[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you um [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign minnie's called to order with the clerk please call the roll mayor kaufman here mayor pro tim bergen here councilmember coombs president councilmember gardner here councilmember jorinsky here councilmember lawson here councilmember marcano president councilmember medina here councilmember mario president councilmember sundberg here and council members of onik here there's a quorum uh announcement for the call in line good evening city council welcomes city council welcomes feedback from the public on both matters appearing on the agenda and during public invited to be heard if you would like to speak and have not already spoken to an operator please press star 3 for those watching on channel 8 call 855 press star 3 695-3475 connected you will be very prompt confirming you are in line to speak to an operator and then be able to continue listening to the meeting when the operator comes on line please be ready to give them your name and agenda item you wish to speak on keep in mind you must press star 3 before the city clerk read the title of the item you wish to speak on if you are not in the queue for the first public invited to be heard when it's called you will be placed in the cube for the public invited to be heard at the end of the meeting and as a reminder council does not allow comments about any item on the agenda very public invited to be heard and each speaker has three minutes thank you please join me for an invocation o lord our god and our father we come to you and we ask that you would look upon this particular gathering tonight and guide us in our decisions bless our city with honorable industries sound education and good government unite the community together even though we come from different backgrounds we pray that there be justice and peace in our city give city council wisdom direction and sensitivity to the business and procedures before us tonight hear us therefore as we commit this meeting to the health of this community our man please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all executive session update during executive session we had legal advice discussed negotiations public invited to be heard mayor we do have three individuals the first is jerry drinsky mayor point of order oh mayor pretend oh do we not have minutes no we do not we did not okay thank you good evening my name is jerry jorinski a name which should be familiar to you i would like to direct my comments this evening to council member marcano on your web page there is a sentence that reads and i quote he is currently dedicating his time to serving the residents of ward 4 unquote that sentence is absolutely not true i am a resident of ward 4. as you publicly stated several months ago the republican party is a sadistic death cult and the most dangerous organization that has ever existed an outrageous and quite frankly ignorant comment the remarks made by council member jarinsky for which you would like to see her censured pale in comparison to yours if anyone should be censored or apologize it should be you and not her but your words were and council member jorinsky's words were are free speech that is protected i'm quite sure there are many republicans in ward 4 and you have insulted and demeaned them mr marcano you are not serving your residents you are serving your own personal agenda an agenda of disrespect for the police for public safety and i believe for the future of aurora in my judgment your political career begins and ends with the aurora city council because while it is easy to represent those with whom you agree true leaders will do all they can to work with those with whom they disagree and you are not capable of doing that because you are not a leader but a follower of a hateful agenda if you truly cared about the residents of ward 4 you would resign and let someone else actually serve ward 4. thank you council for the time to present these comments okay next we have david kerbari um good evening council members thank you for allowing the public to come up and voice comment i want to address specifically the camping ban um you're gonna have a lot of i'm sorry sir the camping ban you'll have to make after your public comments oh okay okay sorry i'm addressing specifically the appointment of um i believe it was garrett wills to the zoning and planning commission i believe that last council meeting the this appointment was postponed to be voted on excuse me during this council meeting that applicant did not state that they had a conflict of interest namely their position as a consultant within the within the real estate market they have a very very strong conflict of interest there and they also made it clear that they were going to essentially rubber stamp things that would as long as they were up to code they would go through the zoning and planning commission councilman sunberg i know that you have a restaurant in in a in a growing area of town you know this applicant seems to be like the person that the type of person that would allow for you know six lane highways and all kinds of uh costly mess that would make it to where your restaurant you know nobody would walk up to it they would do a u-turn to come into the parking lot and you'd have you know more uh more parking space than restaurant space and a lot of a lot of aurora is already kind of falling into this parker road you know the areas in havana on the havana street corridor where i live i don't want the same four restaurants i do not like buffalo wild wings you know i would like to see a zoning applicant like the the gentleman who uh the name escapes who's coming in from um works for the the city of denver who is an actual urban planner that's his job day in and day out and so please consider that on item 18. thank you next is bruno good evening council my name is bruno and i am a member of the party for socialism and liberation and i am here with a number of other community members uh who have come uh to speak out uh against the urban camping ban a policy that is crucial i'm so sorry i don't know yeah i i'm sorry i'm gonna get to that uh i know that it's later in the agenda uh but i did wanna make it clear that we are gonna be here and we will make sure that every single one of us is heard on that issue but moving on i wanted to speak actually specifically to this five-point plan uh coming from the new right-wing majority of the city council we know that you're rapidly moving to execute a swath of pro-police measures that will win your favor with your right-wing donor base that was so offended to see apd held accountable last year but the people of aurora are facing real issues homelessness rising rents joblessness youth alienation and violence you propose to bludgeon the citizens the citizens of aurora with more policing more patrols more surveillance more criminalization your donors may be happy with what you're doing here but the people of the city are the ones that have to pay that price we're here to say that if you think that you will not meet resistance in this effort to further increase the police the police stranglehold on this town you are wrong thank you [Applause] that was the last individual to be heard the next item is the adoption of the agenda i propose i would like to amend the adoption of the agenda to put um item number nine which is um i'm sorry lebanese i'm sorry 11 a uh i'm number nine is the adoption of the agenda item number 11a to go after item number 14a item number 11a directs the the city uh to ensure that we have uh adequate shelter options for the camping ban but if the camping ban doesn't pass it's a moot question and then uh individuals speaking on this issue if they could combine their comments to both the ordinance and the resolution and so uh are there um in need of motion for the adoption of the agenda motion uh mayor pretend motion to approve the agenda with the change to move item 11a to follow after 11 or fourteen eight it's been removed by mayor pretend bergen second by second second by uh council member zavonik uh to um adopt the agenda as amended uh discussion mayor uh councilmember coombs i would like to amend that motion to also move our council and mayor reports to our next study session only because i expect it will be incredibly late by the time we would be giving those reports and we're unlikely to have people listening in the meeting for that long mayor mayor with jim i would i would also entertain that as a friendly amendment okay moved by um uh council member combs second by council member bergen uh to move um the council reports to the next regular meeting of the aurora city council mayor i'm sorry it was actually for study session because i don't want oh to the study session i stand corrected is that okay to to the next study session discussion i see none then the question before us is the adoption of the agenda as amended uh further discussion uh seeing none with the click please call the role on the adoption of the the agenda call the question the the item has been opened in escribe mayor kaufman the mayor votes yes council members of onik i don't have your vote i'm sorry yes yes okay motion passes unanimously to adopt the agenda with items item 11a moved after item 14a and for the mayor and council reports to be moved to the next study session very well the the next uh item before us is the approval the adoption of the consent calendar item 10a through 10b a motion mayor uh motion to approve 10a please um not 10d oh and 10b sorry n10b uh it's been moved by the mayor for time second bye seconded by uh councilman jones crazy uh to approve the adoption of the consent calendar item 108 at 10 b discussion see no further discussion with the click please call with the clerk please call the question on the adoption of the consent calendar mayor kaufman yes and council member jordan scams or i don't have your vote on this yes the motion passes unanimously to approve the consent calendar i've never or with a clip please read the title to item number 11b [Music] item 11b is resolution 20 2250 a resolution of the city council of the city of aurora colorado to reconstitute the city of aurora's efforts around gang reduction intervention and youth violence prevention and mayor we do have one individual to speak on this item very well joelle northam it's just joel one syllable my name is joel i'm an organizer with the party for socialism and liberation and i'm speaking in opposition to this five-point plan but more specifically about this uh defunct aurora gang reduction impact program this agripp thing that y'all are doing this uh this is aurora's iteration of like comstat in los angeles and operation ceasefire in boston and so on other cities they've tried this initiative out before they're trying to market you're trying to market this as like community policing um you know because you know some of these cases it involves like involving local non-profits involves clergy gives yourself sort of like a veneer of legitimacy to this program but it's not really about reducing crime and preventing the emergence it's about preventing the emergence of people in oppressed and exploited communities becoming an incipient political force and we see they're already through it agripp specifically it's just a massive surveillance dragnet for black and brown youth that's it aggregate will undoubtedly come with military-grade surveillance software and a gang database which will include not just suspected gang members but their families and anyone else who is loosely connected with them you could use fake you could just be facebook friends with someone who throws their setup and you could be put in one of these gang databases and once you're put into a gang database you're automatically subject to harassment harsher treatment by the authorities and explicit bias in legal settings this program also is designed to create a network of snitches in order to foster distrust in communities into basically ruined community cohesion which ultimately just creates the conditions for violence in these communities is all you have to do is just be able to snitch before you get green lighted these methods in tactics like those that are being proposed in this five-point plan were developed actually in overseas war zones um which actually says a lot about how you see our communities and see our people um agripp like all of these so-called community policing programs only is just an expansion of state and police power which i believe i speak with a good portion of this room we're vehemently opposed to a grip in this five-point plan do not address any of the underlying causes of the hardships people in marginalized communities face it's just a selection pool for the prison industry i want to echo much of the sentiment that is in this room right now that you all just want to throw policing as a solution to everything when we know especially with these police out here that that is not the solution y'all are not about justice you're about expanding state police satan police power right real justice is helping his helping struggling youth and families not feeding them to the prison industrial complex you think that policing in prisons keep people safe but this country holds 25 of the world's prisoners and spends more money on police than many countries spent on their entire militaries but nobody is safer because of it sir i'm sorry you're reaching your three minutes yeah i'm done don't give any more money to these police [Applause] let me uh for those of us uh from aurora let me review uh what the code of conduct is uh in this chamber and and all and others that are here as well and and that is that that there is no clapping or demonstration uh during the conduct of this council meeting thank you mayor i believe we need to i already read the title we need to vote on oh i'm sorry very well uh council member lawson oh i think we need a motion first removed by councilmember lawson second oh my jarinsky sent in by councilmember jorinsky uh to uh approve uh item number 11b um how do you want to proceed at this point i just want to make a couple comments very well please proceed okay first of all i want to just say that this program is not going back to the police department i this program is i'm the one who actually myself and the mayor went and got funding so we could address the youth violence in our community the a-group program wouldn't would have still been here if it wasn't because of the the elimination of the photo red light in 2018 by the voters this program is just to refocus where we're at now with dealing with the youth violence with our youth this has nothing to do the funding is still the same the program is still the same it's just putting it refocusing it and focusing on the youth violence that we're dealing with and what the current state of what's going on in our in our community we need to be more aggressive on intervention and prevention is important but this is what this establishes so when you're going around saying that this is a defunct program the only reason why it was defunct is because of the photo red light this is just to address and to refocus where we're at now in our community youth are getting shot every single day so this is just to kind of get us back and have the same resources money is not going away the program is not moving out of the division it's basically just re-allocating the resources to where we need to be for intervention and dealing with our youth the program can be expanded the program will be filling the gaps that's why the the community the leader of the community housing will continue to find out where the gaps are and the needs are it's not telling non-profits that they can't apply for funding we're just focusing more on the intervention section you i mean people can say it's going it's not going back to the police department so for that rumor to be out and to say that this program is downsizing it's not it's the same program it's just reallocating the resources so for that i hope that i will get support from my colleagues on this and hopefully we can continue to address the youth violence which has to be done now and also to actually fill in some of the gaps that are needed which are which is kind of what's being done right now so thank you mayor mayor uh mayor pretend yeah i want to echo what councilmember lawson said she has put a lot of thought into this program she is the one that originally came up with the youth violence program that we needed to address all the violence that we're seeing in aurora and elsewhere in the metro area and unfortunately it is affecting our youth in in terrible ways we've had you know a tremendous number of shootings in our city and most i would say a lot of them um involving our young people and and to say that this is against people of color this is actually to help prevent crime against people of color because they're the ones that are being shot and and killed and so you know i think it's disingenuous what was said earlier because this program is about trying to really put the resources towards intervention and there's actually in the formula for funding 80 is towards intervention we need to address this problem now not six months from now not a year from now and then 20 percent of the funding will go towards prevent uh prevention and so um there are still opportunities for non-profits to to apply for funding for the prevention programs so um i also hope my colleagues will um you know support this program it's really important that we address this very important issue in our society further discussion mayor uh council members devonic thanks um i'm i'm also in support of this um resolution and and i i want to just thank councilmember lawson for the work she's put into this when we first heard the presentation from the youth violence prevention program i was a new member of council and the thing that stood out to me was there was a lot of i think good intention behind it but it lacked the focus that the a-grip program had on going specifically after addressing youth violence one of the first meetings i had as a candidate was with omar montgomery who's the head of the naacp here in aurora and i asked him at that time you know what what could we do about youth violence it was a growing problem and it is still a growing problem in the city and he said one of the biggest losses that that we had in terms of being able to address it was the loss of the a-grip program because of the photo the the elimination of the photo red light which was the funding stream for it the only reason that program which was which had a successful track record went away was because of the loss of funding what councilmember lawson has done is identify another source of funding that's going to allow a more focused program that will help address youth violence in our city so i rise in support of this and i hope my colleagues will too further oh sorry councilmember mcconnell thank you mayor i certainly share the goal of producing youth violence although as i said before i think that the path to doing that is by addressing the root causes that is the underlying conditions that create this kind of you know epidemic of violence in not just our city but all over this country this is something that's not unique to the city of aurora and neither are the conditions in which a lot of communities of color as you identified mayor patem um you know live under due to the legacy of institutional racism redlining uh and other forms of discrimination that still plague our communities to this day uh and we're still you know the after effects we're still dealing with to this day um i understand uh that a-grip was a beloved program um i've talked to several community members and organizers about it they liked it however the information that we got when we were discussing a-grip a few weeks back at study session was that it wasn't particularly effective and the one audit that was done came back inconclusive because it was just really not well run so i understand that you can potentially improve some of that but at the end of the day my concern is that we're still being reactive as opposed to being proactive we're not addressing those underlying conditions in our community that lead to this kind of behavior and i just want to stress again when we were discussing our hazard mitigation plan last month we had several maps in our backup that included socioeconomic data social vulnerability indexes esl areas educational attainment and so on and so forth and you can basically overlay those various data points with where we're having a lot of this violence and it's the same map folks so if we can actually address those root causes which i maintain and there's plenty of evidence to show stem from the social socioeconomic inequities in our society that are baked in that have been ongoing for decades if not a century or more at this point we will actually start to address the root and if we don't do that we're just going to keep throwing good money after bad the youth violence prevention program as it stood as we approved it last year was absolutely not perfect but i think it was a much more robust and overarching kind of approach that would do some of what agripp does absolutely i think a grip was uh some of the founding principles of agripp were incorporated into the youth balance prevention program but it did more because we understand and you know our youth prevention manager understands that there's a lot more at play here than just gang intervention especially when you consider that these gangs that we're dealing with and i want to throw air quotes around that because they're not like the bloods and the crips uh it's my understanding that the boner boys which is one of these you know alleged gangs is actually a discord server which is like an aol chat room basically and people got into beef through that that's not something that a traditional gang intervention program is going to really address and i am concerned about the other social impacts that we'll have if we go this route um you know through like folks basically being thought of as snitches or just not being able to uh you know build trust with their own social networks leading to more alienation leading to a continuation of these bad outcomes that we're seeing so i think that we all have a good intention here but i just want to state that we need to redirect our focus to addressing the root causes i think the youth violence prevention program as it stood did a better job at doing that it could certainly be better and we can do a much better job at addressing those root causes as a council by actually beginning to invest in our community and make up for these long-standing inequities and injustices that have been allowed to percolate in our city so that's where uh so with that said i will not be supporting shifting the current program as it is i don't think it's going to be as effective as what i've heard other community members ask us to do and it's certainly not going to be as effective based off of the data that we've seen with what we've already tried so you know what they say about insanity rights doing the same thing over and over again and expecting just different results i would encourage my colleagues to think outside the box and try to reinvest in our community in a meaningful way mayor further discussion um sorry mayor mayor tim you know i and i appreciate your comments councilmember marcano i when you talk about root causes um that's important but that's a long ways away we're talking about right now kids shooting each other and killing each other and we need to address this problem immediately and that's what this program is intended to do and that's why we're looking at intervention as a priority so as much as i appreciate your thoughts i think that that's i think why a lot of us do want to support this and want want to get action right away further discussion mayor council member mario thanks mayor actually can i get a clarification for the city attorney on procedures regarding calling up an item in the future specifically resolutions to the city attorney sure yeah thank you i i'm sorry i didn't understand the question oh uh what is the are we able to call up a resolution