There is little time for a new Aurora City Council to reflect on how liberal and progressive candidates swept last week’s municipal election. The needs are urgent and compelling.
On Nov. 4, Aurora voters decisively removed far-right Republicans Danielle Jurinsky and Steve Sundberg from their council seats.
Republican Amsalu Kasaw was hand-picked last year by key Republicans on the city council to replace former GOP strategist Dustin Zvonek, who resigned his seat. Amsalu faithfully supported the Republican council agenda at every turn and vote, and he was also passed over by Aurora voters.
The election now gives progressives six votes on the 10-member council, and potentially the votes of some of the more moderate city lawmakers remaining on the dais.
What it means is that the new city council can reverse or modify far-right policies that are seriously destructive to the community. These are policies and laws that don’t even come close to being representative of the vast majority of people who live here.
As veteran political strategist Floyd Ciruli pointed out this week in an essay, Aurora, as part of Arapahoe and Adams counties, has moved from voting about 40% “Democrat” in 2000 to about 60% last year. About two out of three voters in the Aurora region voted against Donald Trump in 2024, in what was heavy voter turnout.
The now-gone city council members who backed the Trump agenda, and even drew Trump to Aurora last year, are not representative of the vast, culturally and racially diverse community that makes up the state’s third-largest city.
Numerous policies and legislation enacted by the past Republican city council, similarly, do not mirror the philosophies and attitudes of the majority of unaffiliated, moderate and left-leaning people who live here. Many of these changes made during the last four years ran counter to solid research, facts and data.
Changes that shut down the city’s critical and successful domestic violence court program were based on the factless political whims of partisan lawmakers legislating far-right ideology, not the needs of some of the city’s most vulnerable victims.
Similarly, the Republican council has sought to undermine the Aurora courts’ public defender program, creating a constitutional and ethical quagmire.
The next city council should immediately review the gaffes and determine whether the decision can be reversed without causing further strife for victims and the community.
Likewise, the current city council eliminated the city’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs as part of a national obsession among far-right conservatives fearing such programs might erode opportunities for white people. In reality, one of the most important benefits of DEI programs in the workplace is simply helping everyone understand the needs and challenges of minority and non-minority city employees, stressing courtesy and civility, qualities noticeably lacking on the city council dais.
Similarly, Aurora businesses desperately need the city’s help in countering the false narrative perpetuated by President Trump, Jurinsky and others on the city council that the city is overwhelmed by Venezuelan gangs and rogue immigrants. Before this, Aurora has long been a community that not only supports its diversity and immigrant communities, but it boasted about them.
Aurora businesses also need help pushing back against a generational wave of online ordering, destructive tariffs imposed by Trump and skyrocketing insurance and utility rates.
This year, after an astounding amount of personal council drama, city lawmakers foolishly curtailed a $2 per-employee-per-month head tax on businesses. The tax was created decades ago to help fund city roads and other infrastructure businesses depend on but local residents pay for. Seen mostly as a nuisance tax for almost all local businesses, it drew in $6 million a year. That was painfully cut out of city coffers, which now must result in service cuts or new taxes.
City lawmakers should immediately reinstate the reasonable levy and use the proceeds to support local businesses through marketing or public safety campaigns and projects.
While so many needs will vie for city council action almost immediately, the priority must be to address the critical problems plaguing the Aurora Police Department.
The state imposed a consent decree against the city and its police department in November 2021. The decree determined after an extensive investigation that the department exhibited “patterns and practices” of using excessive force, especially against people of color. The department has drawn international attention and scorn for hiding and accommodating what is clearly a small number of inept or malfeasant cops, tarnishing the entire 700-person department and creating real fear in the Aurora community.
While it appears the department has made real progress in providing for improved transparency and training in the department, the reform efforts demand much more than what the police department has so far delivered.
Part of the problem has been outgoing city council members who have pandered to some police factions, pushing back against the depth and speed of mandated police reforms.
For years, the Sentinel, area elected officials, Attorney General Phil Weiser, numerous community groups and some city lawmakers have insisted that a truly independent oversight structure be implemented into the Aurora police system.
The new city council should waste no time in researching these oversight groups in police departments across the country. City lawmakers should determine what oversight structure best serves residents and implement the change as quickly as possible.
