AURORA | Aurora lawmakers are considering a plan to reduce the number of city boards and commissions, citing frequent vacancies as one justification for a reduction.
Under preliminary plans, the city could consolidate its 29 boards and commissions, which currently include 297 members.
During a Nov. 18 study session, council members discussed some ways to make the system more efficient without compromising citizen input.
City Manager Jason Batchelor highlighted that Aurora faces 56 current vacancies across its boards and commissions — nearly 20% of all positions. He said that while some boards have a quasi-judicial role in making decisions, others are purely advisory, as detailed by the city charter.
“The charter lays out that, unless specifically authorized, boards or commissions shall be advisory,” Batchelor said.
Mayor Mike Coffman and several council members expressed a need to review the current structure, calling it overly time-consuming for city staff and unwieldy.
Councilmember Alison Coombs suggested adopting models used by other cities, such as larger committees that meet quarterly, with subcommittees handling specific tasks in between.
The council tasked its Public Relations Committee with reviewing the boards and commissions. Staff will provide data on vacancies, meeting attendance and the time required to support each body.
Councilmember Curtis Gardner emphasized the importance of council involvement in shaping the changes.
“It’s the council’s job to make policy, not staff’s,” he said. “We want an honest opinion from staff, but the recommendations should come from the council committee,” he said.
The goal is to streamline the advisory structure while maintaining meaningful opportunities for public participation, Councilmember Françoise Bergan said.
“We don’t want to send the message that somebody’s board or commission is not important, but we don’t need all these different ones,” she said.
The Public Relations Committee will begin its review in the coming weeks and present recommendations to the full council.
Let’s call out the shenanigans out loud this is Jurinskys latest attempt to dismantle Auroras DEI office and if Aurora residents don’t wake up she will be successful. Let’s stand up for right and not let evil or wrong succeed.
Evil?!? Not at all. This proposal is about making the structure of voluntary and advisory roles much more manageable. The suggested structure, successfully used by many other cities, is a very good first step.
Person with the same thoughts as I have. She really should just resign. She’s done nothing but cause issues since she was put in office.
I support next to none of Councilwoman Jurinsky’s antics. That said, if this is an attempt to dismantle a DEI Office, one I don’t even know whether the City has, I would support that. Aurora has a long history of being progressive when it comes to having historically disavantage populations represented not only on Council and in the Mayor’s Office (see: our first woman Mayor, our plethora of female Council Members, and our Council Members of color, both black and brown. Additionally Aurora has had women and persons of color in high administrative positions from Deputy City Managers to Department Heads. I see no reason to have an office to increase administrative burden to address a problem which does not exist.
I’m all for making these commissions better, more efficient and productive. I’ve know folks on these commissions and because of what I’ve heard (and have seen when I visited some of them) I personally wouldn’t want to waste my time. I’m not sure Council really is interested in what the members of these commissions have to say anyway.
Many of these Commissions were created because past City Councils wished to get out of difficult discussions. They pretended that the Commissions would inform them so they, Council, could make informed decisions on thorny issues. The reality was that by creating these Comissions City Council simply avoided those issues and moved on pretending they had addressed whatever the issue of the day was and then they never really revisited the issues.
Its good to hear there’s at least awareness of the problem.
Some observations: First, the allegedly prestigous Citizens Advisory Budget Committee (CABC) meets monthly yet only gets 10 minutes to present its recommendations to City Council each September– often repeating itself year after year.
Second, there are zero qualifications to serve on CABC other than residency. Too many CMs fail to consider actual relevant experience when appointing members– which leads to poorly informed recommendations. Do we really want bartenders and healthcare professionals advising Council on money matters?
The current CABC model is to fully educate a group of interested citizens on how the City operates while ignoring the fact that most members are largely clueless in municipal finance, have them break into subcommittees to formulate their recommendations, and then have the subcommittees divide up the annual 10-minute presentation — which then the Council typically ignores.
Finally, The Citizen’s Engagement Academy largely replicates CABC in terms of educational content. If Council is interested in cutting the redundancy and waste, then axe CABC. If Council is sincere about having an budget advisory committee, then implement some actual qualifications and perhaps make the Academy a prerequisite to serving on CABC– in addition to having some meaningful finance or accounting experience.
But as Council allows only 10 minutes/year to hearing CABC’s recommendations, my recommendation today would be to axe CABC. That likely comes across as harmful to some but I would encourage them to ask what value is the taxpayer is actually receiving with the current CABC model? A handful get the prestige of listing their CABC membership as they pursue elected office while the other 99.99% get diddly squat.
I like the way you made your presentation. I think I can agree with you.
How about City Council NOT engaging in politics when appointing volunteers to a boards or commissions that are decision making more than advisory. Look at the disastrous results from some of your appointments to the very important Civil Service Commission back in 2020.
You appointed people whom ABSOLUTELY were totally ignorant of what the the commission was all about. And SHAME on you Mike Coffman you led the charge. But then again you are spineless anyway. Well, you got just what you deserved!
Here is another look at this. Most of the Boards take little money or staff time to operate properly. Many of them, as the CABC , help train future politicians in Aurora in an attempt to get them known and trained to the City Budget and/or operations. To me, that personal education is more important than the “ten minutes with Council”, which is an accurate statement. Council, historically, as Jeff Brown states, doesn’t listen to recommendations of CABC, unless they were already thinking about them.
Some Commissions as the Civil Service Commission are very expensive and unneeded. You want to build a couple of fire stations? Eliminate the CSC and return their chores back to the Departments and we citizens would save a few million dollars to help pay for them.
Publius” two comments above hit the nail exactly on the head on how we got to where we are with feelings about “DEI” and Commission accountability.
Couldn’t we use our own Elon Must to head up a DOGE, (Department Of Governmental Efficiency)? This is a way to build fire stations. Eliminating the Head Tax was and is good for small business and connecting building fire stations to the tax was silly and political at best.