Aurora’s $1.5 billion police and fire question

AURORA | Aurora police and fire officials rolled out a 25-year framework
designed to address the near-term and long-term building needs of the city’s public safety departments.

It isn’t cheap.

“Overarchingly, the plan totals $1.5 billion,” Deputy City Manager Laura Perry said during the city council meeting June 9. “This is an unconstrained financial plan. And again, 25 years.”

Likely to constrain the plan is where Aurora would get $1.5 billion, as the city heads into recent predictions of diminishing revenues and increasing needs across the city.

“This is the first of its kind in the city, and it plays a critical role in shaping our capital needs,” Perry said. “It serves as a strategic plan that not only assesses needs, but prioritizes them and outlines a financial framework for the next quarter century.”

The review evaluated more than 30 public safety facilities and is organized around three planning goals: short-term, or 10 years, mid-term, or 15 years, and long-term, or 25 years. It includes assessments of current space usage, operational deficiencies and the physical condition of each facility.

Engineers have conducted detailed inspections, rating buildings on a scale from “critical” to “good” based on four key components, Perry said. There is architectural integrity, site layout, structural soundness and electrical systems. 

Many of the city’s public safety buildings are 30 to 35 years old and in need of major upgrades, Perry said.

Key challenges outlined in the master plan include: aging infrastructure or buildings older that 30 years and showing signs of structural and operational deterioration, space and functional constraints or limited room for training, specialized services and new technologies, operational impacts or infrastructure shortcomings are directly impacting service delivery for police, fire, and emergency services, and shared facility inefficiencies or multi-purpose buildings that require design optimization to better support overlapping departmental needs.

The planning process included multiple visioning sessions and workshops with stakeholders across various city departments. On-site facility tours, stakeholder interviews and reviews of historical planning documents added depth to the data collection.

Growth forecasting was also a significant focus, estimating future staffing and space needs in light of the city’s expected population growth.

The final plan will be a comprehensive financial roadmap totaling $1.5 billion over a 25-year period. This estimate includes everything from minor upgrades to full facility replacements for the city’s police and fire departments.

City council members and public safety leaders will present individual segments of the plan in the coming months, breaking down how each department, including police, fire and 911, will be affected.

“This is going to take some years,” Perry said, “but now we have defined needs, defined projects we can talk to the public about.”

The city plans to “nest” different funding sources, such as impact fees, grants and the capital projects fund.

“Going to voters and getting some kind of bonds to fund, or start funding these projects, is going to be critical,” City Manager Jason Batchelor said. “So we’re going to be doing this over the coming months.”

Aurora Police 

Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain’s pitch for new and modernized police facilities described conditions as inadequate to meet the needs of the department of a rapidly growing city.

“We have 14 different facilities, all of them are, without question, aging and old,” Chamberlain said, talking about all of the buildings used by the Aurora Police Department. “Again, with the impact of the growth and the expectation of that growth in the City of Aurora, there definitely needs to be a modification.”

Among the changes Chamberlain hopes to see includes the creation and construction of a District Four facility in north Aurora, consolidation of special operations under one roof, renovation or reconstruction of existing stations, modernized headquarters with community-accessible lobbies, a secure and centralized property and evidence facility, separate and expanded training academies for police and fire, and an internal shooting range and dedicated parking structures.

“Out of the 305,000 calls for service,” Chamberlain said. “The Aurora Police Department handles approximately 255,000 of those calls for service. So again, a huge yoke of responsibility.”

The city is currently divided into three police districts, but there are significant gaps, Chamberlain said, particularly in the rapidly developing northeast end of Aurora. He said the department is recommending the construction and creation of a District Four patrol facility in the north. He said it is “not just a request, it’s a necessity.”

Chamberlain said he also plans to restructure districts based on geographic areas for more effective response times.

“As we look at this transformation of an organization, we look at the infrastructure to go with that,” Chamberlain said. “We are also going to look at how this map is set up. This map, the way the divisions are set up now, is going to be completely erased.”

Chamberlain said he also wanted to expand 911, so that police are not the ones taking on non-emergency calls involving mental health, and other forms of critical need that don’t require the police.

In an anecdote to underscore the dangers of coverage gaps, Chamberlain used the example of a fatal officer-involved shooting two weeks ago at the Parking Spot next to the airport, when an officer had to put out a help call after a struggle with a suspect, he said. 