in the future sure okay can you elaborate on what what needs to happen at tonight's meeting for that to occur so i i'm are you talking about something that has failed tonight no and bringing it back or you're just just bringing up any resolution so council always has a prerogative any council member has a prerogative to put a resolution you can either go to study session or you can come directly to the floor that is a council member's prerogative sorry to to be a little bit more clear in order to bring up a resolution in the future once it's been voted on does somebody have to be on the prevailing side of that vote so if this fails and you do have an opportunity that a member on the prevailing side has to bring it up because that would that would mean there would could be a change of voting on this reconsideration it's a reconsideration okay and then if it passes tonight um is there an opportunity to bring this back up for discussion it could be brought back for again you can bring it back for a vote for reconsideration okay and do you have to be still on the prevailing side yes okay and i do have some comments aside from my questions to the city attorney mayor please proceed okay thank you um okay so i have a couple of thoughts so i'm just trying to get some procedural clarification on on the vote tonight so i don't i don't have anything against supporting youth violence prevention um i think my issue with this resolution lies in a few kind of other areas so when we were first given a presentation on this youth violence prevention program we had hired a program manager i believe is the correct title um and there was a you know well-vet well-researched plan five-year plan that was established there was community input from actual youth hundreds of youth giving input on the types of programming that needed to happen through the city of aurora to truly impact youth violence prevention and um that's the program that i was sold on that's the program that we built trusting relationships through the city um and talking more about what youth violence prevention like a true program looks like um you know after you know this uh during this year i don't know if it's because of the change in political composition of our council but suddenly this youth violence prevention program robust program turned very narrowly so we're taking back this very database or data-driven like researched program that we presented to community was presented at emergency community meetings after the hinckley and central shootings um we're we're taking that away essentially and we're just focusing it on gang violence prevention so i do not support the fact that we are going to be reducing the potential impact and services that community has asked for and that we as a city council or rather our representative as our the youth violence prevention manager shared the focus of this of this program i feel like we we said one thing to community and then now that that has changed and so i don't support i don't support that reduction in uh scope because that is not um i mean agripp was you know you you could debate the merits of how successful a grip was um but if you have read any of that evidence-based research a-group was very was only focused on gang reduction and intervention i refuse to say that youth violence prevention is gang reduction they are not synonymous and that rhetoric really frustrates me about the direction of this conversation our youth are not just in gangs there that is one part of a larger conversation around violent crimes and our youth and our youth were very explicit about some of the other areas that they needed support with and this shift fundamentally changes that so i i have issues with the way that it was initially presented to community um and now the the shift in the focus is is only um associating we're saying the resolution is youth violence prevention and in in the policy we're saying that is a equal to gang gangs and youth and that's not okay with me i will be supporting this only for in the hopes that my perhaps we might have an additional discussion in the future it was just stated that need to be on the prevailing side to reconsider the the conversation so that's something that i'm hoping to be able to do in the future again i have nothing against um supporting and funding programs for youth violence prevention um i 100 support that support that but for those structural issues and the difference between what community was what was shared with community and the scope of this project i don't support it but like i said on a procedural note i'll be supporting for that reason further discussion mayor councilman coombs thank you so i just wanted to get some clarification on what it means to be shifting 80 of the funding into reinstituting a-grip because the the program that was presented to us had a majority of the funding already going to intervention and then a lesser portion of the funding going to primary and secondary prevention so can the youth violence prevention manager can you answer would this be basically just re-labeling the um the intervention efforts that you already were planning to undertake or is this changing the direction of the program in terms of the intervention programs that you had proposed question of staff hi um this is christina a program manager for the or youth violence prevention program i apologize i'm joining virtually i'm getting over a cold um as far as the funding the the shift in funding would essentially still support the the funding recommendations that were outlined initially with a smaller percentage going towards upstream prevention efforts um the major change um in shift from acre to agripp would impact more not necessarily the funding but more so on the programmatic side of things um and so that would essentially if if we're only being directed to do what a grip called for we're only serving high-risk identified gang members which is a smaller population of what a yvp is currently serving and looks to serve mayor okay i'm sorry i'm not finished can i go please proceed didn't know so just to clarify that means that we wouldn't be doing the same intervention programming as was present presented to us it's a narrower intervention programming and lesser prevention programming as well that's that's correct yes a group only focused on high-risk gang members whereas we're focusing on at risk and high risk which is really important especially considering that most of our violent crime is not being committed by identified gang members okay thank you so with that being stated um that's really my objection is you know it's already been stated by councilmember murillo as well is framing all of our intervention efforts as being only focused on gangs because what that really means actually is that we're going to continue to let youth shoot each other because we're not going to be identifying and intervening in situations where youth are at risk of engaging in that violence or being victimized by that violence and so that you know i think we could say we want to shift 80 percent of the funding to intervention and only 20 on prevention that i would support even though i think our staff gave us those recommendations of those funding amounts for reasons that were grounded in data i'd be willing to say you know what we just still as a council want to prioritize intervention what i'm not willing to say is that we want to prioritize only intervention and gangs and not put any resources to ensuring that all of the youth in our community that are at risk for being victimized by or engaging in violence that not all of them are going to be served so that's really for me a deal breaker i think we need to acknowledge that there are all of those other risk and protective factors that were presented to us by our staff based on a study that they conducted and a very in-depth community needs assessment so i can't support this for that reason only because we're really leaving out so many people by making it focused on kings mayor uh mayor pro tem and then mayor then councilmember lawson okay um when we when we made the decision on the out on the allocation and said eighty percent what was to go to intervention and twenty percent to prevention um my understanding is that is directing the rfp process is that not correct christina staff response um i'm sorry can you repeat the question please when we said that we wanted 80 to go to intervention and 20 to go to prevention um my understanding was that we were saying that that was the direction for the rfp process that that was giving you some focus on on how to um how to do the rfp that's correct okay thank you councilmember lawson well i think it's very interesting i'm kind of disappointed in christina it says section two on this is to support this collaborative approach to reduce gang and youth violence in the city the city council approves of a group funding to be allocated as 80 as we discussed and dedicated to intervention efforts and 20 of funding to be dedicated directly to prevention this says reduce gang and youth violence in the city so i just don't see this as just gains it's looking at it from a bigger perspective so i i disagree with what's been said this is not this program is just to refocus and redirect this program this program we was presented when i first presented this this proposal last year along with the mayor i said i wanted this to be a grip 2.0 meaning yeah agripp had some issues but it also had some gaps that could be expanded to make it better we are doing the rfp process for the nonprofit so where this is going that nonprofits can apply and the same ones cannot i don't even know where that's coming from so again i do not just see this as a program for gangs it's for youth violence period so you can you can say whatever section two of what this this this resolution says and youth violence so again um i hope that my colleagues will support further discussion mayor i'm sorry councilmember medina then councilman just to give a little more clarification because i'm probably one of the few people that has actually worked with a grip for about five years the first five years that it was implemented in northwest aurora so just to give some context on that i was one of the community members working at moorhead rec center as the facilitator of that facility working with a grip on those particular specific things they were targeting specifically gang members and that's the issue that i have as well is just that we're putting in the word gang and once you do that we we take away everything else the other youth are just that they're other youth we're going to label them as gangs we're not even going to look at them as just troubled youth or whatever i don't like all these labels that we put on youth i've asked that of youth that i work with they don't like that that all of a sudden i get an altercation and now i'm gonna be labeled a gang member because i get in a fight in school over something i don't want that foot on on kids i wouldn't want to put on my own children if they have an altercation i think we as as a group and as a community haven't addressed the issue of the gun itself what's the concept of how do they mitigate i think it all goes back to if some of you went to the meetings which i attended some council members did as well where one of the youth was asked why he concealed carried a weapon and concealed it now doesn't that sound just like what we do as adults we have conceal and carry weapons correct we have that as adults the only difference is they can't do it because it's not legal they're not of legal aids to do that and what did the gentleman say when he said why he carried it was because he felt unsafe wasn't because he was a gang member it's because he felt unsafe isn't that the same concept people are carrying and concealing because they don't feel safe so what's the difference between an adult doing that and yet a youth can't do that yet the premise is the same they're trying to protect themselves from others that would want to do them harm so i i just beg the question that if we're going to really implement this that we need to take the word gang out of it if we found out possible i certainly could support and i would want to be engaged personally again because i have those relationships in those communities so that i can make sure that we're addressing those needs what many council members said the root causes the poverty a lot of different factors the mental health there's a lot of different things that are going on in these communities and these families that create this opportunity thank you councilman coombs um yeah so i just want to be clear that my objection is not about the nonprofits that can apply because that keeps being appealed to as an issue my issue is what are the actual programs that we're implementing and what youth are we going to be working with that's my concern and how are we going to be working with those youth so i just want to be very clear about that it doesn't really matter to me which non-profits apply or what funding they get it's that programmatically we are not saying that the only violence that we're going to focus on or even the main violence that we're going to focus on is gangs mayor further discussion mayor patel it i mean it states in the resolution that this is yes it has it addresses gangs as well but it also addresses just plain youth youth violence and and this this program is about preventing youth violence intervening trying to to to do what we need to do which we have an obligation to to our young people to try to prevent this and and that's what this is about i think we're we're getting um really off topic because this this has teeth in terms of funding we will get funding where we get programs funding to help address the youth violence uh councilmember crews um then i guess my question is then why are we saying agripp which is a gang specific program why don't we just say we're shifting the prioritization of funding within the youth violence prevention program why are we making it about agripp and about gangs if our intent is not to primarily make it about gangs further discussion mayor mayor uh let me go council member of zevonnik then mayor pretend again i want to go back to the just the plain language of this resolution in the second whereas it says in an effort to end violence among youth the city of aurora launched the gang the aurora gang reduction impact program a-grip was about intervening in youth violence bringing this back is a way to to make a more focused and intentional effort on our on our part to address youth violence in our city the youth violence prevention program as it was presented to us earlier this year end of last year was a mile wide and an inch deep this is more focused and will give us a better chance at actually addressing the problem that we have of youth violence in our city very important yeah i agree with that and i was just going to add that the a grip program really has a good foundation if you if you do the research on on the program it may not have been executed years ago to its fullest capacity but it has a really good foundation and that's why we chose to revert back to that program further discussion mayor mayor councilmember marielle thank you i've gotten feedback on passing resolutions before that they are not laws it's direction so i want to be clear there the title is aurora gang reduction impact program i i don't know to me that means that the main focus is aurora gang reduction impact um there is language you know kind of catch-all language which i'm appreciative of and i think is kind of honoring that more intersectional approach but i don't know how else you read that and not understand that gang violence prevention towards youth is not the main focus of this program which as we've stated and we've heard from community um the the manager got like several hundred youth in aurora to take surveys to you know attend community meetings they've talked with other stakeholders to give feedback and that was one small area of other areas that were important i i don't know how else to say that for that to be more clear and and kind of the to the i guess the program itself like a grip is is implementing a comprehensive gang model and and that is going to be limited in scope there's when i say data based evidence based that's what i'm talking about like there's entire theories and research around the scope of this type of program and it is certainly still missing my larger point that it's it is we're reducing the focus um and reducing the services that we're going to be offering our youth so i i'm clear that that's what's going to happen i welcome a future conversation where we talk about um maybe delineating that a little bit more like i said that was my hope in in supporting this that we might be able to bring this up in a future conversation that this doesn't have to be the last conversation that always feels so so heavy um you know one vote and it's done which is the process for voting on a resolution so um i just want to be clear that that's that's how this is going to work and and to me the language is very plain in in just even the title and again i welcome an additional additional conversations to um suss out and clarify um you know maybe maybe it doesn't have to just be a gang reduction but agripp is not the same you know gang reduction is does not equal youth violence prevention and then i guess another point is my colleague councilmember zavonik referenced a conversation with a very well-known leader um omar montgomery of the naacp and i'm glad that you had that conversation but i just wanted to clarify did omar montgomery approve of the representation of that conversation because it kind of alluded that that he was supporting this so i just wanted to clarify yeah i didn't want to make it oh sorry tell the members um i didn't want to recognize i didn't want to suggest that mr montgomery supported this resolution i just wanted to make sure that i stated a very clear fact which was that when he and i sat and met and i asked him what we could do to address youth violence in the city as i was getting some input from him throughout my campaign or in that particular instance he suggested that the eight which i was at that time unaware of he suggested the a-grip program in its loss was a loss to the city and that it was just simply because of the photo red light revenue stream that went away and not because it was a failed program but that in fact it was a good program but not that he sorry mayor members will wait to be recognized councilmember muriel amer i believe i corrected myself before you obnoxious gavel um but go ahead um council members demonic so just to be clear i just you're not saying that omar of montgomery of the naacp very well respected black leader in this community very heavily focused and gang violence and youth violence prevention and all of the above is is necessarily supporting this he have he has might have mentioned that a group might have been a pr you know in an isolated conversation that that might have been supported but but that he's not specifically supporting this situation here mayor councilmember zuma no matter how many times you ask and how many different words you use the answer is still yes he did not say tonight or in in reference to tonight's vote that he was supportive of it mayor jorinsky mayor jordan i wasn't done okay this has been a wonderful council member jorinski this has been a wonderful conversation but i would like to call for the vote uh the motion is called for the question it is a non-debatable motion is there a second second uh it's been moved by councilmember jordan's second by mayor tim uh bergen call for the question with the clerk please read the rule mayor kaufman mayor vote yes i'm sorry mary who had the second with councilmember jornsky's motion um okay my apologies for changing the vote i can't hear uh council member jorinsky she's addressing the council i can't hear her be no comments from the audience the vote okay it is now open and he scribed for council members to vote on the motion to vote for the call for the vote for the resolution councilmember medina no council member yes the motion passes with no votes from councilmember coombs councilmember marcano and council member medina to call for the vote question before us now is the adoption of [Music] i'm um uh councilman coombs i'd like to make a substitute motion no uh that there's no substitute motion to isr i don't believe the city attorney there's a call for questions a subtle question it already passed the motion already passed it's a subtle question no the motion didn't pass yet we haven't voted on this item so it's a substitute motion to call for the call for the question prove this resolution the the question before us now is the uh adoption of um 11b item number 11b would clark please call the roll mayor do we have a motion and second on the floor to adopt this resolution i'm sorry um so you can now vote on the main ocean right the question before us is the adoption of item number 11b that's correct i'm sorry does it require a first a second there is a first and second already so you're to the point of voting we're prepared to vote now call for the question was was passed okay so i have a motion by councilmember lawson and then second by councilman is that correct that's correct okay okay the at the vote has been open in escribe the motion passes with seven yeses with no votes from councilmember marcano councilman medina and councilmember coombs mayor councilmember yeah i would just like to go on the record amending my initial vote i i was confused i was still frightened by the gavel um i couldn't even think straight um i'm still struggling sorry um i i initially thought the first vote was for on the um the entire resolution as opposed to calling for the vote my apologies i did not agree with calling for the vote but was going to support the resolution city attorney so i'm lost on the number of votes okay so for the call for the question passed we had we had eight yes and three no so councilmember marielle would just like it to reflect okay we will change that to seven yes for no with councilman mario voting no to call the question and we can move to the next item later now please um read the title to honor number 11c item 11c is resolution 20 2251 consideration to approve a resolution for the first amendment to the amended and restated iga between the city of aurora and the rtd for the initial parking management plan for the iliff station parking garage a brief presentation by staff uh good evening my name is scott bauman i'm the parking manager within public works i am seeking approval of a first amendment to an existing amended and restated iga with rtd for the parking management plan and operations of the islet station parking garage this first amendment is only extends the current iga for an additional two years to february of 2024. all other pre-existing iga terms and conditions remain in place this iga allows the city to fully manage and operate all day-to-day operational aspects of the islet station parking garage on behalf of rtd this garage service is performed currently by laz parking through our outside vendor park aurora enforcement program this ij this iga with rtd also outlines the requirements and responsibilities required of the city at the garage beyond maintaining and operating the garage there are requirements for ongoing reporting and the management of a dynamic pricing strategy plan to monitor the variable pricing aspects of the commuter usage of the garage rtd has already approved and signed this iga amendment without this proposed amendment the iga would automatically expire this month and would leave rtd and the iliff garage without an active operator and we wouldn't have any involvement in the operations of the garage if you have any questions regarding the approval of this resolution i'm happy to questions to staff uh councilman mcconnell thank you sir and thank you scott for the presentation let's have a quick question for you a refreshing memory here the garage is fully paid for already correct yes yes that's correct all right great so um can i follow up please proceed all right thank you um so i'm wondering uh you know in an effort