Finally, Aurora is a large city without an independent audit component, something that has served Denver residents and taxpayers handsomely for decades.
For now, city lawmakers should appoint review teams to scrutinize past spending decisions, contracts and board accommodations to ensure they were ethically and legally created. The current city council has meddled in a number of boards and commissions that affect public housing and development companies, as well as pacts creating lucrative contracts with billboard sign projects, which, previously, have been non-starters in Aurora for decades.
The list of projects and decisions during the past four years that demand scrutiny is long and foreboding. But an electorate that much more closely represents the community must work to create a government the vast majority of Aurora wants, not a government without merit imposed on it.
As one of the 49% plurality of voters who are Unaffiliated and as someone who endorsed a Republican (Jurinksy), a Democrat, (Wiles) and an Independent (Gomes), I disagree 1000% that further police reform or oversight is needed or is the city’s #1 issue. You yourself admit real progress has been made. What percentage of the population would actually benefit by more?
The police chief is severely constrained by an inadequate budget. As is the fire chief and public works director. Unfunded changes and further oversight are pointless when the city can’t fund its way out of a wet paper bag,.
FACT: The outgoing council resorted to selling $35 million in new debt to simply maintain the growing street network. Not added capacity on Gun Club — just repaving and resealing mostly. And the residential street network has grown much faster than retail, dining and entertainment. The financial impact is severe and growing.
FACT: The outgoing council also closed three facilities due in part to their predecessors deferring maintenance for decades. Was selling a golf course next? What maintenance is being deferred in 2025, 2026 2027, etc.?
The prior council also committed the city to giving away future revenue as part of the Colfax revitalization. Needed? Yes. Financially sound? HELL NO!
I suspect the 49% plurality would want council to prioritize public safety followed by road maintenance and capacity. All depend on fixing the revenue problem. With a retail tax base that lags the state average by 14% and Denver’s by 59%, the highest and best use of the council’s time and energy is to focus on a strategy to boost retail and dining activity by 14% without giving up any more tax incentives that the city can’t afford.
There’s $45 to $50 million in additional annual tax revenue just sitting on the table awaiting execution and of a serious strategy by city council.
I’ve proposed that council seek to exit the Denver SCFD at the next reauthorization and form a functionally equivalent district with no change to the cultural tax rate. That would free up over $8 million per year to be invested in revitalizing culture, the arts, entertainment and retail/dining activity in Aurora— something that would certainly benefit ALL residents rather than the very, very small minority who fail to follow a lawful command by the police and then potentially suffer adverse unlawful consequences.
You “suspect” that the 49% of unaffiliated voters would agree with you. From what data or “FACTS” did you decide this? That speculation is far beyond being arrogant. It’s the same assumptive arrogance that got the far-right trumpers resoundingly voted out of office. Voters did that, including the unaffiliated. Full stop.
I suspect that your real issue is with the APD being held accountable for its actions. You really should have made your last sentence your first, so we could get down to the brass tacks.
Please do a favor to ALL Aurora residents by bringing your long-winded 💡 to the new city council meetings where they can be heard and judged and just maybe voted on down the road.
Its so easy to insult a person and call them arrogant while hiding behind an alias. And attacking a moderate Independent seems a lot like lining up in a circular firing squad but hey, that’s just my opinion.
Also, I never voted for Trump. What I have done for five years now is question how APD can ever achieve and maintain discipline while the Chief is under severe budgetary pressure and the resulting “we make do” approach to discipline he and his predecessors have been forced to live with. You can google “Jeff Brown Aurora 9/20/2020” and read my initial piece if you’d like.
Where’s the left’s financial solution? People believe the Police Chief and City Manager have a bottomless checkbook for internal affairs, lawsuits, training, oversight, infinite bodycam analysis, recruiting new officers and more important that they have no resource challenges each and every time they face a decision on severe discipline. Its not like they can just call up the union hall and request that they send over a new fully trained officer because the Chief just fired one. Or that he has a bench of reserve officers on stand by.
How can a Police Chief be held accountable when he’s given a thoroughly inadequate budget? As I said in 2020 “bad apples thrive when they see leaders cutting corners on discipline.” The root cause to the cut corners is not within APD or in the City Manager’s office. Funding is squarely on City Council.
