarily through a council committee, have had heated debates for months over how to handle a history of combativeness among council members and between public commenters and city lawmakers.
Heated meetings peaked in 2024 and 2025 after police shot and killed Kilyn Lewis while he was being arrested in Aurora. At one meeting, council members fled the council chambers because of protesters, and Councilmember Stephanie Hancock called the protesters “terrorists.”
Former Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky was also known for confrontational and sometimes profane rhetoric, even cursing out fellow council members over group texts.
Since the 2025 council election, where voters did not re-elect Jurinsky and chose four new council members, meetings have had somewhat less conflict, but have been far from free of profanity and insults.
That left the city council to propose decorum changes that include a process to remove audience members who disrupt public speakers and consequences for those who keep talking from the lectern after their allotted time has expired.
On Monday, city lawmakers agreed to require the city to post meeting agendas and back-up materials no later than five business days before a scheduled meeting, ensuring the public has time to survey materials before meetings.
That measure passed easily.
A proposal by Councilmember Alison Coombs to strike a one-hour limit for public comment at the beginning of each council meeting failed after Mayor Mike Coffman broke a tie vote with a “no” on the measure.
Coombs said she was prompted to offer the change after talking with constituents who said they want every opportunity to address the city council in public and on the record.
Hancock said allotting more time for public comment earlier only pushes council business on the agenda further back, making it unfair to members of the public who go to meetings to observe and speak to other agenda items.
Some city lawmakers see the public comment segment as little more than a regularly scheduled opportunity for regular factions to get public time.
“It’s the same people over and over and over,” Councilmember Francoise Bergen said, referring to advocates who regularly address the city council primarily on issues related to the police shooting of Kilyn Lewis.
Coombs defended the group, saying that she regularly hears from constituents that they find the regular addresses informative and relevant.
City council has agreed to hold two such listening sessions during each regular council meeting, with the second one coming at the end of the council business agenda.
While council members refused to remove a one-hour cap on that session, too, they did agree to preserve it, and to make public comment by juveniles attending meetings a priority, allowing them to speak first at the first listening session.
Time limits and decorum changes ran down to city lawmakers themselves as well.
Mayor Mike Coffman was successful in persuading fellow lawmakers to limit council members to the same three-minute comment restrictions as the public during parts of the meeting where city council members provide a variety of updates and off-the-cuff comments.
“If (the public) is limited to three minutes, then we should be limited to three minutes,” Coffman said.
A section of the new rules addressing sanctions and discipline of the public for ignoring admonishments from the mayor during public meetings or violating rules was sent back to a council committee for further refinement.