to incentivize ridership have you investigated potentially dropping or just eliminating the fare i understand that or the parking fees rather i understand that it would incur a recurring cost to the city uh to the tune of around what thirty thousand if i'm not mistaken per year um is that something that you've all discussed so this specific rga really is a pilot program with rtd rtd wants to know and we're the only site in their in their entire program that that allows for parking on the first day so what that does is they want to know the elasticity of what pricing in the garage does for ridership so this is a specific program that they want to see pricing and what it does and how it changes the demand for the for the garage so i don't see the i mean the price at some degree could go down to zero right now it's a dollar fifty for the first day um that's been on hold now for you know the last two years because the kova the ridership is down so we've kind of put a hold on that dynamic pricing component of the garage but we're right now working with communications we're gonna start doing some marketing and advertising and get that going again and a ridership is picking up and the garage usage is picking up so i do anticipate the garage rates being lowered at some point and you know it would be staged down in in in increments with rtd's approval so they what they want to see pricing at the garage they want to see because they they're modeling it elsewhere so at some point rtd is going to be charging all their lots and garages you know system-wide and they're using the data from this garage to determine what's the correct pricing and so forth all right thank you further questions of staff mayor council member mario thanks mayor um and and thank you i have more of a comment um i'm i'm looking forward to see how this kind of develops i was the co-chair of the rtd accountability committee one of the big areas of conversation was kind of the fiscal solvency of rtd and how to kind of maintain the system that is really far-reaching with kind of covet exacerbating a lower ridership so i'm very curious to see one just to back up a little bit there was even state legislation that was passed i believe in the last session that gave rtd the flexibility to explore this this area as a potential source of revenue to make the larger system sustainable that wasn't previously an option so i'm very curious to see how this kind of pans out and you know just wanted to offer that comment and thank you for bringing this up you're welcome okay uh motion is an order are there further questions for staff seeing none of motion is in order mayor councilmember mcconnell thank you sir move to approve 11c move by councilman mcconnell second bye birkin second by uh mayor trent protein bergen to approve item number 11 c uh further discussion i see no further discussion the motion the motion before us is the adoption of item 11c call for the question the motion passes unanimously to approve resolution 2022-51 the time is now uh 7 um 37 uh council will stand in recess until 7 45 to give staff the opportunity to make another announcement for the call in line members of the public who would like to speak on an ordinance and have not already spoken to an operator press star 3 before the item is called by the clerk for those watching on channel 8 call 855-695-3475 to be connected and then press star 3. council is taking a short break to allow any additional speakers to sign up please be patient and stay on the line until the operator is able to take down your information keep in mind you must press star free before the clerk calls the and reads the title of the item you wish to speak thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you thank you new royal city council is back in session with clark please read the title look please read the title number 12a item 12a is public hearing with related ordinance ordinance 2022-11 public hearing and consideration of an ordinance of the city council of the city of aurora colorado rezoning 10.532 acres of land more and more or less generally located north of jewel avenue and east of the plains conserva conservation center within the city of aurora county of arapaho state of colorado from parks and open space district to accident potential zone district clear zone sub area and emitting the zone map accordingly buckley space force parcel reason public hearing on item number 12a is now open presentation by staff thank you good evening mayor kaufman and council members my name is karen hancock and i'm a principal planner in the planning and development services department the item before you this evening is a request by city staff on behalf of buckley space force base to rezone a 10-acre parcel recently acquired by buckley the subject parcel on tonight's agenda was transferred to buckley from the city in exchange for a parcel located on the northeast corner of the base this small parcel is very important for buckley to have within their control as it is located in their accident potential zone and additionally in the clear zone sub-area right at the end of the runway the current zoning is pos or parks and open space and the requested zoning is accident potential zone pos zoning allows some passive land uses like trail heads and storm water ponds the apc district clear zone sub-area prevents no active or passive land uses unless requested by buckley the clear zone sub-area must remain vacant for the safety of the pilots and to support the base's flying missions rezoning will assure that the parcel remains vacant and with no active or passive land uses as long as there is a flying mission at the base buckley's staff sent a letter to the city manager jim dwombly requesting this rezone and asking for the city to act as the applicant that concludes my presentation presentation by the applicant we are the applicant on behalf of bugley space force base you're both okay uh is there any desert any member of the public that wishes to be heard on this issue no mayor question are there questions of uh staff or staff representing the applicant from members of council mayor mayor bertim um yes you mentioned that we're changing it so that passive or active would not be allowed anymore so but you had an exception in there what was that um unless buckley requested it oh thank you yeah no further questions i see no further questions motion isn't the public hearing is now closed motion is in order mayor i'd love to adopt a move by um council member sunburgs second on by jarinsky the councilmember jorinsky to [Music] adopt item number 12a further discussion seeing none call for the question on item number 12a the motion passes unanimously to approve ordinance 20 22 11. um i will now relinquish the gavel to the mayor pro tem to run the meeting concerning item 14a and the companion resolution thank you mayor katie do we have public invited first yes we we have 25 individuals in person and 18 on the phone line and do you need to read the ordinance first or we just have public invited first right yeah no i give you a question thank you it's introduction of ordinance 2022-12 an ordinance of the city council of the city of colorado adding a new section to be numbered 94 122 to the city code pertaining to prohibiting unauthorized camping on public or private property and adding article 4 section 114 106 through 114-112 to chapter 114 pertaining to abating unauthorized camps on public property and the first individual is deborah johnson good evening my name is deborah johnson i'm here to thank you for the opportunity to speak in opposition to this ordinance 22-12 unauthorized camping ban i realize this ordinance is trying to deal with a delicate balance between homelessness affordable housing and quality of life for surrounding neighborhoods however we need to be respectful of these people and the situation they are in it is appalling that the first aspect the city promotes with this ordinance is aesthetics yes sanitation public health and safety are mentioned but aesthetics is first i do not like seeing people living in the high line canal near my house but also know there isn't sufficient affordable housing in denver metro area or services to accommodate their needs also section 114 which is a section of the aurora city code this ordinance is being placed is labeled solid waste is this how aurora leaders are classifying these encampments and the people that live in them solid waste there are other sections of the city code that may be better representation like section 62 environment or section 74 health and sanitation the concentra the consideration of this orange is premature just tonight a resolution a resolution is being introduced directing the city manager to look for and create shelter options for authorized can unauthorized camping i would recommend the information gathered from the city manager or be part of the council decision making process on the necessity and the ability to enforce this ordinance in addition this ordinance does not specify what agency or department in the city will be responsible before writing the rules and regulations for its implementation you mentioned earlier ordinances law not an implication plan please do your homework before you pass this law make sure there are resources and administrative structure available to enforce the ordinance as i stated this is the passing of this ordinance is premature please vote no or postpone the vote until there is sufficient information to make a sound decision and then in reference to your resolution i just want to add i know that these two were put together i think that this resolution needs to have a time frame the city manager is to look for and create to maintain the options and who is the beneficiary of this information city council housing authority it's unclear who will benefit from this information i would like to see at minimum these two items added to that resolution thank you next speaker jim kickbush good evening this is my first time by the way my name is jim kickbush i want to thank you mayor kaufman and city council especially the new conservative ones thank you i support the camping ban or whatever you want to call it i live next to toll creek and it is getting out of hand you can't even walk your animals anymore please vote yes for this thank you very much next is ryan hanby hello mayor and council um i want to begin by just saying i've i've spoken at public comment many times and i've never seen the amount of police in in the chambers or in the room out front as i see tonight and i see it as a blatant act of intimidation of people who have come here tonight to speak i can't see it as anything other than that i want to speak in opposition to the camping abatement ordinance i i want to echo what the first speaker said that i think it's coming without the proper research being done there isn't a set point in time count for the number of homeless people that are in aurora i don't understand how you can just say that we need to ban ban homeless people which is which is really what this does bans homelessness outside of shelters without knowing how many people are homeless in this city i also think that without without a set amount of money that's going to shelters i i don't understand how you can you know just sweep homeless people away i'm not a resident of aurora i'm a resident of denver i live in the east colfax neighborhood and i know that many of the people that became homeless in denver have moved into into aurora and i think that um you know what this is what sweeps do it the the sweep program in denver has failed miserably and just continued to move people from place to place and every time people are moved they lose they lose all of their possessions you know into these trash trucks that come along with the sweeps i also just want to say that i really don't think that the aurora police department is up to the job of enforcing this camping abatement ban it's under a consent decree right now i believe we all know what happened with the the murder of elijah mcclain and i think that um this body has proven that it's unable to effectively um interact with members of the community and i would include people who don't have homes within that um community i think that you know many many homeless people have have jobs as well and something that happens is you know when homeless people go to their job during the day then a sweep comes and they come back at the end at the end of the at the end of their working day and they've lost absolutely everything um in in a sweep and i i just there's so many things that i don't see in this in this plan and i think really what we see here is that it's not it's not just an oversight but it's an attempt by the new conservative majority of this board to do something for aesthetics alone for you're reaching your three minutes okay thank you i'm sure you'll hear from the rest of the folks tonight the rest of what i was going to say next is david kabari david if i could ask the um everyone in the chambers we do appreciate you being here and we appreciate we want to hear from you if you could just please be respectful i think both sides can agree to that thank you thank you for uh allowing time to speak on this um i'm here primarily uh because i'm confused why this uh camping man has gotten so far i apologize i'm not the most eloquent but this this ban has been this type of thing has been tried in multiple cities across the u.s it's failed in austin it continues to fail in denver it has a lot of legal liabilities to it that's why it's being called a camping ban and not a ban on homelessness right but primarily you know my issue and i think everybody's everyone here their issue with it would primarily be how much it's going to cost this is this is going to kick back on the taxpayers big time the the cost of this program in denver there is a specific audit going on right now for it because of how much it is impacting the city's bottom line there the contract to remove that material is a toxic one i you know i've been on hazmat cleanup teams the no one wants to touch this contract they're the the big ticket customers that form the base of of your uh say like an environmental firm that would that would go out to bid for this they do not want to be doing business with a company that is going to do this kind of business not to mention when you have people get on site and all of a sudden there's a propane tank or a canister of gasoline now all of those technicians then have to be 40 hour has whopper trained that's a change order right and that's what the city of denver is facing right now is this massively ballooning contract that is costing them a lot of money in addition to this and i i think the this is the prime reason why this has come up and why this has gotten so far is this increases the number of interactions between the public and the police that's why the fop wants this so so bad because you increase those number of interactions you increase your funding ask when it comes budget time and when that happens there's not existing revenue streams for this right you're going to have to pull some some new one in we have already set up a bunch of you know bad arrangements with metro districts that are bleeding us dry this is going to be the nail in the coffin aside from all of the you know you may think i'm like a bleeding heart or something like that so you know you're reaching your three minutes i'm sorry okay i'll at least postpone it at least postpone it to do some more research i'd love to talk individually with some of you thank you next speaker danny moore good afternoon mr mayor distinguished council members thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening my name is danny moore i'm a 24-year retired military veteran i've worked in aurora for 27 years i raised my children's here i have a small business in aurora so you see i did not just discover aurora i want to encourage you to be strong tonight this is not a perfect first step but it is a first step i'm here tonight to advocate for the passing of the unauthorized camping abatement ordinance a favorite american poet named james john holmes once said there's no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting someone up this is what i'm here to encourage you to do tonight it is not enough for our citizens to be placed on the sidewalk or under a bridge or in our sewers as a state we're better than that we are our brother's keepers and sometimes that means we have to to help our citizens where they don't seem to know they need help for you see as a county we are better than that there are many reasons why i could oppose the camping ban safety it's just not safe for our citizens to live on the street unprotected environmental is only a matter of time before we start to see the toll it takes of having human waste run along our streets i would ask you why do we have an ordinance to pick up animal waste but it's okay for our fellow citizens to have their waste run down our streets but neither of these are the reasons that i that i am for this it is simply inhumane i want better for our citizens we must act as a village to lift up our fellow citizens the homeless problem has become like many of the solvable problems of our time it is now too profitable to allow it to be solved millions is spent to keep our fellow citizens on the streets our empathy for public camping has created a hammock that prevents people who need the most help from getting it no man woman or child should be forced to accept the lowest of what our society offers to do so is beneath us and we are better than that tonight we have the opportunity to lead to lead with cities like colorado springs and taking tangible steps to end homelessness in our town in creating a public and private venture [Music] now is the time we must do what is right we must provide the help where it's needed because this is aurora and we are better than that thank you and i encourage you to vote yes next is nate casa good evening my name is nate and i'm an organizer with the party for socialism and liberation i've lived in aurora for more than 10 years and this proposed camping abatement is a disgrace what makes it even more disgraceful is the mayor's claim that this plan is compassionate was this compassion the mayor found after his one week stunt pretending to be homeless where he concluded homelessness is a lifestyle choice this ordinance is an extra infringement on homeless people you already spent my money to sweep 80 people just last year i personally know a social worker in the denver area whose job is to find employment and housing for people experiencing homelessness and one of the biggest barriers to employment and housing she says is that when her clients lose vital documents like their ids social security cards birth certificates and immigration paperwork and phones and sweeps it delays their ability to connect apply for jobs and work on housing by months and in most cases years i wonder if the mayor were to be on the other side of one of these sweeps and have his life completely uprooted would he still call them compassionate is it compassionate to increase the presence of apd on these people did i dream it or just a few a couple years ago did we not watch thousands of people in aurora flood the streets in responses to the crimes of apd who are in endless scandals this is the department that is under a consent decree right now for the unbelievable racism and brutalization that they enact on our people and how is the solution to give them more money that just does not make sense how many poor people of color have apd beaten brutalized killed and abused not to mention the city already gives them millions of dollars and this crooked police department pays out millions and millions of settlements after abusing our community and they still want to give 6 million more in retention bonuses for police officers instead our money should be used to fund housing immediately for these homeless people instead of killing and brutalizing us and rather than dehuman dehumanizing and degrading poor people we need to treat them as human we need to stop the sweeps they deserve clean safe decent and permanent housing so we say housing and not sweeps vote against this ordinance thank you please dynamic applause thank you caitlin amick i don't see any real solutions for the unhoused community in the five-point action plan and camping ban i only see an incredible amount of problems the camping ban would increase face time between apd and the community as well as funnel more money into that department instead of using that money for any real tangible solutions for the people and people suffering from homelessness any proposal that would encourage additional time policing aka terrorizing communities is obviously a dangerous decision for your constituents a mere six months ago an independent investigation on apd and aurora fire rescue found that they have a pattern and practice of violating state and federal laws in this proposal it would increase patrols in key neighborhoods but the independent investigation found that the aurora police has a pattern and practice of racially policing so we know that that means increased patrols in black and brown communities once they're patrolling those communities all people become at risk since apd has a pattern and practice of using excessive force expanding the practice of police-enforced displacement of homeless people is just bringing more risk of confrontation fines jail time and trauma to an already very marginalized group and it offers no meaningful support it was found apd already had a misplaced view of de-escalation and they don't focus on avoiding unnecessary escalation in the first place so why would we ever allow a department with such a stained track record to have such a huge role of any anti-homeless measures and why would we accept such a weak plan from someone who enthusiastically went undercover homeless because that clearly was a classist repulsive and disgusting stunt vote no and please find a plan that actually addresses the underlying problems facing the community instead of criminalizing being homeless and poor dakota dexter my name is dakota i'm with the party for socialism and liberation here in aurora as a resident in aurora i think it is appalling that certain council members and even the mayor uh have the audacity to suggest that homeless the homelessness crisis in this city can be solved with more police and violent sweeps just last year while the mayor was pretending to be homeless the city conducted 80 sweeps i have witnessed sweet sweeps up close and they are violent how much more violence does the mayor think this community deserves as every member of this council and even the mayor knows there is only one solution to homelessness housing not police not sweeps housing anything less is simply cruelty stop playing politics with people's lives if you care at all about the most vulnerable people in this community vote no on this camping ban l hello my name is elle i'm also with the party for socialism and liberation in aurora you really don't make this like a welcoming experience um you know i've been sitting here as everyone has for however long we've been here an hour hour and change um and something that's really struck me as it seems like the members of this council have a confused perspective on the difference between supporting their community and condemning community members to being subject to violence the violence of being labeled a gang member the violence of fractured communities due to clumsy and profit-driven state intervention the violence of losing all of their possessions and their home everything we've heard before tonight this camping ban agripp these which are both part of this five-point program they all seek to terrorize marginalized people in aurora rather than supporting them the money the house the money to house the houseless and support the youth exists you just refuse to listen to the people when they tell you what they need and how to allocate that money also very striking to me that mayor kaufman you introduced a version of this camping ban in august and it didn't pass you needed to wait six months before reintroducing it and rather than using that six months to really address