“He had to wrestle with a suspect for almost four minutes by himself,” Chamberlain said. “He was struggling for his life. The first officers to arrive to help came seven minutes later, and that was actually Denver Police officers.”

Chamberlain said that infrastructure also needed to be updated, and that the makeshift nature of existing stations is not sustainable.

“District One was built in 1950; it was refurbished in 2002,” Chamberlain said. 

Both District One and District Two police stations were never intended to be police stations, but were instead set up and modified to serve as such. District Three, on the other hand, is not a standalone police station, but a combination of multiple assets, which include fire, 911 and a library, Chamberlian said.  

“District Two was never meant to be a police station; it was modified to be a police station,” he said. “It was once a bank. It is not set up in any way to sustain it.”

The headquarters were once a jail, which was modified to become the police headquarters, Chamberlain said. 

The decentralization of special operations and the risks associated with storing evidence in scattered locations are also unsustainable and require a secure and modern facility, he said. Units such as SWAT, canines and gang detectives are held in separate locations. 

“If you have poor evidence management, that is the Achilles heel of many, many law enforcement agencies,” Chamberlain said. 

There is one facility that holds all police equipment and logistics off-site at Nome Street venue, Chamberlain said. Five different facilities have all of the police’s property. If DNA, logistics and Niven information related to shootings and other incidents are misplaced, it can be costly to an organization that’s involved in litigation, he said.

Chamberlain also said he wants to separate the police and fire from sharing an academy, which was built and opened nine years ago at a cost of $29 million. 

“We are bursting at the seams,” Chamberlain said. “We have two academy classes that are there. The fire just started another academy class. It is packed in there.”

While he said he is supportive of the city’s investment in a joint facility, he said he wants the infrastructure to be updated and the two departments’ academies to be separated. 

“I know it sounds good to have this harmonious relationship with fire and all these joint things, but there are two very different businesses,” He said. “You have fire business and you have police business, and it is a very different occupation.”

Allowing the police force to operate sustainably enables the community to thrive, Chamberlain said.

The way a neighborhood is perceived and crime rates decipher housing costs and the comfort level of a community. Chamberlain said that incidents like national news reports falsely painting the image that Aurora is overrun by gangs do not help the community thrive. 

“Public safety, it is the backbone of community stability,” Chamberlain said. “Reputation matters.”

Aurora Fire

Aurora Fire and Rescue said their vision for infrastructure balances the need for much and the desire for only the best.

“We won’t settle for mediocrity,” Alec Oughton, Aurora fire chief, said,  “We really are striving for perfection every day to try and serve this community, save lives and protect property.”

Aurora Fire currently has 17 stations in Aurora and city officials have said recently it’s already lacking two stations, one in northeast Aurora and one in southeast Aurora.But as the population continues to grow, updates and new stations will be needed to keep up. 

“We’re a very capital infrastructure-heavy system, because we need to be both distributed and have the ability to concentrate our resources throughout the city,” Oughton said. “Over the project timeline, we have multiple projects,” within the 10-year window, 15-year window and the 25-year window, and they’re a combination of both new builds and remodels.”

Aurora is a large and sprawling city, encompassing three counties across 165 square miles. Denver is 153 square miles and has more than 40 fully staffed fire stations.

The average age of Aurora’s fire stations is 26 years, Oughton said, and some are already older than 50 years old. 

“That ripe middle age for a fire station where they’re due for some major renovations,” Oughton said that five stations are either close to or already beyond that half-century mark.

Aurora Fire and Rescue’s response times are about eight minutes, all in the 90th percentile.  It’s about the same as Denver.

“This is a process of both keeping up, and catching up,” Oughten said. 

Within a 10-year review and build window, both remodels and replacement stations will occur. Some on the existing site and some potentially on new sites, as well as new additions to the Fire Rescue footprint within the city of Aurora.

The two new stations being built would make up stations 18 and 19. 

Station 18 is located in Ward II and would cover Aurora Highlands and the Windler Development Block. Oughten said this could also “heal the rest of the system because of its proximity to E470,” and the accessibility to move North and South quickly. 

