File Photo by Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado
Aurora’s long quest to determine what the city needs and wants has finally produced a solid answer.
It needs about $2 billion worth of roads, improvements and additions to this sprawling community of almost 400,000 people.
After years of study, outreach and number-crunching, city officials have assembled a sweeping catalog of infrastructure and capital improvement demands that reflect both the reality of a fast-growing city and the voices of the people who live in it.
Called Build Up Aurora, it is an impressive body of work.
Through persistent surveys, public meetings and outreach to a wide cross-section of residents, Aurora officials have created a roughly $2 billion list of projects that stretches from please-hurry street repairs to expansive new recreation amenities and even a re-imagined police department.
The challenge is juggling a data-driven blueprint rooted in community input as well as years of deferred maintenance coming due all at once.
City officials have wisely acknowledged what should be obvious but often goes unsaid in civic planning: Not everything on the list is going to get built, and certainly not at the same time. The so-called “unconstrained” plan is exactly that. It’s a full accounting of needs, not a promise of delivery.
Residents and city leaders behind the plan have been clear that the next step is prioritization, grouping projects and determining which, if any, might be eligible for outside funding such as grants.
That realism is essential. Because the financial landscape Aurora faces is harsh.
Federal grant money, once buoyed by pandemic-era spending and infrastructure packages, is drying up quickly under the Trump administration. At the same time, Colorado faces a significant budget squeeze, limiting the state’s ability to help. Aurora itself is not immune to those pressures, and sales tax receipts reflect that.
All of that points to a stark reality. Aurora residents and businesses should expect to pay for most of what gets built.
The numbers are not trivial.
Spread evenly across Aurora’s roughly 400,000 residents, a $2 billion price tag amounts to about $5,000 per person. Add financing costs from bonds, and that figure climbs closer to $7,500. Look at it by household — roughly 150,000 across the city — and the burden rises to about $13,000 per family, before interest, depending on how projects are financed over 10 to 20 years.
Even assuming the list is pared down, the cost remains significant.
For all the surveys, meetings and outreach, the city still lacks one essential piece of information: understanding what actual voters will actually approve when faced with real costs.
There is a crucial difference between asking some residents what they want and asking many, who vote, what they are willing to pay for. Public meetings tend to attract the engaged and the interested. Surveys capture preferences, not commitments.
Neither are substitutes for rigorous, scientific polling that tests voter appetite under realistic financial scenarios.
Aurora’s own history underscores the risk of skipping that step.
Voters have, at times, shown strong support for major bond issues, such as recent school funding measures. But they have also rejected critical infrastructure proposals, even those that did not require new taxes. The city’s track record with mercurial voters is inconsistent, even unpredictable.
Compounding that uncertainty is the broader economic pressure facing residents. Property taxes are already straining many households, with little relief in sight. That leaves sales taxes as one of the few viable tools for raising revenue. That’s an option, however, that makes local businesses, already navigating a challenging economy, cringe.
Aurora cannot afford to craft a proposal it believes is reasonable, only to watch voters turn it down because the price tag, timing or mix of projects misses the mark.
The solution is neither complicated nor unprecedented. Before finalizing any bond package, the city should convene a committee of residents, business leaders and community stakeholders tasked specifically with commissioning and analyzing independent, scientific polling.
This group needs to ask not just broad questions about priorities, but detailed testing of trade-offs.
Which projects matter most? How much are voters willing to pay? How do different financing options affect support? What combinations of projects are viable, and which are not?
Aurora has done the hard work of identifying its needs. It has built a thoughtful, comprehensive plan grounded in community input and fiscal awareness.
But without clear insight into voter behavior, that plan risks becoming an expensive exercise in wishful thinking.
We’ve seen these senarios play out time and time again. Infrastructure maintenance is included in city budgets. But liberal governments borrow that money to pay for their ever growing welfare programs; including caring for homeless and illegals. Then when city infrastructure becomes neglected , our government tells us we need a tax increase if we want to fix our badly neglected roads, etc. They know that their citizens are unlikely to vote to increase taxes to pay for more welfare programs, so they shift money from basic maintenance budgets to social programs and then ask for tax increases to cover infrastructure maintenance that has been neglected for years.
I know Jurinski still has her tentacles out, causing stirs, like releasing the info on the moron councilperson who got caught driving while drunk. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think he has a tongue-lashing coming, just not from Jurinski, wbo served as a huge pain-in-the-rear on the council. It struck me that her most notable move, when she wasn’t denigrating others or the city, was to bully several other councilmembers through vile and profane emails to vote to repeal the Occupational Privilege Tax that brought in over $6MM per year. The dumbest part of the repeal of the tax was knowing that a shortfall was coming , while needs were growing and still not suggesting or finding a mechanism to replace it. So, no matter how many are clamoring for her to run for a different position, I think she should stick to serving drinks in her bar. She sure never understood that council members actually solve problems. Oh, and thanks for the $6MM hole in the budget, Danielle!
Before trying to raise our tax rates, the Aurora City Council needs to answer 4 specific questions with absolute total candor:
(1) How far below the regional average is Aurora’s retail activity per resident today, compared to the 2016 benchmark when it lagged the average of Colorado cities by 14% and Denver by 59%? (Underlying cause: We have almost no visitor spending contributing to our retail/dining economy while sales tax fuels city services).
(2) What would the city’s financial gain look like if retail/dining activity moved up to the average of Colorado cities? If Aurora is still down 14%, rising to average would come with a $45 million/year bump in sales tax revenue. So achieving this isn’t preferable to raising the tax rates? I know some are locked in to raising the rates. You might want to rethink your logic.
(3) What would Aurora’s slice of the REGIONAL performing arts market look like if the city had a market share commensurate in size with Aurora’s share of the metro Denver population? In other words a moderate, balanced share of roughly 13% vs. the negligble share today.
(4) How much tax is collected in Aurora by the Denver Scientific and Cultural Facilities District and what percentage is returned as grants to entities in Aurora? The Denver SCFD refuses to disclose its collections by city but it can be extrapolated from the city’s financials. It’s estimated that less than 10% of the $8 million collected is returned. I don’t hear anyone defending this scam — but no elected leaders are proposing a fix either. Is it just easier for them to convince us that we’re not being scammed — or that Aurora isn’t worthy of nice things?
The Aurora City Council is short on political courage and would allow the SCFD Ponzi scheme to continue for another 12 years if people don’t demand action prior to the next reauthorization. Ditto our representatives at the state capitol.
Keep the .1% rate for cultural facilities but invest much the money in revitalizing Aurora with a world class performing arts complex and entertainment district so retail/dining can come up to average thus boosting sales-tax collections $45 million per year or higher. Yes, a steep goal and one that can’t be accomplished overnight. But I challenge anyone to put a better, more politically viable plan on the table.
With a dedicated replacement for the Denver SCFD, City Council could triple the grant amounts awarded to the Fox and the handful of smaller Tier 3 grantees in Aurora, and still dedicate 70% of the tax collected to new cultural facilities. It’s amazing the lack of interest among the political class in doing this.
The Denver SCFD collects over $8 million per year in Aurora— and we have the Fox Theater and surrounding blight. Ponzi scheme straight up. Where are our local elected leaders? You can’t drive past the Fox Theater and then say they’re nurturing a vibrant city. They will continue to turn a blind eye to Denver’s economic sodomy of Aurora– if we allow them.