the underlying causes of the challenges faced in these communities you simply brought the same plan back sweeps are still cruel they're still a waste of time and energy and they still create all the problems that you've heard people mention tonight six months didn't change that so i hope that this council will listen to the people who are here tonight and i hope that you will vote no on this camping ban joelle northam hi it's joel with the party for socialism and liberation um speaking in opposition to the proposed camping ban um that you're trying to push through i also just want to note that as an aside that nobody that's been through poverty could ever give any legitimacy to your finding that homelessness is a lifestyle choice as if your few days pretending to be homeless give you some sort of special insight to the plight of the poor and disenfranchised especially since you live a life of privilege and luxury that was a vacation for you and if you really wanted something to prove you could just go back to haditha iraq where you were tasked with covering up war crimes as a civil affairs officer i digress this camping ban is cruel it's inhumane and it's noteworthy that when mike kaufman was asked about how shelter might be created to support the resolution he didn't have an answer for it and said oh well we'll just wait until that resolution passes or something like that now call me cynical but i think that you have absolutely no intention of doing anything with regards to social protections for those people call me cynical but i think that the conservative wing of this council just wants to use this in order to hide the larger systemic housing issues in aurora you know of course to make way to attract private investment and other moneyed interests and things like that that's what i think um you actually have the means to create more social housing to solve this issue you could do something about the ever-increasing inaccessibility of housing in aurora you have the means to expand social protections vocational training programs etc more generally but instead you'd rather commit resources to just shuffling people around endlessly people who have nothing and then what like finding them you do realize that people don't have anything right so when you find them they can't pay you right you do understand that just basic logic right the problem is that some of y'all just absolutely hate your non-money constituents and you see them as a pestilence instead of human beings who have the same need for shelter and economic security as you do this resolution will only contribute to further dehumanization of an already vulnerable population and will increase the risk of more violent confrontations and abuses by the notoriously gangster risky war police department i just want to make a statement that um if you could please refrain from personal attacks on um any council members or the mayor and just keep your comments to whether you you know why you support or don't support the camping ban thank you william overton order apollo jason wanna order mayor yes councilmember marcano i'm just going to state for the record that the first amendment applies to everybody including the gentleman who attacked me earlier when you said nothing so i think you know maybe we can all suck it up and deal with it thank you please and mayor or council member marcano yes first amendment does apply i was asking politely just to pee for people to please refrain from that i think it's disrespectful and yeah it is a first amendment right but i think we can be civil i i you know i appreciate everyone here and i think we can be civil good evening council i want to thank you for having me here tonight and i would like to apologize for my dress because i should be dressed better but i actually have to get to the gym after this um anyway um i'd like to say as one of the only people in this room under 30 that's not a radical leptist i'd like to really say that i yes i am and i'd like to say that i am a right-wing conservative proud of it and i am happy to see that this council is supporting a compassionate notion to move people as was said earlier off the streets it is inhumane it was negative three degrees the other day and to have people on the streets it is incompassionate it is wrong and it is not safe and people are dying on these streets and with regards to that we cannot allow aurora to become a another san francisco seattle portland it's incomprehensible and when it comes to funding i i don't i know the radical leftists in the room don't do their research but according to kddkdvr we spend in this in the denver metro area we spend double on homelessness than we spend on k-12 education that is appalling and is sickening and i cannot believe that we spend double on homelessness than we do on our children the future i am 100 in support of this resolution and i'd like to thank the apd for all that they do in order to keep our community safe and i also would like to thank you for having me here tonight that is all effect cassey hello my name is i'm an organizer with the psl um i grew up in aurora i went to high school down the street and i'm here to say that i uh opposed this camping ban uh this camping ban as well as the sweep style company don't really do anything to address the problem at hand and that is housing these people uh the can the camping ban the sweeps are only gonna cause more harm cause more violence and simply just dehumanize the people that it's affecting uh this city has we could and rather than having a camping ban i think it's more important that the council in the city focuses on using this resources to actually provide housing for these people to actually give them shelter to actually solve the problem rather than just sweeping it and making it illegal to become homeless i mean that's all i have i'm vote no jyn beverly my name's jen i'm an organizer with psl mayor mike said being homeless was a choice after being undercover and mocking the unhoused community i have lived in aurora for most of my adult life and have seen raising rents increasing taxes and killings of unarmed black and brown babies and i still have seen the lack of support and ends meet for people who can't pay their bills can't put food in their babies mouths who can't pay their excel bills who can't pay their aurora water bills the unhoused community is not a new thing in aurora i went to school at eagle crest high school we had unhoused people out there in your east aurora area that you take so much pride in but now all of a sudden aurora has become a major hub for corporations like amazon and hello fresh and we need to make it pretty and shiny because we need to appeal to all those people that want to bring money in and ultimately vote no to unions and say no we don't want to give you money no we don't want to give you equal rights no we don't want to give you raises for killing for killing our babies and doing all the things that are right for us the camping ban is not a solution this is police terror for anyone it touches aurora police is a gang we know this i've been in aurora my entire life i've been told by aurora police that i get stopped because i look suspicious at 16 years old on islip and chambers minding my business so i know what it's like to be terrorized by apd this will only affect the margin marginalized communities i.e black and brown kids black and brown moms and dads black and brown people who pay the taxes in this community who put you on these benches this will only affect the people on the streets this will affect a cycle this will be a cycle of incarceration that most people cannot get out of we know this will be a perpetual cycle for those black people that y'all are arresting in the streets and lastly i want to touch on a comment that was made by francois bergman about public comments and about the fact that you want to cut down the time of public comment you made a comment about elijah mcclain and the amount of people who came in here talking about it that was an interest of the public elijah maclean was the interest of the public and if the people in aurora want to come in week after week to talk about someone who could have been my brother could have been my cousin could have been my dad and want to come in and complain and say that apd killed someone that looked like me it is up to you to sit up here and listen to those people because they're the ones that put you up here so your comment was ignorant your comment was not necessary and your comment was very offensive and you owe the city of aurora someone like me an apology just sit up there and listen to comments week after week because we won't stop fighting and we'll keep fighting because of comments like that [Applause] if if we're going to have disruption we're going to have to take a recess and then i'll tell you that then we're going to have to have everyone not participating in this meeting so i think if you want your voices heard please be respectful rory cavallari i'll make this short and sweet for y'all by passing this measure you're removing people who have nowhere to go nowhere safe being homeless should not be illegal maybe if this country gave a fraction of an inch of care about their homeless population and provided for them their rich classes neighbors wouldn't have something to get so unfairly bent out of shape about you have no these people are still people and you have no right to remove them from the only refuge they have if you really cared about the citizens of aurora you wouldn't send hundreds of your residents to certain death you aren't concerned with safety or the environment your police force has made that more than clear cindy fisk it's sydney by the way um but honestly i'm baffled by the gall of you council members who are trying to implement a measure that is nothing but cruel and classist because we know it doesn't solve anything we can see that from our neighbors in denver um you refuse to seriously actually invest in affordable housing in reigning in your murderous police force who are paid systematically to rob people of any shot at wealth they have via penalties and incarceration you are crying about a problem that you have created and that you continue to contribute to these are people right in front of you who have had enough privilege to run for office to finance their own lives as a whole campaign cycle came and went and they are trying to functionally make homelessness and poverty illegal they may claim to understand the plights of the folks who endure cruelest winters and asheville summers with no housing no consistent food source no running water or power no place to put their belongings but they don't what they do understand is the cries of apd to please let me harass more marginalized folks please let these special interest groups make more money with more incarcerations i get because eventually these fines are going to pile up for these people right and they're not going to be able to pay where are they going to go you also listen to the cries of your rich neighbors who are more concerned with the aesthetics of their sidewalk and that their neighborhood doesn't look too nice anymore than you are with the people who are literally being forced to live in a tent i don't know i feel like living in a tent is a lot worse than looking at a tent in fact i enjoy going to rei um but i wouldn't really want to be homeless anyways um let's talk about the exemptions that are in this ban that make it compassionate which is you you'll put them in a shelter right unless they're an addict or unless they're gay or unless they're trans right or you only come sweep their neighborhoods every few weeks give them a you know a little bit of time to get their belongings back together before you destroy them all again we are not fooled by the language of compassion and i will give the gop credit for trying to make this look compassionate they have new messaging every day i swear to god um but it's not and why would you force these people to have interactions with the police very stressful interactions that call their very existence into question when they're already stressed and struggling to find a place to lay their heads to find food to eat to find a job to find their families why add more stress do you think that's going to lift them out of poverty or do you think that's going to trap them in the perpetual cycle which is what you are intending to do right we're not fooled by your statements about safety and environment because if you were uh apd wouldn't there would be nobody employed with that department right if you were concerned about safety um but we know what you're concerned about you're concerned about trapping us in a system where we can never escape into generational and perpetual poverty moreover you want i'm sorry you're reaching your three minutes of course moreover the most important part here is the only thing that separates you and the people you want to sweep from the streets is money you are afraid that if we have the ability to organize and run for ambush your time is up man paychecks your time is up until they do rich thorns my name is rich forney i'm a social worker and last year i worked at the safe outdoor space at 14th and grant for homeless women and trans individuals one of the things that i learned there and i don't claim to be an expert on the unhoused community uh it was only a four-month period but i learned quite a bit and one of the most important things that i learned was with the camping ban and with the sweeps it became much harder to find individuals who are needing to get services you know how hard it is to find a bed for somebody you know how hard it is to find addiction treatment for somebody you know how fickle it is how fickle it is is a moment of an addict when they're actually willing to go and get services and you want to make it harder for these people to do that the levels of sexual assault in this community and you want to re-traumatize them by ripping them away from the only place they know in that moment and then you're gonna put them into a shelter and try to get them services in that moment no that's not how trauma works this is not trauma informed this is not kind this is not compassionate i'd like to quote matthew 25 40 for you all don't have it memorized stop going about stop going to church a long time ago but i do remember this one and the king will say i tell you the truth when you did it to the least of these my brothers and sisters you were doing it to me this is an act of cruelty and you are doing it to the most vulnerable and most marginalized people out there and may god have mercy on your souls if you pass this nathalin ingber hi my name is natalia i came here today in opposition of this abatement ordinance for unauthorized public camping now i want you to know that opposing this ban doesn't mean that anyone hopes that living in tents be a permanent solution for our unhoused neighbors but displacing arresting and finding aurora residents is the most regressive approach you could possibly take it relies on the expansion of policing neglects the basic needs of our neighbors and will only aggravate the situation folks that are camping in the street are not there by lifestyle choice as you've declared mayor it is obvious they are there because aurora has failed them so instead of pouring salt on a wound created by aurora's neglect for its residents please do the right thing by not allowing police and the city to further criminalize and alienate those that have been backed into a corner and just like any other instance where police or the judiciary system is involved black and brown community members will certainly be disproportionately affected please look to denver as an example of how ineffective camp sweeps are an absurd amount of money is dumped into trashing denver residents property and shelter leaving people no choice but to set up camp someplace else that will only undergo sweeps again the fact that so many resources are continuously dumped to no real solution or end is infuriating surely there is a better use of these resources the aurora police department has no business spending more money and we will not tolerate the expansion of apd under the guise of cleaning up our streets please vote no on this blatantly anti-homeless camping ban and refocus your efforts on creating sustainable solutions for your residents houseless or otherwise thank you alexis moncada hi my name is alexis moncada and i'm with the party for socialism and liberation we are here today to directly oppose this plan to subject those already incredibly vulnerable to even more brutalization being houseless is not a lifestyle choice is a it is a systematic failure instead of using our resources to provide people with housing the city wants to push out those who have already been pushed out of their homes and communities this is not a solution to homelessness aurora already conducts homeless sweeps we can see that this is not an effective nor humane way to address this they are costly and they have done nothing to reduce the crisis of poverty in aurora i have witnessed some of these sweeps myself and they are incredibly cruel this proposal wants to increase police presence in so-called key communities like what was said earlier apd has a history of racist policing after all the abuse and corruption we have witnessed at the hands of the apd how can we expect them to engage peacefully with members of our community apd is constantly under investigation for brutalizing or murdering people in the city they already receive over 130 million dollars in funding the community came together in the summer of 2020 to demand action against apd and it is an insult to the entire city that we are now seeing these kind of proposals come forward the fact that we are even having this discussion when there are so many other problems really affecting people like access to affordable housing and violence at the hands of apd is ridiculous this is an injustice against all citizens of aurora and we cannot continue to treat the failures of this city with more policing all of you will go home tonight to a warm bed and food on your table many other people in this community will not the only acceptable solution is to use the city's funds to provide people with stable secure housing that they have a right to please vote no on this ordinance good evening council members mayor my name is eliza lucero and i'm an organizer with the party for socialism and liberation we are here tonight to voice the community's opposition and condemnation of the homeless camping ban that has been proposed by mayor kaufman it is well known that this proposal followed mayor kaufman's truly disgusting stunt of going undercover to be quote immersed in homelessness for a week as if mike kaufman with his 174 thousand dollar salary and you know home that he returned to could ever actually understand the circumstances of one suffering from homelessness and poverty mike kaufman made approximately 3 347 during this week-long act that was so overtly disrespectful to the people of aurora yet he felt that he could determine that his little performance proved that the reason people are homeless is a result of their lifestyle choice the real reason mayor kaufman did this is clear his actions were never about an investigation on the causes of homelessness it was never an attempt to relate to his most vulnerable constituents and it was absolutely not about developing solutions to the crisis of homelessness mayor kaufman's actions were rather an insulting public relations stunt to put forward his right-wing agenda against the poor and to create an excuse to increase policing in aurora as opposed to funding actual solutions to this problem criminalizing encampments does absolutely nothing to address the homelessness issue here all this does is increase police presence in our communities directly after the people of aurora have so vehemently spoken out against the brutal and thug-like police department that is apd this proposal seeks to give even more money than the already exorbitant 130 million taxpayer dollars allocated to dangerous murderous criminals that make up the aurora police department this proposal only funds a cycle of cruel and violent displacement this this is the opposite of a solution and we are here to demand real solutions because there is a problem we want a real solution so what is the solution to not having a house um it is blatantly clear fund permanent housing with homes being provided aurora can be directly meeting people's needs instead of funding increased violence at the hands of the police do not give any more money to these police officers fund real solutions and reject the criminalization of poverty in aurora thank you lillian house good evening council my name is lillian house i'm a member of the party for socialism and liberation i'm here with a whole lot of people from the community who took their time tonight so instead of thanking you all for your time i want to thank you all for your time because we are not getting paid so thank you that is real civic duty and i want to really uplift what people have been saying this is not even an attempt at a solution it is so plainly not even an attempt at a solution it is a performance for your right-wing base and the the people of aurora deserve better than a performance all we need to do is look at denver and see what a failure this is this is not an issue that needs expert investigation which you haven't even looked into you haven't even done that this is just a performance it is so superficial and transparent it is an insult to the people of aurora to propose investing more money into the aurora police department when they are under a consent decree which people did not vote for they didn't get to vote for 4.5 million dollars to be contracted to supervise them for five years because of their patterns and practices of racism and abuse and criminality nobody voted for that nobody had a say in that likewise nobody had to say in the murder of elijah mclean which has been a traumatic stain on this community and also was just paid out 15 million dollars of taxpayer money we pay for them we pay for their mistakes they brutalize us we pay in every way that's not the only settlement you all have paid out you paid out let's see a hundred thousand dollars recently to a woman who apd officers hog tied and carried out of her home on a child welfare check that is how these officers handle child welfare checks that you paid out 285 000 of our money you need to stay on the camping ban oh no this is related thank you ma'am and so to a man who apd officers brutalized for responding to a noise complaint so now you want to send the same officers into the most furthest marginalized communities are our neighbors they are our neighbors maybe not your neighbors you probably live in a fenced gated community no what's your address um on top of the settlements you guys paid six million dollars in retention bonuses the community does not want to retain them in fact if you want to talk about a gang disruption program let's disband apd by no means is sending this department into our communities a solution to any problem facing this community and there are real problems and you know that because you dressed up not just as a homeless person but as a homeless veteran which belies the very fact that this is a choice because the fact i'm sorry you're reaching three minutes disproportionate number of veterans shows that people go and they face the trauma of being sent to fight a war time please to no support time please is the cause of homelessness do not support this and if you do support this time please resistance time end here okay we're gonna end here we're gonna end up having to take a recess we are going to take a recess and no one else is going to be able to talk so if you can please be respectful samuel hoglan one more one more and we take a recess you make a great school teacher hello i'm sam psl i oppose the proposed camping ban and the campaign to substitute policing for real solutions sweeps are not a solution sweeps are costly ineffective and inhumane and they only create cycles of misery i've seen what happens firsthand in denver you know people fences go up in the morning and just people's stuff just gets thrown away you know you're not born homeless it happens overnight people have jobs people are in apartments you know they can't afford their rent they miss one payment and they're out they pack up everything they can into a tent and they think that i'm going to be able to work my way out of this like i'll get back up on my feet but they still have a job so they go to their job the fences go up everything in their part everything in their tent gets taken out uh gets thrown away they'll lose computers passports so it just makes it that much harder and like the longer you're out there on the street and you just face these injustices you begin to slowly lose your mind and uh that's what happens to a lot of people and when it gets to that point it's actually it's too late um denver's just been horrible on this please aurora do not follow the same road the denver denver has followed it's kicking the can down the road a lot of these you know a lot of these encampments the amount of money they spend on these encampments actually could pay for you know a month's rent for everyone in the encampment enough time to maybe get up on your feet so that's what i have to say please vote now bruno hi again um by the way i don't know if i mentioned this before but i am an aurora resident i'm an aurora resident in ward 2. i've been an aurora resident for 10 years and as an aurora resident i'd like to remind everyone on this council that you are public servants in a position of power you are not the people that get to decide the fate of everyone in your town you are supposed to be serving the people that put you in those positions of power and the people that can remove you from those positions of power and what you're doing right now is evading that job that you have because you are literally looking for the laziest most brutal shortcut you could find to the issue of homelessness do your job be a public servant actually sacrifice something out there for your constituents maybe sacrifice some time maybe sacrifice some money maybe sacrifice doing hard work to solve these issues if you have constituents that are so bothered by have the the injustice the the the cruelty of having to see people just struggling to survive that cannot bear to see people just trying to get by in their lovely pristine aurora sidewalks then you know what get them into housing it's that simple it's that simple get them into housing put the money into that put the effort into that i actually find it really interesting that you think that the issue of policing has nothing to do with this because who is going to be out there enforcing these these camping these sweeps who's going to be out there performing these sweeps it's going to be the apd the same apd that is have been found categorically to have an issue with racism and excessive force this is not a far left fringe radical uh opinion that i hold this was research done by the attorney general of the state of the colorado you disagree with that take it up with him focus on that focus on making your cops less racist focus on giving resources to the people that are most in need in your city focus on bringing real solutions to your constituents and not just sweeping your problems under the rug and calling it a day and if this camping ban goes through the resistance will not be limited to these meetings we will continue to be out here we will continue to shed light on this because these crimes will not go unnoticed by the community the community does not stand with this we do not want to see our neighbors just hurt it around like cattle and we will be out there we will be putting a spotlight on your actions and apd's actions and we will be making sure that there is public outcry about this thank you almond cross ladies and gentlemen of the council mr mayor my name is oman cross i am currently unaffiliated unemployed and homeless in aurora right now so let's let's do this speech right here i call it the three-minute mirror thank you all for allowing me to speak but i have a difficult task before me i have three minutes to open the eyes of a whole room but let's see if i can do this as just one homeless veteran to be honest i don't even know why this is being discussed has the city of aurora fallen so far as to pass a law to label people as trash and sweep them away is this moment real if so who have we all become i only have three minutes i don't have time to explain to you why this isn't just a bad law it is immoral so instead i'm just going to present you with the only three outcomes that can happen to me depending on how this goes option a tonight every single one of you is going to go home and you're going to take a real hard look in the mirror and you're going to see just how monstrous actions like this make each and every one of you and then when you realize that you're going to say no more not just to this bill but all inhumane bills just like this you'll stand for something that matters and earn the position you were given option b you're going to ignore me and you're gonna send me apd and they're gonna sweep me away and millions more like me all over this country because you are setting an example as to whether or not this kind of behavior is okay so if you sweep me away i'm gonna die alone with nothing or you're gonna have your friends lock me up in jail is that what i deserve so let's go on to option c now this here is the fun one in this scenario you still don't listen you pass it anyway but these people the ones who care they're going to save me from your broom they're not gonna let you kill me and when they do that i'm gonna live long enough to handle one piece of business because if this council has become so corrupt that you can't see the poison that's in your own heart right now mr mayor i officially challenge you for the title of mayor of the city of aurora because if you will not stand for these people i will [Applause] we are in recess we are in recess officers we are in recess [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] hey the meeting is back in order city clerk do we have the call in line yes we do have individuals in the public calling line of order council member marcano thank you what on earth just happened we have no more public invited that are in the chamber so we are now moving to the call-in line why did that happen because there's no more people that signed up we went through the entire list you're saying well if you don't believe me i was told that by the city clerk okay i'm not i'm just asking i'm sorry there was a lot of commotion i i think but our noise canceling is really good we heard none of that so okay sorry you just you just basically gaveled the meeting out so okay so we are now going to move to the call-in line for more public invited thank you thank you speaker kathy go ahead you have three minutes i'm kathy gross i live at 2108 south joliet court mayor and council i urge you to vote against this proposal i believe that it is still thought out i would also ask you in the future it's very stressful to come before city council the process is intimidating the grandeur of your chambers is intimidating and people get emotional they are very concerned about the things that they believe in and get upset and you ought to give them a little bit of care for that i am speaking now to the conservatives on council i believe that the money that is going to be spent on sleep and that has been spent on sleeps could be spent on a more long-term solution because we just keep doing sleep uh if we could find shelter that was available for people and put them in it it would be a one-time deal and you know maybe six months before somebody got back on their feet but we wouldn't keep throwing people out of their home-built homes and i have to tell you that just a few weeks ago i tried to find shelter in aurora for a young man who's really no fault of his own was out in the cold on a bitter night and ended up curling up against the wall of the church because he'd been taken to church as a child and he thought that's where you went for help fortunately we were having a food bank that i could not find him a place and the next day after i took him home and put him to bed in my house i talked to the people at commitus crisis center who were a little bit irritated with me that i did not know that they had the only beds in aurora but when you talk about there being space for people to go there isn't and you have to know by two o'clock in the afternoon that you're going to need a space in the night it's a system that is broken because there isn't enough of it there is vacant land and buildings in the city of denver that in the city of aurora that people could use if we wanted to put our heads together and do some problem solving but in the meantime if there are encampments as you call them how about dumpsters with service how about sharks containers how about porta potties how about these things all set up where people are where they could get services where they can be close to the social workers and the people in the city who are trying to help i understand that seeing a tent community is uncomfortable it's uncomfortable because i go home to my warm bed and i feel badly that you have reached your three minutes one or two people who spend the night with me because they have nowhere else to go that is arnie go ahead you have three minutes mayor kaufman and members of city council my name is arnie schultz and i have lived in aurora since 1975. i am opposed to the proposed ordinance and resolution because they do nothing to address the root causes of homelessness which include stagnant wages unemployment lack of affordable housing and health care poverty poor mental health addiction racial inequality domestic violence and family conflict which is amazing major cause of youth being unhoused this is the most inhumane ordinance i have seen proposed in my approximately 40 years of following and being involved in testifying before the members the mayor and members of city councils my reasons for saying this include section 94 123 cc 3c unhoused people may be issued a citation and be subject to arrest many of the unhoused population have mental health health issues and may not understand or be able to read the orders other unheld people are minors are they also subject to the initiative citation and being arrested section 94 125 5 prohibits any form of cover protection or shelter from the elements other than clothing you go out in the three degree below wet weather and see what you do the section sounds like cruel unusual punishment section 114 106 definitions include camp or camping includes the use of a vehicle for overnight occupancy where overnight occupancy or overnight camping is not permitted are people supposed to know where these locations are unless they're posted council member mark connor's amendments are much more humane and in favor better gender item and hope that at least six of you have some empathy for people less fortunate to you and we'll vote no on this item and yet on his amendment in this day and age the vast majority of iran's face the possibility of becoming unhoused due to a number of things they have no control over we also know the cities that not have sufficient shelter options available to at all times for all the individuals and families that are being called unauthorized camps who decides on a priority of shelter options where another human beings will be moved to who decides what alternative facilities are who is going to decide which group or groups of owned houses human beings will be moved first there is also no indication that families will not be separated it's imperative that these issues be codified i also object to the resolution taking place immediately without reconsideration the city manager needs some time to do research for the tasks you're imposing upon him your because it's good it takes the time everybody search themselves thank you wren is next you have three minutes good evening counselors i spent the past two years studying encampment sweeps and other policies criminalizing homelessness including camping bans via surveys records requests legal analysis dedicated auditing and first-hand observation primarily in denver which has an urban camp event approaching its 10th anniversary in may so i thought i'd share with you tonight some of the data available that's impact there amputations due to frostbite among homeless people in denver increased by 300 percent after the passing of the urban camping ban a survey of over 500 homeless residents six months later found that 66 of those displaced by it moved hidden more dangerous areas for such people rates of robbery sexual assault drug overdose and death by exposure are significantly elevated and then the number of reported crimes against homeless victims increased by 42 in the five years following the camping ban 83 of those same survey respondents were abated or displaced without being connected with any services 50 of them said their quality of life went down significantly due to sleep loss associated with camping ban enforcement the effects of chronic sleep deprivation include depressed immune systems increased risk of stress illnesses confusion and disorientation or even at high levels memory loss and psychosis all that's just a small sample of the many public health risks created by urban camp and vance if you won't take my word for it in 2020 the cdc issued national guidelines for municipalities against abating encampments because it significantly accelerated the spread of cobit 19. but the damage isn't just medical it is also economic from another survey conducted in 2020 72.6 of respondents had lost property when being displaced and 29 percent had lost everything they owned case workers and service providers routinely report disconnection from clients due to campaign ban displacement leaving the decreased numbers of homeless residents accessing services and when ticketed or arrested homeless residents lose future housing and employment opportunities as a result camping bans are also legally dubious in 2019 denver's was ruled unconstitutional in the 10th circuit as cruel and unusual punishment and the 9th circuit boise's has been as well they're upheld all the way to the supreme court level which refused to hear the city's appeal passing a campaign ban is guaranteeing aurora will be subject to years of federal litigation at taxpayer expense i don't necessarily expect the conservatives among you to care about him with that i'm saying it here tonight so there can be no doubt that you have all the necessary information available to you to prevent making the same brutal costly mistake that denver and too many other cities have this is the speech i would give to an idiot to try and teach him why this is evil because it's obvious those of you would have a soul will vote against this measure axel is next go ahead you have three minutes maxell you are live you have three minutes um did you say maxwell or maxim maxim go ahead i apologize this this is max thank you council members for allowing me a long time resident of aurora a 24-year veteran an immigrant and a taxpayer the opportunity to speak on this matter i do not represent a political party but i do represent many real residents that were not able to come to the meeting today because of the hostile nature of the folks that live there today we do appreciate apd for being there to protect those that work that said homestead campaigns are an increasing problem across aurora and a camping abatement is a significant step in the right direction to manage the health and cleanliness of our communities these encampments like the proper sanitation plumbing services and especially they provide the perfect breeding grounds for diseases including spreading cobia 19 hepatitis a and b e coli and hiv among many other diseases aside from the visible trash which is not the score of my argument almost encampments also prevent excuse me present a biohazard these hazards include human waste animal waste drug paraphernalia and not only in the human waste excuse me and not only is the human waste and open-air drug use health risk for those who live in these areas is also a harmful to the residents who are left with burden have to clean up the waste that those leave behind the campaign pavement is a necessary first step to manage this issue the so-called camping areas on our public and private properties and i encourage every city council member to approve the camping abatement as i think all of us can agree that supporting public health and sanitation is a primary function of city council i appreciate everything that our police do i appreciate everything that our council members do and i applaud you to please please vote for this as the first step as we move away from these campaign campaigns thank you for your time lori you are next you have three minutes go ahead uh good evening i i'd really like to thank the city of aurora for their continued commitment to support and establish services that support people who are experiencing homelessness including shelter beds and affordable housing units non-profit organizations like aurora warms the night should be applauded and supported for their work to provide food and provide food clothing and other necessities to people living unsheltered donating time and money to those organizations is both helpful to people experiencing homelessness and it helps keep the city clean and safe these support services show a great amount of respect and care for people who are homeless it shows our humanity and our desire to serve the community the camping abatement is the first step to reducing the overwhelming rise and hazardous living conditions for our fellow human beings human waste drug paraphernalia crime and sexual assault accompany these camps and they're harmful to the people living in them i've talked to many residents and business owners in aurora too and they've shared that due to the encampments their children fear playing at the park or just simply walking down the street people now avoid going outside because they fear for their safety families avoid patronizing local businesses because the areas are presumed dangerous these local businesses are no longer able to make ends meet when their customers stop coming and anyone who says that the only people that are affected are the homeless is wrong it affects our entire community people of all races and ethnicities i hope all of our council members will be compassionate to all city council must consider the safety of all of the residents and that means approving this first step with the camping abatement i don't understand why so many people tonight said that this was an attempt to criminalize homelessness so that there'll be police weeks because the camping abatement requires that the city provide a minimum of 72 hours notice before the camping area can abated and that the city must ensure that the people living in the encampment have an alternative shelter option further it does not criminalize homelessness as there are no fines or penalties associated with being in an encampment i'm also grateful for the companion proposal offered by mayor kaufman to require the city to increase our shelter capacity to meet the increased demand these are real solutions so yes shelter for our vulnerable people experiencing homelessness and yes for respecting our entire community and ensuring public safety and health please take care of the entire community and vote yes for the camping abatement it is the compassionate approach to dignity and safety for all of aurora thank you eve is next go ahead you have three minutes eve go ahead you have three minutes i am an employee of a female council member that owns a business support the racist apa police union who blasted elijah mclean but turned around and hired the same law firm that represented elijah mcclain's mother to defend her first amendment rights after she stuck her foot in her mouth and showed her lack of intelligence aurora convinced me to know who she really is when the camera is off and she is no longer a keyboard warrior she wants the camping band but won't pay a living wage to her staff and won't pay overtime when it's owed she forces us to dress like sex workers on pullbacks and as a female business owner wouldn't you want to dignify your female staff you consistently put your bartenders at risk of civil suits with the promotion of over serving for the sole purpose of profits and you have no concern for the safety of your patrons or any other driver or passenger on the road you state what happens when they lie your issue but it is i strongly encourage you to stop this practice i encourage you to stop drinking and driving i encourage you to stop giving cops free booze free food that's out of the inevitable dui how do we if the if it's not regarding the campaign ban is there a way to stop the call you can you can you can instruct this is regarding this item which is the camping ban yes if council would like they can instruct roger sherman to let them know to stay on the okay so he is screening calls though that make sure that people are calling in on the camping ban yes okay thanks michael is that go ahead you have three minutes thank you my name is michael ruddick policy manager with healthier colorado as an organization that advocates for public policy that improved the health of coloradans and on behalf of our 7 500 members in aurora we strongly oppose the ordinance tonight at best this ordinance is an attempt to shuffle people experiencing homelessness out of the public eye at worst it's an ill-conceived and costly policy that'll negatively affect attempts to permanently house people and improve health criminalization of homelessness isn't an effective strategy at reducing homelessness make no mistake this is a policy that will result in more fines before jailing of unhoused people homelessness in this community community and all communities is a terrible reality compared to house people individuals experiencing homelessness have a life expectancy 18 years fewer higher rates of diabetes heart attacks hiv depression and undiagnosed mental disorders children experiencing homelessness experience emotional and behavioral issues at twice the rate of kids with home that's why it's so necessary to prioritize real solutions and resources to get people on their feet and under a roof this ordinance distracts from that goal according to the 2021 pit count there were 594 people experiencing homelessness on a given night in aurora meanwhile there are only 285 year-round consistent shelter beds language in the ordinance states that a camp cannot be swept unless there's adequate shelter offered okay that's great but when we have double the amount of people experiencing homelessness as we have shelter beds why aren't we focusing our attention on making up that huge gap in shelter this is the definition of missing the forest for the treat frustratingly this ordinance is how to find strategies that haven't worked while increasing the frequency of sweeps and abatement according to the city's own website the city already gives 72-hour notice before sweeps offers shelter options and then sweeps camps surely we can all acknowledge this strategy in lieu of real investments in housing and shelters hasn't worked as the number of people experiencing homelessness has increased over the last two years by almost 20 percent by the way that's just about the same increase as in denver where they've had a camping ban implemented since 2013. if the strategy hasn't worked up until now why would it work by formalizing it into an org housing's first solutions are what work building trust between service providers and people experiencing homelessness is what works investing in job training mental and physical health affordable housing is what works during a 100 day stretch last fall denver housed 576 people through this approach that's 20 less than the entire homeless population of aurora these aren't pie in the sky talking points data driven solutions are getting your time please vote no thank you next is barbara go ahead you have three minutes thank you for hearing me tonight i'm bargaining oh hi i'm barbara niederhoff speaking on my own behalf thank you for hearing me i've lived in aurora since 2009 and before that i lived 15 years right across the street from aurora we all want our neighborhoods safe and clean and we want our neighbors to be safe healthy and contributing to our city we know that in order to even do just okay in our society everyone needs a base of the folks to rest after days work a place to be safe range affairs and be ready for the next day all other social functioning rests on that base we know that year by year that is kept out of reach for more and more awareness pay is not keeping up with housing costs and affordable housing is not keeping up with the people who need it my two older kids who have been to college both got full-time jobs after graduating neither of them can afford aurora and one has moved away they're both very lucky that my husband and i were able to buy when they were young and the market worked for more people some other people have been squeezed out and before the roof and can't afford to move away either until gloria builds the spaces needed to keep them safely underneath you'll just be copying denver's failed policy of pushing people from one neighborhood to another to another that will make it harder for people to get a good job harder for them to get care of services harder to keep belongings they need to survive and make it much harder for them to gain their own housing later on in addition this policy will spread their sites around rather than make them just go away and that will make the world less space and less clean for all of us and it will waste a lot of taxpayer money each of you has your own stable base of operations even if you chose to live outside for a few days or more you would not be experiencing homelessness because you always know that this space is there for you to any council members who believe that government should be based on evidence please don't know on this one listen to experts in the field and put our resources into real solutions so that we can get people on their feet again and make a world affordable thank you and goodbye thank you next is aubrey go ahead you have three minutes evening my name is aubrey wilde and i'm the advocacy program director at the colorado coalition for the homeless we provide integrated health care supportive services and houses 4 000 households through developments we own and operate including renaissance veterans departments at fitzsimmons located here in aurora i'm speaking on behalf of the coalition in firm opposition to the proposed camping ban strong families and thriving communities start with home this ordinance and companion resolution failed to direct any resources toward the development of affordable supportive housing emergency shelter or other meaningful solutions to homelessness and we know that there is not enough shelter available for the people you hope to sweep criminalization of survival further destabilizes the lives of people experiencing homelessness leading to an increase in robbery physical violence sexual assault of people experiencing homelessness it leads to an increased risk of frostbite hypothermia dehydration heat stroke disease spread and death and it leads to an increase in disconnection from case managers housing navigators housing providers and medical providers these have forced people to seek more hidden and isolated locations to rest and have made it much harder for the coalition staff to do their job it's also made it more dangerous to engage with folks because people who are previously sheltered in groups of five six and seven have been invented have been swept under camping bans are more likely to settle in what we're calling mega camps of up to 100 people in areas that are unfamiliar to our frontline staff as a defense without access to housing and services many people experiencing homelessness become trapped in a homelessness jail cycle criminalization prevents people from getting on a path to stability and it comes at a major cost to taxpayers one of the most impactful strategies for addressing homelessness is permanent supportive housing or psh which pairs housing with voluntary supportive services to make sure that people can remain housed successfully through denver's social impact bond project for example more than 360 of the most frequent visitors to emergency rooms jails and detox were housed using a housing first and psh models over the last five years and in total it cost half as much to provide housing and supportive services than it did to provide emergency services and policing to people experiencing homelessness evaluators found several things including that 86 percent of residents remained housed after one year there was a 34 reduction in police contacts there was a 65 reduction in use of detox a 40 decrease in emergency department visits and 155 increase in preventative office based health care visits this clearly demonstrates that solving homelessness is possible and that shifting resources away from policing and emergency services towards proven strategies the outcomes for people experiencing homelessness and the broader community i challenge you to identify even one place where a kid can work i don't think you'll be able to do that i urge to know about tonight brian is next go ahead you have three minutes hi my name is brian lindstrom i'm a lifelong auroran and i'm a resident of ward 2. i'm speaking against 14a and the criminalization of poverty so i'm a history teacher and i have a master's degree in history i was originally gonna plan to discuss how history repeats itself and draw comparisons between vagrancy laws and p image policies of the past and homeless policies attempted to be passed in present day but i've learned from my more conservative family members that appealing to history and humanity is not persuasive enough but instead it comes down to money so i'm here to appeal to your fiscal conservatism i've heard the majority of this council taught being good stewards of the taxpayer dollar and being fiscally responsible but this is big government spending and overreach plain and simple enforcing this ban will increase government spending but while doing nothing to actually stall homelessness it will cost taxpayers over 40 000 per homeless person to approach homelessness in this way we've seen denver do this for over what for almost a decade and has increased cost to nearly 50 000 for a homeless person while not addressing homelessness if we invested that money into housing uh the homeless it would cost taxpayers half half as much while actually solving the problem stop this big government spending stop this big government overreach do not pass 14a and as an aside um i keep hearing calls for respect you know when we host the visuals you complain when we march you complain this public comment is the only vehicle for us to peacefully be heard by you and you threaten to shut it down because our comments hurt your feelings remember jfk's words those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable thank you omar is next you have three minutes go ahead thank you and thank you to our city council and mayor um name is omar montgomery i am a resident in ward 5 and speaking as a resident not for a particular organization or political party i am speaking on behalf against the camping ban because i think it'll cause unnecessary uh financial stress on the city it will not address the issues of our own house some of you were with me and several others at the mlk statue this year celebrating martin luther king birthday he said over two thousand people one of the young ladies i sometimes walk down colfax came to me with a big smile and gave me a hug and council member crystal morillo was there and said because i have housing i am sober i am no longer doing drugs the alcohol and me and my child have a place to stay we can be a city that do this right and be innovative we can send action teams similar to how the havana business district does and go check on those on how find out what services they need and place them either at the living tree ready to work programs that we have there the only permanent housing that we have for the young house is providence at the height if we're able to expand some of these programs that we have right here in the city and become an innovative city and show the rest of the world the rest of the country how to do this right if we have action teams go out leave it there again to do case management and give these people the services they need and do this with humanity we will be a model and not using the same type of programs that have failed i realize this is a very difficult decision i know that our small business community deserve to be able to have um people come pensionize their business and not have distractions but at the same time we could do this with humanity with that task force let's have a small business community there let's have our advocates for the um house let's have our own house community to speak for themselves not us speaking for them let's get that action team going and let's begin to use models that we treat our own house with humanity and give them grace so that they can live their lives not in a cult but in a home where they probably won't be doing drugs where they won't be committing crimes or anything of this nature and that's not stereotype or in hounds many of them are working poor the average rent is about 1300 a month some of them are sleeping in cars at restoration church waiting on home vouchers that they haven't received yet they got their kids in the car and they go eat at the church the city was there as a matter of fact you're a three-minute servant hey mandy is next go ahead you have three minutes hi thank you mayor kaufman and member of the council my name is mandy ashley i'm a resident of aurora in ward 5. i'm the executive director of the aurora health alliance which is an inclusive convener comprised of many sectors and stakeholders our mission is to achieve equitable access and promote a healthier aurora for everyone this includes members of the community who are unhoused my comments represent both mine and those of the alliance aurora health alliance's commitment to health equity means we strive for and promote the highest possible standard of health for all people health equity means everyone has a fair opportunity to be as healthy as possible it requires the dismantling of structural racism through the removal barriers to health it requires both improving access to the care and resources needed to thrive along with equitable treatment once the access is gained we have not seen any compelling evidence that enacting or enforcing urban chanting bans provide any meaningful solutions to solving the housing crisis for this reason we urge you to vote no on the camping ban ordinance given the lack of appropriate emergency shelter the lack of health mental health and substance treatment services for those experiencing homelessness and the lack of adequate long-term supportive housing and affordable housing for those in need the proposed camping ban would essentially criminalize the status of being unhoused in aurora we urge investments in housing services and shelter as a cost-effective proven alternative to criminalization the city is currently undergoing strategic planning process with regard to housing implementing a campaign ban seems counterintuitive to the thoughtful database solutions that will be produced through the city's own process have some faith in this process and patience with its implementation criminalization is not an effective tool to address homelessness data-driven solutions centered around portable housing emergency shelter wraparound services physical mental and behavioral health services are key to reducing homelessness and improving the health and quality of life for aurorans we urge you to vote no on this program thank you to you next is mandy you have three minutes go ahead hi my name is mandy corbari i'm a resident of ward 4. i would like to voice strong opposition to the camping ban it's cruel to prosecute and persecute unsheltered people without providing a place for them to go i find it shameful that our city council was recently pushed far right by a huge infusion of the cash and not by the will of the people of aurora in order to pass this ban and other inhumane measures it's very telling that in this session you are threatening to silence the voice of the people because you don't like what they are saying but you need to hear this because people are fighting for their lives tonight i want to point out that it is empty and astonishing to pretend that this is in in any way a compassionate practice sleeping campsite doesn't give people a roof over their heads it pulls them further into homelessness by taking away their possessions and it's an illogical argument on its face the camping ban in denver has not helped homelessness the cleanups in denver are brutal events that cause harm to the people whose items are being trashed no matter what the law states in reality individuals end up losing their personal documents and items that keep them warm on cold nights food and shelter they don't usually have a bed to sleep in after this week these losses prevent people from gaining employment and cost precious funds to replace this is violence the only thing that helps with homelessness is housing i want my tax dollars to go towards more affordable housing and low cost of free housing for those who need it and i do want to say that um council member marcano you're doing a great job and you resent you represent the opinions of my household thank you eric is next go ahead you have three minutes derek you are live turn off your radio in three minutes erin you are next you have three minutes all right uh thank you my name is aaron petrow i'm a resident of ward 4 and i'm calling in opposition of the camping ban i appreciate the opportunity to speak and um i just would urge the council to practice humanity i know you guys can practice humanity i've seen it when you guys came together in a collaborative effort to propose to to um to reconsider the east bank uh development mother teresa once said that many people talk about the homeless but not many talk but you talk to them so i'm asking those on council who consider themselves spiritual and i know there are a few of you to reconsider your position on criminalizing homelessness i've seen firsthand how homelessness can affect friends and and family and it's hard on all of them there's different humane ways that we can provide housing and include wraparound services so their problems are being being met while also providing a human humane way to treat our unhoused residents so again just to make this quick i'm just going to urge humanity not just for unhoused but also for your colleagues and hopefully you can come up with a better collaborative solution rather than criminalizing homelessness thank you very much for this time to speak that will be focused on the bulldog okay thank you we're going to take a five minute recess and then we'll open it up for discussion with council at 9 45. [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] meeting is back in session meeting is back in session i think we're still missing some people mayor you have the floor to introduce the ordinance oh i'm sorry katie could you please read 14a item 14a is introduction of ordinance 2022-12 an ordinance of the city council of the city of aurora colorado adding a new section to be numbered 94-122 to the city code pertaining to prohibiting unauthorized camping on public or private property and adding article 4 sections 114 106 through 114 112 to chapter 114 pertaining to abating unauthorized camps on public property thank you and mayor do you want to go ahead and introduce your ordinance uh thank you madam chairman i would move uh item number 14a second okay there's been a motion um by mayor kaufman and the second by council members of anik um discussion mayor pretend yes um well go ahead council member marcano thank you ma'am i have a series of amendments i would like to offer uh to the ordinance mayor our council member marcano this is councilmember mudio i was not as quick to you to the draw but i actually was hoping to make a just an opening statement not a amendment um would that be okay with you absolutely okay thank you can i run the meeting sorry i'm sorry thank you mayor for tim um yes councilman thank you mario okay i appreciate it okay so before we get into discussion um i just wanted to open with just acknowledging um the intense dissension of of prior council meetings if you've tuned into prior council meetings it's not a surprise when i say there's been contention and it can get very intense i do think though that this is you know too important of a conversation to for any any potential discussion so i just i acknowledge that we are not there's there's clear policy difference here um with myself and and others um and i also want to acknowledge that the mayor you know has the votes to pass this um but uh there are several of us councilmember marcano and myself included that do have amendments to propose there are some serious structural concerns with with how this ordinance is written and i think the public deserves to to hear that out and that cause that debate in that conversation i mean not get stuck with a procedural call for the vote which would thwart any discussion hence forward with that call so i've seen that procedure kind of used to to discourage and literally shut down any public you know discussion between council members on the agenda items so i just wanted to ask the council or sorry the mayor and my fellow council members to see if you guys would agree to not call for the question until we've discussed um some of these amendments um i think specifically there are there are some structural and legal concerns around the timing of this proposed proposed uh ordinance um some of the inefficiencies that this might create um and and more color on what people mean around criminalizing right so i would just ask the mayor and my colleagues to not call for the vote until we've had a robust discussion and have talked through these amendments um you know in an effort to not thwart the the public's right to this conversation and having the information the full information before we make this vote so i'm going to just leave that as an outstanding request council member marcano all right thank you mayor pro tem um so i have as i mentioned a series of amendments that i would like to offer um for council's consideration here um beginning with section 94112 um so i would like to my first amendment would be to strike the section of item number three that says make an arrest and replace that with temporarily detained and then leave in or otherwise enforce this section and strike against a person camping on public property unless colon and that will become contextualized in the future portion and you all should have received a version of this in your backup so please let me know if you're not following along the second amendment that i would like to offer i'm sure i mean mayor pretend mayor i'm wondering uh it would i think it would be better uh councilman mcconnell if you could do each one set let's debate each one separately and vote on each one separately sure we can do that i would rather we don't vote on each one separately why would we do that i mean he's proposing a number of amendments up to council member mcconnell i think well um yeah um mayor pro tem um or i guess are you still chairing the meeting i guess you are uh i'm fine with discussing each item if uh you know i want to make sure that the public is clear on what we're talking about here and that my our colleagues are able to ask any questions if they have them so okay yeah i think it would be best if you went through your amendments and then then there's open discussion on on the entirety of it all right well okay so i'll try to give a little bit of context then um so for the strike the revisions to section three uh or to item three in section ninety four one two two uh the reason for that is to change into temporary detention is because that is preferable to an arrest which can go on someone's record you all know that getting a record however my newt can impact her ability to secure employment housing etc in the future so i don't want us to craft a policy that's going to undermine us even more than we're already doing to ourselves here um so section 3 item a a city employee or law enforcement official that has issued the person in a camp a verbal or written order to move from the camp and take their property with them and that person has refused or failed to move uh colin and so that last section is an addition i believe that the sponsor of the amendment needs a second i don't believe there was a second do we oh hey did you make a motion council member marcano um i was so i apologize since i have several amendments i was going to just run through them i thought that that was that that's when i moved the entire you can move the entire amendment uh this is an amendment so you can move the entire amendment but you need to okay council member marcano do you want to go ahead and make a motion sure so i'll move uh to amend section 94 1 2 2 3 as i stated okay wait a minute are we doing each of each section that's what i thought you all just asked me to do that's not what i said i originally said do the entire all your amendments in the entirety and then we would and that would be the motion for your okay so would you prefer to get a second now or would you rather me run through these and then ask for a second i was procedurally if i could okay mayor uh it is a strike councilman mcconnell you consider this as a strike below amendment uh to the in other words this in in its entirety replaces uh the the my proposed ordinance in its entirety uh and then it would just require one vote and then but you still need uh you can move it and then you still need a second but it but you can move it as a strike below amendment okay so for clarification then from the city attorney because i know i'm not the only person that has amendments to offer if we do that then in that past then the modified version that you all have in your backup with a few uh tweaks would be the ordinance as it would stand and then another one of my colleagues is able to continue to offer amendments correct i think this is going to be really difficult to follow because you have so many amendments and then i guess there's more coming from other council members so for us to vote one by one i i personally don't think that's efficient because you're going to pass things without knowing what's what's coming next from another member on an amendment all right so if i can suggest that let's go through what you all had in your backup since you all should have had a chance to review that and i did leave my comments in the margin so you were all able to kind of get an idea of why i'm making some of these suggestions and just i'm sorry to interrupt but um and i don't know if anybody else has this issue with their escribe but earlier today i did see all your amendments when i went on the city website i i'm not seeing them on my backup on the escribe is anybody else having an issue with that no may pretend there's an item called camping ordinance amendments marcano.pdf may offer a suggestion yes councilmember marielle i was wondering if it's in our backup if we might be able to use this wonderful technology to share an image for council members yeah i'm happy to share because i do have it up on my side screen here that'd be great thank you okay all right so now i see them and share already are y'all seeing [Music] the ordinance here yes all right great sorry i'm trying to switch my view on the other side so i can see all of you as well okay all right so um yeah so i guess we'll start we'll take it from the top here so 94112 um you can see the changes here we strike make an arrest to and change that with temporarily detain and then or otherwise enforce remains against a person camping on public sorry on public property is stricken unless and the reason for that is that again temporary detention i think is preferable to an arrest which can go on someone's record as i mentioned that can make it more difficult for folks to find housing and employment etc a city employee or a law enforcement official has offered the person in a camp a verbal or written order um to move from the camp and take their property with them and that person has refailed or refused or failed to move so that's a clarifying addition there and the city has an indoor shelter option that is realistic practicable and safe and i want to stress the indoor and realistic practicable and safe indoor would include our pallet shelters those are considered indoor structures and realistic practicable and safe means that the camp has to the space has to actually exist it has to be ready for habitation and it has to meet federal criterion for uh through hud for what is a safe uh and you know reasonable um shelter option effectively so the reason i wanted to add that was because when we discussed this and horns a bit i felt like there was an opportunity for um folks to use weasel words with people experiencing homelessness to get them to opt out and i want us to make it very clear what the options are that we are providing people with and then the second part in this section here in section b is that the shelter has agreed to take the person and that the person has refused to move from the camp which means we actually connected that individual with a provider that has space and then that in spite of that being offered a realistic practicable and safe shelter option that person refused in that case you're clear to enact a sweep um again i want us to make sure that we're not you know potentially fooling folks here um so with sec with item c there i struck exception to this section and just clarified that if a person is offered in writing a realistic and practical and uh practicable and safe you'll see that repeated throughout option and the shelter option is available to that person uh and that person refuses to go to the shelter option that has agreed to accept them and the person refuses or fails to move the camp uh location when ordered this person may be issued a citation and it subjects to temporary detention instead of arrest in order to facilitate the person's move to the available shelter again if people get a record we are going to end up effectively criminalizing homelessness here that can cause a whole lot of other issues that will still leave these folks without shelter and ultimately back on our streets um so section 4 here is any person cited for and convict convicted of violating the section shall not be subject to the general penalties provisions as provided in section 113 so that's as is from the or from mayor kaufman's ordinance i wanted to add a violation of this section shall not constitute disorderly conduct pursuant to section 94 110 a5 of our city code that is what is colloquially called contempt of cop and that is something that the attorney general's investigation uh yielded that we overuse and can then that's a charge that can lead to people being impacted with the general penalties which is an indirect way to get people basically criminalized through a sweep process and i did check in with our public defender's office we have a tremendous amount of unhoused folks who do come through already as is with our existing policies for trespassing and for contempt of cop so i don't want us to again compound and institutionalize that problem um i'm sorry i'm hearing mumbling does anyone have a question or a comment why don't we go through the end let's just go through the whole thing last question all right so uh section five um i strike the uh or any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing um again this is i think an area where we get right into cruel and unusual punishment and there is also an except there was a separate section where this is repeated that we i removed blanket as well just because there is oh there are many other uses for blankets other than camping i think the definitions for camping and for setting up a camp already kind of cover that without the need to add blankets because the way i read that you could potentially cite someone for camping for reading a book on a bench with a blanket at night um or you know potentially taking their baby in a stroller covered by a blanket around at night so i think that we need to be very careful with the language and not be over broad i also struck the camp or camping can include using a vehicle for overnight occupancy where overnight occupancy or overnight camping violates code or another city rule or regulation that are not otherwise authorized by the city and i just need to share this with you because this is from a constituent illegally parking a vehicle was the very first thing that led this person into homelessness when the vehicle was all that she and her mother had that car was impounded her mother lost her job as a result she lost the car because of losing her chop and then all of her three-year-old daughter's possessions were lost i'm talking photos clothing toys etc this resulted in her becoming separated from her daughter engaging in sex work just to make ends meet and eventually enduring a very long and incredibly abusive relationship just to stay sheltered so if we're doing this kind of stuff i need you to understand that's the road that we're paving i don't want us to go down that road we already have safe camping areas not everyone as you know you heard earlier is aware of them and putting this in here i think is just leading us down a very ugly route moving on evidence of unauthorized camps or unauthorized camping includes as you can see here i again struck the or any form of cover protecting from the elements other than clothing again you can these over broad definitions i think are going to get us into trouble um moving on um this was just a grammatical fix here when i added an ore before bedroll and again blankets or any other form of protection from the elements other than clothing was struck moving on to abatement of unauthorized camps again you see realistic practicable and safe uh and then repeated that these have these uh set options will accept all of the individuals in an unauthorized camp meaning we must be able to house everybody who we are sweeping um in one ago um prerequisites for the abatement of camps again available shelter options so we must have enough realistic practicable and safe indoor options for all the folks who are going to be swept and those said shelter options must be willing to accept all of the individuals and families in an authorized camp in an unauthorized camp um the notice requirements i just added here in red as you see any occupants uh present in a camp on the day of the abatement shall be offered placement in a shelter option which has agreed to accept the person that's the addition which has agreed to accept the person and advise them to sell that services are available for them and then um in section 114 110 i change the minimum notice period back to seven days from 72 hours an earlier draft of this ordinance reflected that ruling from the federal court that impacted denver i would rather us follow that guideline fully expecting that we will likely be challenged um or so you know something will happen and cause us to follow that same guideline as well so i'd rather just be proactive rather than react uh to that issue as well um and with that i believe that covers yeah i don't think i missed anything here i believe that covers all of my comments america tim yes mayor mr jim if i could uh uh go through these amendments and as well i would like to uh defer to drafting on some of these amendments not i don't want them to opine in terms of their opinion that would be inappropriate but but in terms of the legal interpretation of what we're trying to do here and so i think if we go to [Music] section 94 122 subparent three we um see it says no city employee authorized to issue a citation shall issue a citation make an arrest and that is struck and replace would temporarily detain if i if i could defer to um counsel in terms of the difference between so we're in a situation where we've in this version which is not the same version that was introduced six months ago but what it says essentially is that we've decriminalized there are no penalties or fines for for violating the law in terms of an authorized encampment the issue is if somebody refused to move after given the appropriate notice after being informed that there was an alternate shelter option for them uh then in fact if they refused to move um and they were given a lawful order to move then what gives the authority uh for apd to move that individual in terms of this language well the case law allows just what you said if a person in a camp is offered a shelter option and they refuse that that person can be issued a criminal citation does that answer your questions well but i'm in terms of the can they um be moved using uh the language temporarily detained versus arrest well the term temporarily detained is a vague term not defined in the law whereas the term arrest has been litigated extensively in criminal law and it's very well defined parameters and means something very specific but temporarily detained is is vague and opens the ordinance up to uh litigation okay then uh we have uh against a person camping on public property well it's public and private property so what's the value of that language against a person camping on public property or is that just redundant it's i have no legal concern about striking that it's a policy decision whether to keep it in or not it it just clarifies that this ordinance only applies to camping on public property it refers to private and public property well okay my my version refers to both i'm sorry i'm please clarify that statement what does that mean it's public and private property oh okay i again missed it oh oh oh the difference between public and private property well this ordinance is only prohibiting making it a criminal act to camp on public property it does not make camping on private property a criminal act because that already is they're both illegal i mean there's no trusting on private property it's this this ordinance this unauthorized camp ordinance only prohibits makes it illegal to camp on public property okay so then uh 9a you say that person has refused or failed to move that i have no legal concern about that it it clarifies what the purpose is of this ordinance if that person refuses if they've been offered a shelter option and they refuse to leave then they can be issued a citation okay but that it but it that's already basically stated though without that it's been stated before yes okay so that's redundant language mayor um i'm going to finish going through this the city has a an indoor shelter option that is realistic practicable and safe are those they're not defined in the in the amendment as to what that means and those are not terms of art am i correct the terms realistic practicable and safe they are not defined they are vague um what might be safe to what might be realistic practical and safe to one person may not be to another person so those terms realistic practicable and safe could open the ordinance up to litigation okay then we have and that shelter has agreed to take the person and the person has refused to move from the camp i mean that's it's already understood that the city has to provide a shelter option for that individual that's correct and it's it's excuse me your honor but um the before we can even post a camp to abate it we have to have a shelter option available for that so this is redundant in that sense okay and the idea that they well again it's redundant that the person refuses to move after being offered a shelter option okay um then it deletes accept and then in c sub three sub parent three c exception to this section i'm not sure what that means can you explain that um i i don't know what the purpose is in striking that um it okay then it says if a person is ordered in writing and again a realistic practical and safe and i think we already discussed that there's no definition in this as to what that means there's a concern that the terms what does in writing mean does the posting of a sign constitute a writing or or when we offer a shelter option um i i it just how we deliver a writing to a person that might be still in the camp that we are abating it makes enforcement extremely difficult okay and again the terms realistic practical and safe they're vague and i don't know what that means okay then we again repeating has agreed to accept that person then a citation and is subject to a temporary detention and i think we've already discussed that versus arrest in order to facilitate the person's move to the available shelter um then subparent four uh any person cited for and convicted it goes on and then can you explain the then it goes the maximum penalty provision here since we've already said above that it that the vitally violating this ordinance the general penalty provisions of the city code do not apply for violating this ordinance the first part that prescribes a specific punishment is a practical option it specifically identifies what the punishment should be a fine not to exceed 25 dollars in the community service that's all practical um and a policy decision so that part would actually clarify it clarifies and it i have no legal concern about that part um okay the the last sentence a violation of this section shall not constitute disorderly contact well that's goes unsaid that this it's not necessary to have that this what this ordinance is just this ordinance it's 94 122. it doesn't need you don't i don't see a purpose for that last sentence mayor uh yes or america i'm sorry i'd like uh first i'd like first i want to say something because um this is really a competing ordinance what you have with all these amendments i do think we should vote on the entirety of of your it's basically a new ordinance right well i'd may be done can i finish going through it and then okay go ahead okay so um then on 114 106 under definitions in under evidence of authorized camps or unauthorized camps it states it strikes or any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing can you discuss that the terms that term that struck that came straight out of case law and if you strike that there's a possibility that this could cause this ordinance to be cleared unconstitutional it was put in because the case law requires that x that exception very well okay so then we go to and when we're defining shelter it strikes blankets or any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing i'm sorry so if you strike the term blankets or other forms of protection you're creating a loophole so if if i am camping overnight and the only thing i'm having over me is a blanket then i would not be violating this ordinance so it's a loophole okay very well and then 114 107 [Music] realistic practicable and safe again no definition uh in the ordinance itself and none of these are terms of art am i correct that's correct they're not defined okay and then and the realistic practical and safe indoor available shelter options will accept all of the individuals and families in an unauthorized camp i think that's already does that clarify anything i think that language is already there case law does not require the city to have a shelter option available for every person that's homeless in the city before we make it a crime to be in an authorized camp okay um so that this makes it um very difficult to enforce if that's the requirement okay then 114 108. um again we use the terms realistic practical and safe and i think we've discussed that then we have and the realistic but again that same language available shelter options and one talks okay so that is the same language then we go to 114 109 subparent one which has agreed to accept the person and i think that's redundant then we go to uh 114 110 sub parent one taking um [Music] replacing a 72-hour notice with a seven-day notice i wonder if you could speak to the situation so if i understand the situation in denver when they got that court order they were literally doing abatements in the same day that they gave notice is that correct that is correct the seven-day advance notice that denver uses came from a settlement of their first lawsuit denver agreed to provide seven days advance notice then denver got sued a second time for not following that settlement agreement and the judge ruling on the denver motion about that case stated that denver had to abide what they agreed to in the settlement of seven days but the judge also allowed the denver to abate camps when there was a public health threat or a safety threat and allowed that abatement the dance notice a 48 hour to be sufficient so denver has both a 70 seven day notice and a 48 hour notice so our 72 hour notice is a compromise between the two and most of the items that we have been using the past six months to abate at camp have been issues of public safety and public health and what does some of the other community surrounding communities do in terms of reasons why we obey the camp yes if there's evidence of fires if there's evidence if they have propane tanks butane tanks if there's hazardous hazardous materials if there's uneaten rotten discarded food which can be a draw rodents to the area if there's fecal material if there's hypodermic needles presence if there's indoor furniture outside which is again can cause rodent infestations if the camp location is interferes with storm water maintenance or if it's in a flood zone or in an area prone to flooding that's a safety threat when the camp layout doesn't allow access to for emergency services so if there was a 911 call someone's having a problem if the rescue people cannot get in that's a problem a safety issue the violations of the international fire code and the building code are against safety issues they if the residents are connecting to electrical fixtures like street pole lights or other things that unauthorized electric connection is a safety issue there are there have been camps that i have undermined the public infrastructure in particular literally along i-2225 the around 6th avenue camps have dug into the hillside there which again causes a safety issue for traffic above and i believe that there was an incident that occurred over the weekend on a second in sable where culvert there was a recent camp under colfax just east of airport boulevard the culvert was 32 feet long there had been multiple fires in the culvert definitely a very unsafe condition and the fire department in trying to enter into that culvert they lost radio contacts so they had to withdraw the fire personnel for safety issues so yeah that that that particular camp because of where it was go located and the depth it was an absolute safety hazard for the people there and the first responders that had to deal with the fires okay um are you done mayor and i stand in opposition to the marcano amendment strike below amendment okay thank you um councilmember coombs my point of order was just was council member marcano going to get a chance to respond to any of the remarks about the intent of his amendments but now that time seems to have passed mayor pro-tem thank you um yeah i did want to respond a bit here because i know we just spent a whole lot of time on the notice um so those last points i'm not really sure why we went into a whole conversation about when you can order folks to move immediately because none of that was changed um so i kind of feel like there might have been a little bit of a theatrical intent there that was not changed the only thing that changed there was the seven day notice from a 72-hour notice um the going back to the realistic practicable and safe indoor phrasing it's my understanding that part of what we're doing part of why we have conversations like this when we're crafting legislation is to create a legislative history and i think i made the intent of what i meant by realistic practicable and safe meaning realistic meaning that this actually exists practicable meaning that it is ready to be used and safe following the hud definitions for what is considered safe and dignified shelter space i thought that that was kind of why we have these conversations and why i'm able to explain to my colleagues on the public what it is we're trying to accomplish here um some of what i think the mayor just said was redundant it is i think for clarification purposes um i don't think it's necessarily redundant in fact a lot of the law that i have read is exceptionally redundant because you don't want folks to be able to gotcha you at one point in terms of the blankets it was my understanding that you would still be considered publicly camping because you'd be sleeping outdoors at night um we specifically say what camping is not um and sleeping outdoors at night you know in a space even if you were using a blanket would potentially be considered camping so i'm not i don't follow or i guess or maybe i just disagree with the interpretation that um a city attorney joyce uh expressed there but that is not the intent of removing blanket again my intent of removing blanket is so that we don't inadvertently um you know hit someone who is reading a book on a bench with a blanket at night or you know moving their or walking you know their child in a stroller um you know at night with a blanket or something like that they would potentially become um considered camping because you're specifically calling out a blanket which can be yes an accessory to camping but does not make camping in and of itself um so yeah also uh with regards to the violation of this it shall not constitute this early conduct i'd like a comment from city attorney joyce on this because it's my understanding this is some this is a method that we currently have on house folks ending up um in the criminal legal system in our city today by basically being charged by with disorderly conduct and that this is something that also happens in denver and other cities who have similar policies on the books so i felt it was necessary to call out that specific thing because no one um is necessarily being cited for um or what will be eligible for general penalties just for the act of camping outdoors but if someone decides to say oh well now you're you know disobeying me um or charge them for disorderly conduct then you can effectively end up criminalizing homelessness through that so i'd like your comment on that please okay the your reference to the disorderly conduct charge i don't think they believe it's necessary whether other jurisdictions are charging that or not that's not the intent of this ordinance this is just to charge 94 122. so beyond that i don't know why what the purpose is for that with respect to the the camping and the bed blankets issue the way camping is defined in the mayor's ordinance it says overnight occupancy is what's prohibited and camping does not and specifically says camping does not include napping during the day or picnicking so you can lay out a blanket and picnic and still not violate this ordinance it's when you use a blanket or other material to sleep overnight to stay overnight i've i right i don't see where we're actually at odds with what i said in terms of my intent for you know removing blanket then um because my goal is to ensure that someone who is reading a book under you know on a lan uh under a lamp on a bench at night is not considered to be camping if they are sleeping overnight is overnight occupancy is again like something that is very specifically called out here so why would we need to include blanket then because you can do that with or without a blanket by eliminating the term blanket in my opinion you're creating a loophole that if they're using the blanket and they're spending they're camping overnight you've just allowed them to do that and i think to get to your last question when you use the terms realistic practical and safe to mean exist why not use to use the term exist instead of those three vague terms if that's something that you feel would be better language i'm fine with considering that a friendly amendment then no i think it's unnecessary language altogether and i think it says that in the ordinance already the mayor's version if the city has to have a shelter option available or we can post it abate it so i don't think it's necessary to have that