What a difference a year makes in Aurora.
This time last May, a small-and-mostly-gone-now part of the Aurora City Council was clappy-happy that Donald Trump was doing exactly what he promised he’d do if elected. He was rounding up thousands of brown immigrants and opening the throttle on local bogus claims that rogue Venezuelan death gangs must be dragged from Aurora, a city council Trump supporters said was under siege.
When nobody but Trump believed the clearly racist and xenophobic scam, local barkers dialed it back to just some parts of the city had been overrun by demon Tren de Aragua henchmen. Then it was just a couple of apartment buildings. When the facts came out, as they always do, it turned out that some nasty hoodlums, some from this country, some from others, might have had some ties with TdA, but mostly there were just two-bit criminals like ones that Aurora, like most cities, has dealt with for years.
Dial forward to yesterday.
In his State of the City Address on Tuesday, Mayor Mike Coffman talked about immigrants and refugees, but in a very different way. At an event where the mayor mostly gets to brag about the city, he chose to brag about how diverse the city is and how much effort it puts into creating a community that celebrates its differences, which truly come from all over the planet to live here.
“Twenty percent of the Aurora community was born outside the United States,” Coffman said.
Coffman has long been an avid proponent of not just accepting Aurora’s vast diversity, which has long been, or close to being, a majority-minority city, but embracing it. He grew up here and graduated from Central High School. As a congressperson who represented Aurora as part of his district, he learned Spanish. Much of the Ethiopian community here praises him and has campaigned for him as mayor.
In the 50 minutes or so Coffman talked to the packed ballroom at the Hyatt Regency on Colfax in north Aurora, he reflected on a city that sounded like the city we all live and work in.
Coffman took the time to shout out each fellow city lawmaker for projects they’ve focused on and, in his opinion, made serious progress with. Four of those lawmakers, Democrats from the opposing party, have been on the dais for only a few months.
Coffman lauded work done by Democrat Gianina Horton in working to remake parts of the old Lowry Air Force Base into a variety of housing that people can afford. He pointed to how the city took a 20-acre failed military parts factory and turned it into the hugely successful Stanley Marketplace in north Aurora.
“Just think what we can do with 116 acres,” Coffman said.
He lauded Democrat Amy Wiles for working with Republican Francoise Bergan on pushing through a long-overdue widening project for Gun Club Road in east Aurora. He applauded Democratic Councilmember Ruben Medina for tirelessly pushing through programs that reach out to the city’s children and teens with all kinds of opportunities they’d miss if no one went to the trouble.
He touted conservative Angela Lawson’s push for making youth violence prevention programs work and former GOP Councilmember Curtis Gardner’s efforts at finding ways for the city to help boost struggling businesses, bring in more entrepreneurs and fix broken streets and buildings. Everyone on the council got a nod for work that more often than not gets 10 votes these days.
Coffman said two projects truly stand out, however. He commended efforts made by Democrat Alison Coombs to ensure that Aurora rental properties are somehow inspected and unable to dissolve into the northwest Aurora apartment debacle that exploded into a nationally broadcast Trumpian dumpster fire. Blamed erroneously on Venezuelan gangs, in reality, it was the result of what Coffman himself once called “slumlords.”
Coffman also backed efforts by some lawmakers to push ahead with a years-long effort to rid the city of its slummy fence canyons, pointing to miles of dilapidated wooden fences along main corridors that really do look like hell or, “a third-world country,” as he put it.
Coffman extolled the new city council and its clear effort to push away from public cat-and-dog fights that for the past few years have been riveting and revolting at some point during almost every bi-weekly dais derby.
To be sure, this is still a city council quick to snip, snipe or have Bible verse throw downs from the dais, like that’s a thing. This is still a city council that argues loudly and often grumpily about rules regulating how they can argue in public.
But the examples Coffman made illustrating the progress Aurora has been making was almost restorative, harkening back to a time when city lawmakers argued loudly and mightily but still found a way to reach consensus, often overlapping party lines.
The story he told, however, most illustrative of real progress in the city focused on how he spends his weekends.
Coffman said he goes to Aurora’s nascent homeless shelter and rehab program, The Aurora Regional Navigation Campus, every Friday after work, usually staying the night and hanging out and helping the residents there.
Coffman was the leading force behind the large-hotel converted to a place where you have to get sober and find work to move from a cot, to a pod-like facility or even a private room.
For years, Coffman was steadfast in saying that the bulk of homeless people choose their predicament, often led there by drug or alcohol addiction.
For the past few months, Coffman has been listening closely to all kinds of people at the shelter. One man, Jim, wasn’t a drunk or druggie. He was a poor father of two who just couldn’t make enough money to make ends meet, and he lost his place to live.
Another woman, Tara, was like a shocking number of homeless people in the metro area who grew old and in some ways disabled and couldn’t make rent payments on Social Security alone.
Both of them, guests of his for the State of the City event, stood for applause as Coffman explained that, given the opportunity in a place like the Navigation Center, they could find a path forward and away from being just another homeless statistic.
Coffman later said Tara and Jim weren’t what he expected at the Navigation Center, but by his being there, and listening, he’s seen first-hand how infinitely complicated, and hard, addressing homelessness is — yet possible.
Possible is good, and it’s a long part of Aurora history. The city has always had plenty of challenges, but as Coffman pointed out, right now, the state of the city is strong.
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