AURORA | City of Aurora employees are on track to enjoy Juneteenth — the annual celebration of the end of slavery in the U.S. — as a paid holiday this year, following a 6-5 council vote in favor on Monday.
Mayor Mike Coffman broke the tie in favor of adding June 19 to the list of paid city holidays, but to compensate, cutting a paid day off following Thanksgiving.
Council members Alison Coombs, Curtis Gardner, Juan Marcano, Ruben Medina and Crystal Murillo voted against the move after Marcano argued in favor of recognizing Juneteenth as a paid holiday without cutting the day after Thanksgiving.
The proposal to cut the post-Thanksgiving holiday was consistent with a suggestion by Coffman that failed to gain traction at the council’s Feb. 7 study session.
On Monday, council conservatives said they supported the celebration of Juneteenth but were reluctant to give city employees an 11th paid holiday when certain departments already have a backlog of work.
“Are we here to serve the people, or are the people here to serve us? Because we would have 11 after this,” Coffman said to director of human resources Ryan Lantz. “I support the Juneteenth holiday, but I think the job of our public employees is very important, and taking another day out of work at this time is not appropriate.”
Marcano, on the other hand, reiterated that he saw Americans as “overworked and underpaid” and said that “as the public sector, we should be setting the example, rather than overworking and underpaying our public servants.”
Juneteenth was made a paid holiday for most federal employees in 2021. While Aurora’s council previously paid tribute to the holiday via proclamation, employees were not given the day off. Colorado has also recognized it as a “ceremonial holiday” in the past, but it is not a paid day off.
Lantz argued that adding Juneteenth to the calendar as a paid holiday could help improve employee recruitment and retention, endorse work-life balance and honor diversity within Aurora — one of the priorities of the consent decree reached between the city and the state attorney general’s office last year,
“Aurora is one of the most diverse cities in the country, and as such, we should be leaders in honoring this significant moment in American history,” Lantz said. “It is an acknowledgement of the past challenges and triumphs of African-American people and a gesture of our continued alliance in the fight for liberation and healing.”
A signpost marking our journey.
Who’d a thunk a city job would come with so much baggage?
The HR top- dog Ryan Lantz, laments and presents his analyses about the employee retention and recruiting, and wants to make sure Juneteenth is a paid holiday incentive.
It’s not that tough to see why cities, Aurora in particular has a hiring problem. Most employees want to work at doing whatever they enjoy, have some specific training in and good at. Most quality employees that have solid job skills look at the culture of where they will be working. They do their homework. In Aurora its clear in the city hiring a culture class, although somewhat subliminal, will be required. What’s funny, the city experts don’t seem to understand, in fact clueless, not every employee is suited or really that interested in manufactured political social justice being shoved down their throat. So they go to work someplace else, someplace that PC correctness as a woke religion, is not something identified critical. We all know there is sophistication in job hunting. The repeated signals city council members like Juan Marcano, send, it’s all important, more than anything to accelerate city sanctioned highfalutin political correctness. And until that gets fixed, potential sound employees are going to continue to drive on by the cities HR front door. A Juneteenth day, another city paid holiday, really solves nothing.
sounds as if you just have issues in general sir
Holidays like this are fine with me. I would suggest though that it be in lieu of some other ‘holiday’ that has outlasted it’s usefulness? Gotta be something that it could take the place of.
As I understand the matter this holiday is in lieu of the previous unnamed holiday of the Friday after Thanksgiving, the Black Friday holiday.
I suppose Columbus Day is on its way out before too long. Seems the direction society is moving.
Columbus Day was replaced with Cabrini Day last year.
Racist
There is one key point missing from this story: NO outreach was done to City Staff who are directly affected by this decision. Last fall HR was considering changing the dental plan and sent out a survey to all City Staff. Why is something so minor worthy of checking with those affected, but something like breaking up the Thanksgiving Holiday is decided in a vacuum? Eleven elected officials changed the benefits for 2,600+ employees without any consultation.
Very Salient observation.
For Marcano to say that US workers are overworked and underpaid is a complete joke in the most affluent society ever in the World.
He’s a bad joke and the folks in Ward IV who elected him ought to be ashamed of themselves. I hope they see this by the next election..
It’s his socialist nature that allows his mouth to say such silly things without much thought. It’s the robust economy that allows the workers to have any sort of wages much less holidays.
There’s absolutely no reason they couldn’t have given that day and also kept the day after Thanksgiving. An extra day off never hurt anyone.
Making city employees use a PTO day to make Thanksgiving a 4-day weekend is a good way to piss everyone off. We have fewer public holidays than almost everywhere, why not just add Juneteenth without taking a day away somewhere else?