Opponents of Aurora’s strong-mayor ballot proposal begin scrutinizing signatures

AURORA | Critics of an effort by Mayor Mike Coffman and others to increase the power wielded by Aurora’s mayor began Friday picking over petitions submitted to put the matter before voters.

The team spent hours around a table in the Aurora City Clerk’s Office, digitally copying hundreds of pages of signatures submitted by members of the public agreeing to support the proposed charter amendment.

It was the first step in an effort to find invalid signatures or examples of non-compliance among the 424 petition packets that deputy city clerk Cecilia Zapata said were submitted by the amendment’s sponsors.

“I’m relatively confident that next week we’ll get an indication of whether we have a substantive problem with them submitting the requisite number of valid signatures or if there are petitions that have been mishandled,” said Charlie Richardson, a former Aurora City Council member and former city attorney, and who hired the team.

Most of the language of the amendment pertains to eliminating the position of city manager and folding that person’s authority over city staffers into the position of mayor, who would also be able to veto City Council legislation.

Other parts of the proposal would add an at-large council member and reduce term limits for mayors and council members from three four-year terms to two, among other changes.

While supporters of so-called “strong-mayor” governments generally argue that folding the responsibilities of a city manager and mayor into a single position encourages leaner, more efficient city governments, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has been vocal in its opposition to the proposal, describing it as a power grab by Mayor Mike Coffman.

On July 25, Aurora’s city clerk declared that the sponsors of the amendment had submitted 12,198 signatures from registered voters in favor of the change — 181 signatures more than the minimum needed for the item to make the November ballot.

If opponents can chip away at that surplus by finding signatures that should be thrown out before the end of the 20-day protest period, they may be able to block the item from coming before voters this fall.

Cameron Pollard, who led the team, said they would be looking for “minor discrepancies” like damaged pages or similar handwriting on multiple entries that could indicate a single person trying to pass themselves off as multiple people.

For comparison, Zapata said the clerk’s process of verifying signatures focused on checking dates and whether the names and addresses of signatories matched information in the Colorado Secretary of State’s database of registered Aurora voters.

The city previously said the the date when the clerk’s office makes its final determination of sufficiency would depend on the outcome of protests and any litigation that could arise from the process.