We’ll plead, but don’t make us and the rest of the city beg: Stop turning Aurora on its end to solve a problem that doesn’t exist with panhandlers just outside the city’s border near Cherry Creek Reservoir.
After two years and thousands of dollars in staff time and consternation, Aurora lawmakers this week agreed to annex the off-ramp of northbound I-225 at Parker Road so they, at long last, send police there to chase off panhandlers.
It’s a sorry waste of time, money and resources for something that is as much a part of urban life as is traffic, only with much stronger legal protection.
For years, the giant concrete island at this massive intersection has been a haven for panhandlers because of the endless traffic, relatively generous donors and the ease of how beggars can quickly go from car to car for cash without impeding traffic.
Much of the previous city council has fixated on this patch of real estate that Aurora had no control over because it belonged to Arapahoe County, the federal government and the state of Colorado. It was that odd hodgepodge of owners that made trying to grab the strip of road through annexation a two-year nightmare.
A few city council members have cited sustained and numerous complaints from residents about the panhandlers, which has not been the experience of just about anyone else. Such begging has become a ubiquitous part of every urban landscape in every major and even mid-sized city in just about ever country in the world. Even local police say the beggars cause relatively no problems and generate few complaints to them. And police don’t want to have to be responsible for handling traffic problems at a place that’s rife with them. Other than being able to mobilize police against the panhandlers — who at other Aurora and metrowide locations stubbornly return — annexing this off-ramp is an Aurora boondoggle.
“We’re annexing something with no tax base,” then-Councilman Bob Broom said in recent weeks in a plea to stop the scheme. “We’re going to end up making a lot of police and fire responses if there’s an accident. It’s a very busy interchange. Why take on something you don’t have to take on? I don’t think it’s going to solve the problem you’re trying to solve.”
Of course it’s not. First off, Aurora and every other municipality in Colorado, and the country, are just waiting for an inevitable smack-down from courts that are increasingly willing to uphold a right to beg for money as a form of free speech. It is.
And the complaints from Aurora City Council panhandling critics ring hollow as they encourage motorists to refrain from handing over cash to these panhandlers because they say it only fuels their rampant alcoholism and drug habits — rather than solve a problem of homelessness.
Besides making these comments, neither the city’s budget nor the city council’s record reflects anything but a cursory concern for the rampant and pernicious problem of homelessness in Aurora.
If city lawmakers would like to commit to mental health, shelter, housing and employment programs to address the complicated and challenging problem of homelessness in Aurora and the metro area, this annexation might make sense.
But as a stubborn and ill-conceived swat at what some city lawmakers see only as an annoying reminder of a serious problem that panhandling is only a symptom of, this annexation and eventual waste of police resources begs to be overturned while it still can.
“After two years and thousands of dollars in staff time …”
Staff would have been paid regardless … didn’t cost the city a cent.
Nothing is free. Time is limited. If staff has nothing better to do with their time, we don’t need them. I suspect there are more pressing issues but then, someone has to decide on priorities. Wonder what staff thinks on how their time is allocated or do they just look at assignments and say “It all pays the same” regardless of if their time is used wisely or wasted on pet project(s).
If annexation was what it took to curtail begging, and perhaps, accidents on highways and byways due to this, what some here at the Sentinel consider ‘commerce’, then I’m all for it. The Sentinel, in their misplaced care, must think India a wonderful place, for there are beggars every where you look, move.
gooey’s all for it! Hardly surprising given his endless stream of unintelligible boondoggling commentaries. God forbid Ebenezer gooey ever has to hit the streets hat in hand. Motorists would mistake him for a fire plug and keep going. He deserves it!
Get that intersection cleaned up already..
I’ve exited that offramp thousands of times. Never see more than one or two panhandlers at a time. The people who frost me aren’t the panhandlers, they’re the southbound Parker road hogs who crowd into the northbound lane to get one or two cars ahead when I’m trying to get to my green light going north. Now if Aurora could so something about those a——s!
you must not have been at that intersection that often..
No, just every day driving through for about the last eleven years. I saw you there begging. Gave you a buck once.
of course insult has to come. tuff behind the keyboard eh? anyway, I’ve been driving that path for last 25 years. over time, its gotten worse. there are times when police even has to bust up camps along the trail. everyone wants to pity those homeless folks. but what is going on at this intersection is not good.
“Even local police say the beggars cause relatively no problems and generate few complaints to them. “
I have a solution. Send them to your house. They will be happy and you will be happy and rest of us who don’t want them at Parker corner will be happy. Done.
Reality is no one wants to move people along, but it is the right thing to do, in this corner. Not always things end with “everyone happy” ending.
“Even local police say the beggars cause relatively no problems and generate few complaints to them. “