November 17, 2011 03:21 AM UTC

Is There Hope For Aurora?

• 9 Comments
• by: nancycronk

I attended the swearing-in of Debi Hunter-Holen, one of the newest members of the Aurora City Council, on Monday evening. It was a proud moment to watch her raise her right hand, swear to uphold the laws of the land, and be seated on the very large semi-spherical stage. The impressive surroundings of the City Council chambers look more like they should hold the US Supreme Court rather than the City Council of the third largest city in Colorado. I couldn’t help but wonder how many public libraries could have been kept open with the cost of that room. Clearly, Aurora’s civic center buildings are impressive; unfortunately, they were built at the expense of not building new recreation centers for decades.

The meeting was full of pomp and circumstance; the quarter-century long Tauer Dynasty was ending, and this was the closing ceremony. After thunderous applause from his mostly Republican colleagues, Mayor Ed Tauer returned to sit in the public section of the audience with his wife, taking his gavel with him. New Mayor Steve Hogan (R) was sworn in, and took his seat between his twelve all-white counterparts.

I remembered when I first talked to Ed Tauer when I was a resident of Aurora. At the time, I had lived in Aurora for ten years, and (I believe) he was a City Councilman at-large. I called him because he was a proponent of a bill to require all residents of Aurora to keep their cats on leashes. I asked him if he was out of his *#$%^&* ever-lovin’ mind. “This is a legitimate problem in Aurora”, he told me. “I like to garden, and my neighbor’s cat keeps leaving his feces in my flower-bed.”

Coincidentally, my husband and I were looking for a house with a larger kitchen to accomodate our three growing children at the time. I refused to live in a city where the laws were designed for one family (albeit a very influential family). We moved a stone’s throw outside the city limits and enjoyed every moment watching our two cats be cats. The cat-leash law is still on the books, according to City Councilman Bob Fitzgerald, as well as a law that allows dogs that look like pit bulls to be taken away from families (no proof is required that they are either pit bulls or dangerous), and killed, with no compensation to, or sympathy for the families. So much for “small government”.

To be fair, the Tauer Dynasty brought a number of positive changes to Aurora. Under their leadership, Aurora built a state-of-the-art skate park as well as a large multi-sport complex off of Colfax, and it drew a major medical-research center to the region. Aurora played a significant role in partnering with Denver on the International Airport, and on the infrastructure to support it. Aurora is currently competing with the City of Denver to steal the Annual Western Stock Show.

I digress. Back to the City Council meeting.

The Aurora City Council went on to hear heart-wrenching testimony from about a dozen residents concerned with hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” — the very controversial use of a chemical and water mixture injected deep into the ground to break up and extract oil from bedrock. One of the speakers was a physician and another a community health nurse, both of whom were concerned about potential serious health risks. Many were parents. One man expressed concern that homeowners where he lived will never be able to re-sell their homes because of the fracking operation near a subdivision and elementary school. Residents referenced fracking nightmares in other states, and pleaded with the Council to exercise their authority to enact a moratorium on fracking until the safety concerns could be resolved.

Other residents asked the City Council to prioritize re-opening Aurora’s closed libraries, or extending the hours on the Mission Viejo library to more than the current 20 hours per week. Another resident pleaded with the city to consider building more recreation centers for the city’s tens of thousands teenagers.

While listening to all of the Aurora residents plead for basic services — libraries, recreation, public health and safety, etc., all I could think of was how white — and how Republican — the City Council was.

According to the US Census Bureau, Aurora is very diverse city. Less than fifty percent of Aurora’s residents are white and non-Latino (47.3%). People of color make up 16%. Native Americans, 1%. Asians, 5%, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 0.3%. Persons reporting two or more races, more than 5%. Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin, 29 percent! Twenty percent are foreign-born, and a whopping 30% speak another language besides English at home.

In a city where less than fifty percent of the residents are Anglo, its Mayor and every one of its City Council members are Anglo. What’s wrong with this picture?

Democrat Debi Hunter-Holen (who incidentally is married to Democrat Bill Holen in Ed Perlmutter’s office) will bring a diversity-minded, progressive voice to the Aurora City Council — one that has been long overdue. Still, she is one of only two Democrats (that I know of) on the entire thirteen member Council. If the City Council of Aurora actually represented the residents of Aurora, in all of their beautiful diversity and cross-cultural wisdom, I suspect there might be a greater emphasis on basic city services for all of Aurora’s families.

As I left, I pledged to myself silently to work harder at recruiting community leaders from non-white and non-traditional backgrounds into the Center for Progressive Leadership, in the hope that someday, one or more of them will consider running for a position on the Aurora City Council.

But first, I need to go find my cat.

Nancy Cronk is a 2010 graduate of the Center for Progressive Leadership program. Please mention her name if you would like more information, or would like to apply to be a 2012 Fellow. http://www.progressiveleaders….