If there’s one rule that’s been faithful in all the years I’ve watched and written about Aurora, it’s that you can’t make up stuff that tops the reality of life in A-town.
The last couple of weeks have been a perfect example of that.
Winning the 2024 Award for Life is Stranger Than Fiction is the never-ending trial of Robin Niceta. This truly is a story that keeps on giving.
If you recently came to this planet, Niceta is the former Arapahoe County social worker who apparently became infuriated with Aurora Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky two years ago. At the time, Niceta was dating Aurora’s former police chief, Vanessa Wilson. Jurinsky appeared on a far-right radio talk show and badmouthed Wilson, who was running headfirst through the city’s painful police reform, a show unto itself.
An investigation revealed that Niceta, acting on her own, faked a report on a tip line, accusing Jurinsky of abusing her son.
The false report prompted an investigation about Jurinsky, which eventually turned into an investigation about Niceta for faking the report. That was almost two years ago.
Convicted earlier this year for falsifying the report, Niceta has been in and out of court, also accused of faking brain cancer, complete with a fake New Mexico doctor she invented that supposedly supplied faked brain x-rays. Despite being convicted, Niceta can’t seem to collect her sentence. Last month, she appeared in court to have justice meted out to her. Unexpectedly, her lawyer didn’t show, calling in on a speaker phone and explaining that he had become unexpectedly ill with the kind of thing that makes it so you can’t leave your house — safely.
All of the sordid details were captured on the judges’ speakerphone last month, and as if it were just part of the show, Niceta’s sentencing was postponed until last Friday.
Well, of course Niceta’s lawyer missed court again, unexpectedly and without warning. Jurinsky, having pursued justice this far was undone.
“I’m having a f*****g nervous breakdown,” Jurinsky told Sentinel reporter Max Levy. “and you can quote me on that.” Well, of course he did. Tune in next month for the continuing saga.
Meanwhile, in another part of the Aurora Enchanted Forest, the Aurora City Council’s animal instincts played out.
You’ve no doubt read in this very space before the foibles of Mayor Mike Coffman, aka “Homeless Mike.”
That’s the moniker celebrity Denver TV reporter Shaun Boyd bestowed on hizzoner three years ago when he pretended to be homeless for a week and sleep among the tented and untented along the Colfax corridor.
The Sentinel, homeless experts and other media derided the stunt as unethical because he never told any of the people he encountered that he was really the mayor of Aurora, and he ould get an Uber the hell home at any time. He did, however, tell Channel 4, so there would be plenty of B roll as he retold his amazing story of having slept outside with homeless people for an entire week and lived to tell about it.
Not only did he survive, he told Boyd after day seven, or maybe it was six, whatever, Coffman told the camera he’d learned all the secrets to this homeless problem thing. He found out that almost all of those people with serious drug and alcohol addictions living on the streets, except for the ones who just have debilitating mental illness and no addiction issues, are indeed alcohol and drug addicts, except for the ones with debilitating mental illness and no addictions issues.
But Coffman learned a bigger secret he shared with Boyd: They “choose” to live on the streets, behind dumpsters, in parks and under cars because that way they do not have to face their addictions, except for the ones with debilitating psychiatric problems and no addiction issues.
Coffman figured out that the problem is that homeless people don’t have jobs. And they don’t have jobs because they don’t want one. They want addictions instead. It’s all a matter of making wrong choices.
And that launched Coffman’s great plan for Aurora’s homeless people. He returned to city hall and told everyone that the secret to fixing all this is to hustle them out of where they sleep at night.
That was three years ago.
Sure, even after the city keeps evicting homeless campers from their campgrounds, they set right back up someplace else around town, but they’ve moved some. Progress.
Three years into spending piles of tax dollars doing the Hooverville Shuffle, Coffman stayed home and came up with another keen idea: Coffmanville. Why not spend $40 million on buying an old Aurora hotel and turning it into a Mecca for homeless people that just need to choose work over whiskey and meth, or fentanyl? The city just happened to have a spare $40 million lying around in federal dollars.
Voila! Problem solved. So by next year, the old Crowne Plaza Hotel, tucked away between Interstate 70 and Denver’s Montbello neighborhood, far, far away from any Aurora neighborhood, will become a “Work First” dream-come-true for all the thousands of homeless people who will suddenly realize they’ve just been making bad choices. Coffman believes they’ll choose work for one of a few dozen rooms at the inn.
I can’t imagine why no one has figured this out before, but maybe no one asked homeless people like Coffman has. In fact he told reporters this week that he asked some homeless people about his plan and they liked it.
So, despite the gnashing of teeth on spending real money on a real hotel that technically is part of Aurora, the deal is done, and homelessness will soon be solved.
A far easier sell last week was spending a whopping $50 million on a shelter for homeless animals. No, real animals, like dogs and cats.
Other than cranky “quit spending” Councilperson Curtis Gardner, city lawmakers who have backed shooing away homeless people are totally on board with spending even more on a place for unwanted dogs and cats.
The City of Pets Before People will not only create a Mecca for the unhoused on four legs, they won’t be forced to get a job to stay at the Aurora Animal Inn.
Next up? It looks like Aurora lawmakers have figured out a way to end shoplifting, just like they did car theft and homelessness
I’m not making this up.
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Must be nice projecting your “truths” to those of us who have lived here since the 70s …
many of us are now in our 70s … it’s far less safe in present day Aurora then in past years … you see we can’t move as well to escape the current perils you consistently blame conservatives for.
Blame is a hatred you can’t seem able to unhinder yourself with.
It prevents honest assessments of things that affect us all.
Check yourself …
“I can’t imagine why no one has figured this out before…” Actually, some people have. Aurora’s own Ready to Work. Denver’s StepDenver. And Colorado Rescue Mission are a few of them. These successful programs supersede the perpetually failed Housing First model to serve those who want/need help to build independence and a sustainable future.