‘We’re planning a 15,000-square-foot fire station,” Oughten said. “We’re designing it so that it can house a double company, because we’re anticipating that future growth.”

The growth occurring out there is approximately 7% to 8% developed, and the fire department is already experiencing a demand for service. 

“I’ve heard numbers as high as 60,000 population expected just in that community,” Oughten said. “So we will have an emerging demand.”

“Response times right now are anywhere from 12 to 18 minutes,” Oughton said.,” he said. “And so that’s a little bit of a challenge for us to get out there and take care of that.”

Also planned is Station 19, which is the South Shore/Blackstone Station, near Smokey Hill and Powhatan. Oughten said he anticipates that this one will have a little larger footprint, and it will also be for a double company with an anticipated four bays for emergency vehicles. 

The immediate need is to protect valuable equipment.

“We have about $7 to $10 million worth of capital assets sitting outside,” he said. “With all the hail warnings, it could be a little bit of a challenge.”

Stations 6 and 8 will also need major remodels, Oughten said. Station 6, which is at Hampden Avenue and Chambers Road, would need to be replaced, and Oughten said the department would need to build a 17,000-square-foot facility. 

Station 8, across Chambers Road, was built in 1987 and is also due for an update.

“There’s new technology that can be integrated,” Oughten said. “We’re looking at population growth and operational needs. We had a consultant come in from the Center for Public Safety Excellence as we work through the last stages of our accreditation process, and he indicated that the only city he’s seen with a more diverse set of risks than the city of Aurora was Oakland, and that was because they had both an airport and a seaport.”

Police and Fire dispatchers

The 911 landscape is changing, and Aurora is working to adapt with it, city officials say. An increasing number of alerts come via text, not phone calls.

Aurora 911 Director Tina Buneta presented a roadmap for transforming how the city will continue to deliver emergency and non-emergency services.

The most significant requested expense for Aurora 911 is an $119.7 million Real-Time Operations Center, a centralized, tech-forward facility that would unite emergency communication systems, non-emergency service platforms and real-time data operations all under one roof. 

“We understand that if we want to continue elevating the level of service we provide, we have to make some changes systemically,” Buneta said.

The facility would be a new hub for Aurora 911, the city’s planned 311 services, a Real-Time Crime Center, traffic operations and an Emergency Operations Center for major incidents, she said.

There is currently a shifting landscape in emergency communications, Buneta said. Aurora 911 handles more than 300,000 calls annually, with 98% of these calls coming from mobile devices and only 2% from landlines. This reflects national trends as well. Voice calls are plateauing, she said, while data-driven alerts, including text messages, app-based requests and multimedia transmissions, are on the rise.

Text-to-911 usage in Aurora increased from more than 500 texts in 2020 to more than 6,700 in 2024, with projections indicating steady growth.

The department is introducing new technology this year, including real-time streaming capabilities, live translation, and transcription services, which aim to provide the same level of responsiveness to non-English-speaking residents as the city provides to English speakers. Buneta said the city is also adopting AI tools and automation to improve response times for low-acuity, high-volume calls.

Since 2020, Aurora has been expanding alternative response models, enabling 911 to dispatch more than just police, fire, and EMS, Buneta said. This includes growing partnerships with services like 988 for mental health crises and planned expansion into a 311 system for all other city service needs.

“Our goal is to stand up a 311 program,” Buneta said. “So what we want is a situation where the members of our community know 911, for emergencies, 311, for everything else, and we partner with 988, for mental health services that are not safety-threatening.”

To make this happen, Buneta said they will need to centralize communication pathways, unify data systems, and improve real-time collaboration between city departments, ranging from police and fire to housing and public works.

The proposed Real-Time Operations Center would be a 120,000-square-foot facility designed for scalability and shared use. Each participating entity would have dedicated space, along with shared training labs, collaboration zones and centralized data systems.

Phase Two of the project would include a dedicated Emergency Operations Center with a Joint Information System to coordinate responses and communications during citywide or regional emergencies.

Buneta also requested an IT Infrastructure Resiliency Plan, to move systems to a cloud, improving cybersecurity and ensuring continuous uptime, even during power failures or other disruptions.

While still in the planning and scoping phase, the estimated cost for Phase One is $119.7 million, not including land acquisition. The city is also working to determine costs for the IT Resiliency Plan.