So here’s the problem. The people who lead the city don’t have the same priorities as do the people who live in the city — at least not when it comes to getting around town.
Each year, three things regularly happen. The city surveys Aurora residents about what’s up and what they think the local government should be up to. Also, the city makes a to-do list and sets the annual budget to make city council priorities happen. Oh, and every year, everybody freaks out when it starts snowing, as if that’s never happened here before.
Unfortunately, the three things really have little to do with each other.
Residents surveyed recently by the National Research Center in Boulder said the city needs to focus on reducing traffic gridlock, catching more traffic scofflaws, fixing the roads and making it easier and safer to get around the city without a car.
Now if you were to ask each city council member individually, most of them would probably say they totally agree with all that. Traffic, crappy roads and jerks behind the wheel make all of our lives miserable. And most city lawmakers would agree Aurora must do more to make biking, walking and mass transit more realistic and attractive to more people.
But collectively? Nope.
City council puts its money where its 11 mouths are, and they’re talking the same talk city councils here and across the metro area have been muttering for years. Out of the city’s approximately $700 million budget for 2016, police and fire get the lion’s share of cash, more than half of the annual budget. Making it safer and easier to bike? Far, far, far less than 1 percent. An extraordinary $2 million is set aside for bike improvements this year. While I’m glad to see it, it’s a joke when you consider city residents say it’s a priority.
Now you could say that the city is doing a fine job at what it should be doing — making sure local huns don’t carry off your family and your house doesn’t burn down. The city is so adept that everyone in Aurora can afford the luxury to worry about frivolous things like safer crosswalks and designated bike lanes. But you could say that Aurora doesn’t have an image problem of being a crime-ridden sea of marginal rooftops, too. So just don’t say anything. Look at the facts.
The fact is, Aurora police do a great job at racing to the scene of serious crimes and acting as mobile social workers for a city filled with about as many nutballs and sad stories as anywhere else. But what they don’t do is dog I-225 to look for all the dangerous asshats tailgating, lane-swapping and driving like freaking morons morning, noon and night. And we want them to.
Sure cops know what moronic drivers are doing on Aurora’s autobahns, but soaking the road with cops every day isn’t a priority. Talking up the city’s cash-cow red-light camera budget-boon? That’s a priority, and another story.
How little most of this really means to city leaders was made clear a few years ago when Dunkin’ Donuts came to Aurora’s Havana Street. They took over the defunct Johnny’s Diner on the southwest corner of Havana and Iliff, where a Colorado River-full of traffic constantly pounds by like Class-9 rapids. Because some city boob from decades past got away with it, there has never been a suitable sidewalk on the north side of the old Johnny’s lot. Really. As has long been the city’s practice, when a new business moves in, old mistakes must be fixed. But the city allowed Dunkin’ Donuts to keep a few parking spaces instead of forcing them to properly install a place to walk.
The Dunkin’ Donuts mess made it clear that’s the city’s real priority these days. If you’re handicapped or, god forbid, just happen to be walking, you’re screwed. Go around a few blocks away. And good luck with that.
Not having the vision and courage to move the city out of the SUV dark ages isn’t all their fault. We live in a culture of cars. City officials can’t imagine closing lanes on Peoria, Chambers or Mississippi because they can’t imagine it, and most of you probably can’t either. But I doubt they could have imagined just a few years ago that the U.S. military would be celebrating gay pride days, even at Buckley Air Force Base, highlighting and honoring the achievements of our gay and lesbian soldiers’ achievements. They probably couldn’t imagine a conservative U.S. Supreme Court explaining how gay marriage is protected by the Constitution.
They don’t know what they don’t know. But you know that if it was safer and easier to ride a bike to the light-rail station, to school, even to work or the store, you would. You know that if the city quit spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a public relations campaign to persuade you and other metro denizens that Aurora doesn’t suck nearly as bad as everyone thinks it does, they could spend that money on a huge campaign to teach motorists to watch for and get along with bikers and pedestrians. We could tell motorists on TV and web ads that the cops are gonna catch folks texting and driving like asshats on the freeways, and then do it.
Like Mayor Steve Hogan has long been fond of saying, “If you can get six votes on the city council, you can do anything you want.”
This survey makes it perfectly clear what we want. So now we want six votes. Who’s first?
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com