So long as the City can’t fund its way out of a wet paper bag, more police oversight will accomplish very little.
I appreciate this eyes-wide-open, straight forward editorial about what the past city council has done to our city and what our new city council needs to do quickly to set things right. Thank you!
As do I! The editorial was sharp and to the point with no fluff. The AS has a better pulse on the city than the current council which takes its orders from trump and not Aurora residents.
Typical–when his team is in the minority, Perry and the Sentinel staff argue that “democracy” involves “vigorous debate.” When his team is in the majority, he argues that they need to steamroll their agenda and no debate or discussion is required. How Marcusian.
Police oversight always becomes a political football where we have people with agendas that have little to do with the functioning. The consent decree was never needed and came out of gross exagerations by Attorney General Weiser. The City paid out millions for policies that mirror the state statutes that were passed in knee jerk response to George Floyd. Those policies are actually harmful and damage the ability to police well and to recruit good officers. The problems in police departments continually come down to poor leadership. Poor leadership doesn’t look at real problems and find answers. Poor leadership uses favoritism to run things without regard for real public service. Poor leaders are almost always smooth talkers who are liked by much of the public. Confucius said words to the effect “A man with smiling countenance and glib tongue seldom has the public interest at heart”. Without regard for facts, Weiser seized upon the opportunity to make everything racist and to make himself a hero with a political future. Look at the incidents that are occurring. They are not racist. The few things cited by Weiser that did indicate racism were isolated cases that any decent chief would have addressed. Finding a real chief instead of a politicians is a challenge. Look at all of our politics. We get people out to polish their careers or people who just want to beat the other side. They are not people who care about better and fair service to the public. The consent decree is a joke and a waste of money. APD has had poor leadership for a long time, as have most police departments. Man is flawed and he uses the same system of picking “yes men” and people he likes for jobs. Merit often has little to do with it and the guy who pushes the bosses for better training, better equipment, and better service to the public becomes a wackamole. The people who speak out in a police organization are systematically negated by the administration. The system rewards those who keep quiet and support the boss no matter how wrong he may be. The people who care and try to improve things are weeded out or muzzled. Back to my constant effort to achieve justice for the “pistol whipper”. When I filed an Internal Affairs Complaint against those who created a completely dishonest investigation, I gave copies of the business video and the IA complaint to City council and also to a police union rep. I told the rep to show the video to the officers in the department. Only one jury has seen the video. He told me that he had only a couple years left on the department and basically that it was dangerous to his career to show the video. Such is the way in the department. Since the complaint was filed during the tenure of Mr. Schlanger, the consent decree monitor, I told him that he should find out why there was no investigation. He would only say “they looked at it” after checking. No answer. Such is the credibility of the consent decree. The same goes for Chief Chamberlain. He is aware of the complaint that implicates his second in command, Juul. No transparency. No honesty. I believe in both. I believe that the public should see what goes on. I believe the press should see what goes on. I used to think that that would protect us. Unfortunately, everything has become so corrupt and political that you can’t expect any moral indignation or ethical correction. But we have to keep trying. We cannot succumb to the absolute moral collapse that is becoming normalized by our politicians at all levels.
APD has a serious training problem. That comes back to police leadership. Even though Chief Chamberlain has helped morale and does some good things, he, like most chiefs, apparently knows little about use of force. That isn’t unusual. Police trainers have been saying the same thing for a long time. The training stinks. The popular ideas put forward by the public also hinder police work. A chief will buckle under and not have officers carry batons or use shields because it looks too aggressive. Meanwhile, many suspects or citizens will die unnecessarily because the officer does not have intermediate tools that could have prevented the deaths. The poorly trained and poorly equipped officers, who are often unreasonably scared, shoot and kill unarmed people. So, the seemingly well intentioned ideas of the public often cause more problems than they address. The well intentioned are helping to kill people unnecessarily.
The city is incapable of being transparent. I told Council that they should open it all up to a public meeting where everyone who had ideas should debate them. The public should be allowed to see the debate. All sides should be allowed to publicly thrash out ideas. It would be dangerous for the City. The incompetence and lack of any real ideas would be exposed.
No power structure wants to be exposed or to give up its power.