QUID HAS HEARD that newly elected Councilman Charlie Richardson is going to be “that guy.” Richardson, who was previously the Aurora City Attorney, and had been even before floppy discs became all the rage, finally retired — just to run for the Ward IV City Council seat. He won last November, but now it looks like city staffers lose. In just the few short weeks since Richardson’s been sworn in, he’s pre-empted a secret meeting and forced it to go public, demanded to know why many thousands of dollars worth of Aurora water money flows into the quasi-private job creators’ arm of Aurora, and most recently, filed an open records request against the city for emails about a city-owned house that nobody seems to care about. Quid does so love a troublemaker, and it looks like Christmas for Quid and the soulless hacks who toil here for the next four years. Whether Charlie and the Fracas Factory turn up a golden ticket to Trauma Land is yet to be seen, but for now, Quid’s content to sit back and watch all matter of folks at City Hall squirm for wriggle room.
AND QUID HAS HEARD that the state of the union is definitely in flux. No, not that union — the teacher’s union at Aurora Public Schools. Seems that with the state breathing down the necks of school administrators about either getting Aurora Central High School off the “SUCKS” list, plans to do just that are ruffling easily ruffled union teacher feathers. In a damned if they do and damned if they don’t have a choice mess, teachers are being expected to sign away a long list of union rules, something teacher unions hate worse than the usual vacant school on Back to School nights. If they give up school day, contract length and other previous wins, and Aurora Central soars, teachers lose. Quid can just hear anti-union yaks honking now about how old rules sink schools. If teachers nix the changes, ugly is going to land on Aurora Central like a hungry dog on Quid’s third-grade homework. Quid suggests a good round of hand-wringing followed by “yes” votes and union dollars poured into a marketing plan to let it go, let it go and lobby for pay hikes when the dust clears.
AND THAT’S ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS.