AURORA | City Council meetings are now going to have a public option — or alternative — but it doesn’t mean they are going back to council chambers at city hall yet.
Democratic council members Crystal Murillo, Ruben Medina, and Alison Coombs will begin meeting in public this week, outside city hall, even as the rest of the city council meets virtually online.
“We are doing this because we believe that our community members deserve access to their elected officials, but also the opportunity to connect with each other and engage with each other as part of civic engagement,” Coombs said. “We felt like that was missing from the current meeting.”
This comes after the majority of city council voted to make the meetings virtual until a controversial wrongful death lawsuit was settled. The lawsuit, which could take years, is over the death of Kilyn Lewis, an unarmed Black man who was killed by Aurora police in 2024 while being pursued by police as a suspect for a shooting in Denver.
Before the lawsuit, which was filed in May, family and activists demanding discipline for officers involved in the Lewis shooting, protested at the meetings for more than a year, disrupting meeting agenda items and urging city council members to take more action on police department reform and show more compassion for the family members.
The three council reps offering a public alternative this week said they will begin signing into the virtual meeting together in public spaces this week at a northwest Aurora school gym, but the location may change each week.
They plan to have the virtual, streamed council meeting projected visually and audibly, allowing members of the public to view and hear the meeting together, but in the same room as three of their elected representatives.
The rest of the city council members will still appear virtually as they usually do, from their own homes or other locations. Also, members of the public will still need to call into the city’s number to get in the queue to speak during the public listening session before the meeting, or to speak during public hearings on the agenda.
People who do want to speak to all of the city council will have to call in and leave the public room when it is their turn to talk, so it doesn’t echo in the room or cause feedback, Coombs said.
Until the meeting can be held in the City Hall Chambers with the entire council again, this will be the in-person alternative, Coombs said.
The number to speak to all of the city council during the meeting is 855-695-3475. To make a public comment, press * (star) 3. The deadline to speak for the “public invited to be heard” is 5:45 p.m., and to speak for individual agenda items, the deadline is before the item is called. The order of speakers is first-come, first-serve.
Monday’s public meeting will take place at Paris Elementary School, 1635 Paris St., in the gymnasium at 5:30 p.m.
The location for the next meeting will be announced later.