AURORA | Fair Share Jobs, Inc. had access to a City of Aurora-owned home for more than 16 months with the understanding they would be working to help address underemployment for black Coloradans.
But weeks after the nonprofit group stopped using the home and the revelation of the agreement they had with the city drew questions from Aurora City Council members, it’s unclear that Fair Share Jobs provided any substantial benefit to the City of Aurora in recruiting candidates for municipal work since 2014.
ZONED OUT
Fair Share Jobs used a Havana Heights home at 10901 E. Warren Ave. between September 2014 until late January of this year via a verbal agreement with city staff.
Fair Share’s departure from the home was ordered Jan. 27 — one day after city staff determined the nonprofit’s use did not fit with the home’s zoning. That Fair Share was in the home at all was a surprise to former City Councilwoman Molly Markert, whose ward encompassed the property.
“I was not privy to any agreement,” Markert said earlier this month.
A review issued Feb. 1 by Deputy City Manager Nancy Freed said city staff did not look into the zoning issue until Jan. 26.
Markert had stood before council early this month to say she had fielded a complaint about the potential zoning issue from resident Lori Flanagan back in September 2014. A review of previous study sessions regarding the policy for use of city-owned spaces for groups such as Fair Share showed that Markert did not raise the issue during a council meeting.
From October 2014 to January 2016, Aurora City Council and city staff devoted multiple hours across a handful of study sessions and regular meetings to crafting a policy to handle a group such as Fair Share Jobs wanting to use city-owned space, with council members unaware that the group was already using the home with no written agreement nor any official policy governing their use of the home.
ADDRESS WELL KNOWN
For however long it took council members past and present to learn of the nonprofit’s use of the home, anyone looking for Fair Share Jobs in Aurora would have easily found them at the corner of Warren Avenue and Joliet Street on Thursday afternoons and other assorted times.
Fair Share Jobs listed the Warren Avenue address in Aurora in multiple filings and even on board chairman James “Dr. Daddio” Walker’s business card. The Havana Heights home — 10901 E. Warren Ave. — is listed as Fair Share’s principal address on an IRS form, a filing with the Secretary of State’s office and on a Facebook posting from February 2015.
Fair Share’s use of the address apparently escaped the attention of council members, city staff and others when the group used it on their letterhead in their request to the city for use of the “vacant” office space.
Walker had previously told city staff that Fair Share intended to use the home on Thursdays for board meetings, but he later told Freed on Jan. 29 that the house was also used for occasional appointments to meet prospective job candidates. Walker also said that no one used the home between January and July 2015 due to an illness that forced board meetings to move to the rehab center he was in.
‘I FEEL DECEIVED’
Members of city council expressed their frustrations with the controversy over the home during their Jan. 30 workshop held in Broomfield, according to an audio recording obtained by the Sentinel via open records request.
“The house where the Fair Shares moved in, I actually think this (the workshop) was a better place to discuss that, to save us some embarrassment … I feel deceived, not only by the city staff for lying to us a month ago at the study session where they said the building had been vacant for four years, nobody has used it,” Ward II Councilwoman Renie Peterson said. “But to the organization that came in there and sat there in the background, listening to that, knowing very well they had been in there for a year and allowing us to think that they hadn’t.”
Ward IV Councilman Charlie Richardson — who filed an open records request to learn about how the deal was arranged — was disappointed that he and other council members were left to spend time deliberating over the matter without knowledge of the arrangement.
“Bob LeGare and I spent 30 minutes debating a freaking non-issue: ‘What would the neighborhood think if this group moved in?’ Made me look like a fool,” Richardson said. “And we didn’t even have to have that debate if someone on the city manager’s team had raised their hand and said, ‘Oh, by the way, you didn’t get the email, but they’ve been there for a year and a half.’ It just fried my bacon.”
Peterson said the fact Fair Share Jobs officials did not say anything about the previous arrangement during multiple council meetings dismayed her.
“Even if they’re a wonderful organization and they’re worthy, I look at them poorly now that they allowed us to believe it,” she said.
HOW IT HAPPENED
In a Monday email, Aurora parks director Tom Barrett said that while a license agreement was being drafted in September 2014, parks staff let Fair Share Jobs board members into the building for their planned Thursday meetings. After a few weeks, board members asked for a key to spare the parks staff from having to lock up after them.
“No direction by either the deputy city manager or the city manager was given to (parks staff) to allow temporary/periodic access to FSJ, as this level of approval process is routinely handled by departments,” Barrett wrote.
“This was done merely as an effort to support a service that might eventually benefit not only members of our community but perhaps even our local governmental agency,” Barrett wrote.
Freed said the internal auditor’s look into the facts of her Feb. 1 report on the use of the home is expected sometime this week.
LITTLE BENEFIT FOR CITY
According to Freed’s report, conversations between the Department of Public Works and the City Attorney’s office in July 2014 about the potential for Fair Share to use the Havana Heights home determined the agreement “would need to have a park purpose.”
The idea that Fair Share Jobs could help recruit applicants for “very hard to fill” seasonal parks, recreation and open space jobs was determined to be a suitable park purpose.
But in his email, Barrett said Fair Share Jobs has not helped in that regard.
“They have not yet routed any prospective candidates to the PROS Department,” Barrett wrote. “But the city is hopeful that they will be successful in recruiting of more minority candidates to vie for city positions.”
And even though Fair Share did not help with parks job recruitment, there was hope among some on city council that Fair Share Jobs could help recruit minority applicants for police and fire openings. The city has struggled with hiring enough minority officers to the majority-white force in the past decade.
At a Dec. 21, 2015, study session, Councilman Bob LeGare saw Fair Share Jobs having a nexus with the city in the potential to help bring more black police and fire candidates to Aurora.
Aurora police said they have been working with the nonprofit, but only recently.
Lt. Marcus Dudley, who works in the police chief’s office and handles many of the department’s recruitment efforts, said he recently spoke at a workshop hosted by Fair Share Jobs.
Last week, the group referred a person interested in a law enforcement career to him, Dudley said.
The most-recent academy class, which just started this week, didn’t include any Fair Share Job referrals, but Dudley said that was simply a function of the newness of the relationship with APD.
Aurora Civil Service Commission administrator Matt Cain said he was largely unaware of Fair Share Jobs and the hopes among some that the nonprofit would be forwarding prospective police and fire applicants to the city.
The Civil Service Commission’s mission is to evaluate and certify candidates for positions in the police and fire departments, as well as handle appeals for disciplinary actions.
— Reporter Brandon Johansson contributed to this report.