language okay at all excuse me mayor pro-tem councilmember sundberg i move to vote on council member marcano's amendments as a whole are you calling for the vote calling for the question for the question okay so is there a second second there's been a motion and a second discussion may pretend there's no discussion there's no oh sorry it's non-debatable okay go ahead and katie can you pull that up for a vote yes it's now open for vote i got kicked out of my session here sorry for uh mayor how would you like to vote on this mayor vote and council member marcona i can put your vote in for you um no okay the motion passes with six votes to um call for the question on marcano's amendments with the no votes wait a minute i'm sorry was this a vote this was a vote this was the vote to call the question but i think it unfortunately on the on the uh escribe it says we're voting on the abatement or ordinance versus the vote right for the motion to on council member sunberg's motion so can we just do that over i'm sorry yes it says motion to vote on marcano's amendment so this was to call the question my apologies so we can we can open the vote again but the motion is on the table is to call for the question for council member marcano's amendments okay we're caught we're calling yeah everybody got that okay oops i lost my thing it's not coming back up for me but i don't need to change my vote we're opening it back up uh councilman councilmember coombs thank you sunberg okay the vote is now open mayor you voted is that correct may vote time is this just for clarification on the original motion or on the one this was on call for the question we're voting on call for the questions entirely then on the okay the marcano amendments are on the whole proposal no we're calling it's a call for the question on the marcano amendment okay as a whole council okay the motion passes with nine votes two no's from council member mario and councilmember coombs okay so do we have a motion now on on councilmember marcano's uh amendment i thought that's what we just voted on no that was the call for the question okay i have like three levels of votes here now getting a little lost right we are now going to vote on yours amendment yeah so if i could just have the record corrected then to say no on the call for the question okay katie can you make that correction for council member marcano yes councilmember marcano will put you down as a no that would make it three no's for that okay so now can we i can entertain a motion on the marcano amendment it automatically goes back to that oh it automatically okay oh my god okay got it and katie you're pulling it up on the escribe yes so we're just to clarify are voting on council member marcano's amendment yes as a whole yes and the motion was made by oh so do we need i guess council member sunberg and second by jarinsky okay that was the call for the question that was both what who actually moved them councilman oh you're right go ahead who made the motion i made the original question no no marcano did council member marcano are you making a motion on your own amendment emotion i do not recall who seconded it i don't think we got a second because there was all kinds of weird yes it was okay so can we have a second a second okay so we have a motion from council member marcano we have a second from council member combs okay the vote is now open and this again to clarify is the vote for council member mercano's amendments as a whole and mayor pro-tem bergen you said you wanted yours changed yes i accidentally hit the wrong button do you want to vote yes or no i want to vote no okay the motion does not pass with four votes in the affirmative six no votes am i pretend uh council member marielle yeah i just wanted to comment on that last process that was the most like frustrating unhelpful um review of amendments i think we should have taken them separately because now i feel like everyone just got lost and we're going to vote up or down there was no nuance there so and then additionally that that motion to call for the vote was exactly what i was talking about in my opening remarks about shutting down discussion thwarting discussion discussion on on a very important topic so i'm very disappointed that that was a procedural maneuver that was enacted to shut down that conversation i think that we could have paused and talked about those amendments separately instead of hearing the city attorney that drafted the legislation comment line by line in a very unhelpful confusing manner especially if you're on the phone we councilman connor didn't have the opportunity to have a non-i'd say bias because he wrote the legislation non-bias city attorney opined on the conversation so i was just thoroughly frustrated by that process and i don't think we really gave it a fair opportunity for for discussion and it was called to shut down discussion uh mayor putin amendments you still might have amendments okay so are there any other amendments before we move on to vote on the um for 14a mayor putin councilmember marielle thank you i do have a couple amendments um if we could share those on the screen and years prior would have printed and handed you a copy but this is probably better either way okay so i just want to kind of high level i would like to discuss these one by one because i don't want to engage in that unhelpful back and forth but i would like to just kind of talk about them one by one so um you can see that the first amendment is to amend section 4 of this ordinance the proposed ordinance it's the abatement of unauthorized camps so my first amendment um is to that is that first piece so no unauthorized camp shall be abated by the city until such time as a city or other interested entity has enough shelter options available for all the homeless population in the city the reason i've included that language is i don't know if you caught in that back and forth the city of aurora actually doesn't have to have enough shelter beds for this to be enforceable so all of the rhetoric saying that this is the humane thing to do is a lie essentially we actually only have to legally offer a shelter bed we don't actually have to have the number of shelter beds so um i think it's disingenuous and confusing um the way i understand it is let's say somebody's going to abate or sweep a camp um and if it you know if they if they refuse that's a whole nother separate process right if they refuse to go to a shelter that's a separate process of how we deal with that but in the scenario that they do accept to be relocated to a shelter if we don't have enough shelter beds to accommodate that camp on that particular night then it's it's unenforceable so i have many concerns that just sounds very convoluted and confusing to the like the general public it's unclear um that that is the interpretation that i've gathered from the our city attorneys and so if we're if we're really truly um trying to make this about being humane um and and actually supporting our friends and neighbors as we've heard in our public comment um i think there needs to be more clarity and definitive language that this should be only enforceable if and when we do actually have enough shelter beds not um saying one thing and then legally we only have to offer a shelter bed so that is the the rationale behind that first amendment okay so um you'd like to have a second i i would is there a second to that particular amendment okay we have second i think i had uh council member medina as a second okay discussion okay i would like to make a point because it says and unless there's enough shelter options available for all the homeless population in the city but when we do the um if we're going to do a ban on a particular encampment we're not doing and maybe this is for staff we're not doing a ban on all inc encampments in one night it's usually one is identified and then we offer shelter alternatives correct the with the proposal for councilmember rio case law says we do not need to have provide shelter for the homeless but with this proposed amendment first of all we don't have an accurate count of the number of homeless in the city and effectively it will prevent the abatement of any camp point of clarification in the city i'm i still actually have the floor um so this would basically take away the entire purpose of the camping ban like we would not be able to enforce it at all we wouldn't be able to obey the camp at all okay so i i am against this particular section of the amendment can i clear council member so see that's where i have an issue because um it it's saying that we're not going to be able to enforce um actually would you mind repeating your statement one more time if you require the city to have a shelter option available for all the homeless population in the city first of all we do not know have an accurate number of the number of homeless and we do not have shelter options for every single person is in the city homeless person in the city i know that we could not enforce we could not abate a camp again okay so there we go all right i'm clear i i already know we already know that there are not not enough shelter beds so i want to interrupt the narrative that this is in any way humane that accompanying resolution after this means literally nothing because we're directing the city manager to create enough shelter beds except in order for this to be enforceable we don't actually have to have enough shelter beds the the next bit about we don't actually have an accurate count of homelessness what is the point a point in time count what is the purpose of that who defines what is the correct or the you know the legal amount of people experiencing homelessness i thought the point in time count that the city conducts annually is mandated by hud other cities used to have accounts of people experiencing homelessness was an accurate way to do so so can you elaborate why that's not a reasonable threshold maria we could change the way you have written this to make it possible so we could obey camps but the point in time count is for hud financing purposes and that count can vary weekly based on the number of people that come in and out of the city and for us this would require as it's written for us to monitor to know how many homeless people are out there before we and ebay to optional for everyone at any in a camp but there's also a there are also situations where i'll use the mayor for example if he had when he was living in and if he had lived in an unauthorized camp during christmas in aurora we did not and do not need to provide him a shelter option before giving him a ticket because he has his own shelter available to him the city does not need to provide him a second shelter option so we could give the mayor if he a ticket i'm not having a shelter somebody pretending to be homeless if so i'm sorry that was please no more disruptions so we will take another reset that was just not a helpful example only because we know the mayor's not homeless he was pretending so like i i know that um that's not what i'm interested in um i'm still confused why our point in time count what who defines what the legal threshold of like number of homeless people in the city of aurora is i i thought the point in time count was that benchmark um and maybe jessica prosser can add some nuance so you want to explain the point guide count sure council member maria i can just kind of elaborate on the point in time count it's a good estimate it's not going to be the perfect number it's usually an under count typically is the way that hud would explain that i think if we were looking for a good number i would use about the 150 person number that's what we saw during a seven day activation over the past seven days while it was very cold we had anywhere from 160 to 180 individuals that came into shelter out of encampments so we don't have a specific count any given time there's people coming and going for you know experiencing homelessness in aurora the point in time count is a good snapshot in time of an estimate of the number of folks experiencing homelessness but we wouldn't be able to come up with a number any given day it fluctuates sure so if if i was able to the point remains we can argue which number would be the best or you know given you know is it a annual number do we need to have you know 594 beds in a year or 150 beds a week available um i'm open to a way to rewrite this so that that is more clear however the the point remains that currently we only have to offer a shelter bed we don't actually have to have the number of a sufficient amount of shelter beds for this to be enforceable i don't think that's humane right we're talking about how this ordinance has been presented the impacts of this ordinance i think that that's i think that's wrong that we don't have the adequate number of shelter beds so if this needs to be amended to reflect a more accurate picture of that i'm open to that as well but the intent is the same for me okay do we have further discussion please mayor pro time council councilmember combs so i think what we can clarify here is right that what's being said is not that we need to really adequately address um the unsheltered homelessness in our city and that is a claim that has been made both times that this has been brought up is that what we're really trying to do is help people and address the issue that they're having in a meaningful way and so i think that this discussion highlights that that's not what's really happening with this ordinance what's happening is we have to have enough beds to abate a given camp so that might mean that all we're directing the city attorney to do is create 10 beds that are routinely available to abate any camp of the size of 10 people and that we're just cycling people through those 10 beds and then sweeping them along and so that's not effective that's going to result in the people from the cherry creek state park camp ending up very quickly over on the cherry creek spillway trail or the people in the mission viejo shopping center ending up down the street along a trail or in a park and so i do think that it's really important to be clear that this doesn't actually provide a solution in that sense the other thing that could occur and that we've heard from some of the testimony in public comment tonight has occurred in denver is that this incentivizes these mega camps because essentially if people are together in a camp of 70 and we don't have 70 beds available or even 30 then we become unable to abate that camp for this ordinance so i think we need to be aware of those considerations and those implications and that seems to be uh i think having um council member murillo's amendment here would actually address those problems so i know councilmember maria wants to make it or get clarification but the way it's written currently we would not be able to enforce the camping ban so council member mario thank you um given uh jessica prosser who's with our housing team um's comment do you have language that you would suggest to add to this amendment i again i'm trying to actualize the statements and conversations made that this is supposed to be humane the accompanying resolution is supposed to make sure that we have enough shelter beds when we are sweeping folks so i'm just trying to get the the language that actually reflects that that rhetoric so council member maria if we were reflecting the current practices of what we do today we would add that we would need shelter space available for the camps being abated at that time so right now if we're looking ahead a week or two we're looking to see how many shelter beds we have available prior to starting the process so it would be available shelter beds for the current camps being abated for the current camps being abated so we still don't have to have all shelters for all folks before we abate okay correct okay so if i could give to give you some language that you're looking for what you wanted what you want is those those in the encampment or those identified in the point in time count for the year now that's going to make the ordinance unenforceable but it's getting to the point that you're trying to make that you're trying to cover all of the homeless so so you would do for for the encampment or those or or the number identified in the point and count okay so thank you for the the language that i requested um to our city attorney um after i think my point is so that we have the actual number of beds for folks who are experiencing homelessness before we enact this so i think i'm actually just going to leave the language as is i i don't agree that we just need to have a sufficient number of beds for the camps that we're abating because we could strategically abate you know groups that um like we have enough shelter beds for that number amount of people it's still not providing long-term solutions so i will just keep my amendment as is and ask that we vote so that we can move on to the next next one okay um can we go ahead and vote or is there further discussion oh i guess it's pulled up on your escribe so yeah oh i keep hitting the wrong button i'm using my left hand a council member combs i think that that's just the first amendment yes it's just the first okay yes because it says amendments plural yeah thank you for the clarification we're just voting only on this one that was just presented the first part and you're going to present the second one oh three the motion does not pass with four yes votes and six no votes okay go ahead councilmember mario thank you mayor protem all right so my second amendment um is to add in section 4 of the current ordinance as written that all personal items removed by the city during the abatement process shall be stored in a secure protected location and shall be returned to the lawful owner upon request and verification of the owner so this was my intent of codifying right we are dealing with people's lives and and their property if we're going to force them away from where they're at i think at a minimum we should be clear on what the process is so i think it's important for us to codify how we're going to um handle um people's belongings so that you know we don't get the the complaints that denver has with you know trashing people's personal belongings that might be everything they own in the world that is tossed away um you know in the event that they are swept from the location that they're at so at a minimum i wanted to clarify that this is the process we'll follow may i um ask a question on this um and jessica if you could answer um do we currently um have place at the day resource center where they can store their belongings in those lockers there's very limited storage at the day resource center such that someone could store a backpack or something very small and personal by practice when we are abating a camp if something looks like a personal documentation item it is set to the side okay so it is if it's documents they can be they can be stored documents if someone arrives at the day resource center and they have personal items on them they can be stored temporarily while they're on site at the day resource center when they leave they would take them with them okay so if we were to abate an encampment let's say it was an encampment with 15 people would we not be able to have our outreach vans help those individuals get to the lockers and store those items yes which goes out the day before the encampment they're offered a ride and they can take items with them okay so i think maybe the issue might be how how much of the personal items can be stored right so if if you said all personal items are you saying we would not have storage for that that's correct and city manager do we not have any vacant buildings or anything where we could store items not at this time we don't okay so none of our buildings that we currently have the libraries any of that well we have some buildings one building that's under renovation we have a building that's not in very good shape that's small um what about amc we have we don't we're not even using this building half the time i've offered to sell it before but you didn't like that we could inventory if council wanted us to do that and see what space we had we might have some concerns i mean we don't know what we'd really be getting into in terms of the types of things that we would be storing some concerns maybe about cleanliness and what we'd be bringing into a building yeah and then responsibility we haven't done this before okay so the reason i um ask those questions councilmember mario is because in in theory i do you know would like us to be able to do this i'm just looking um you know how how could we accomplish this to some degree practically mayor pro tem yes council member um gardner thank you yeah i um i'm actually really sympathetic to the intent of this um i don't think the government should take property and destroy it um but i i just have some questions and i don't know if these are for council member mario if they're for staff for our city manager city attorney whatever but i kind of want to go through a couple of these so maybe the first one is how are we defining personal items and i don't i don't know councilmember maria if you want to answer that if that's defined somewhere i i wha what what does personal items mean council member gardner in practice today what we do if there's something that looks like an identification medication a passport important documents those are things that we deem to not be destructed and destroyed and so they're set to the side during the abatement process and either you know street outreach would take those um or they're just left to see if somebody comes back for them okay so they're set to the side and i don't know if you wanted to yeah thank you um so to me like people are going to be carrying more than just personal identification right they you're trying to keep themselves warm they might have you know so all of that to be said um that's i would define personal items as is what you just stated um jessica and other articles that like of clothing you know tents like their their property like barring like sanitation issues um or you know like if there's a shopping cart you know maybe that won't necessarily qualify but that's theirs right like i i would love some language if somebody has you know a better way to clarify that but i think for all intents and purposes those things that people use to keep themselves you know safe and warm blankets tents you know obviously perishable items not going to work um that that type of thing clothing changes of clothing things that won't expire over you know however long they'll be in jail or otherwise you know okay and then my next question is at the end verification of ownership how would we do that in all instances and i don't know mario if you want to talk to what your intent was or staff if you have you know suggestion or i i just i'm concerned about how we would accomplish that i would defer to the city attorney on that i mean because essentially if there's no identification i have i don't know if can i make a suggestion and i don't know if this would work so maybe you know jessica or the attorneys can speak to this what if we if you amended this to be that the city will make all um efforts to secure belongings we'll make every effort to secure belongings i i think we're going to get in trouble with guaranteeing this because of some of the questions proposed does that i don't know if that helps can anybody answer that that may be too vague of course that might be very difficult to define yeah yeah okay thank you mayor pro tem i have go ahead council member and then my last is and this is a question for councilmember mario but would you be open to a length of time and i say that because even a private business for example a financial institution that is holding assets after a certain length of time that gets turned back over the governments the great colorado payback so so my question is would you be open to some kind of length of time so we don't have an indefinite storage potentially of materials uh yes uh yeah i i would be open to that um in terms of your earlier question around um verification of ownership i'm assuming we could find a process of putting a tag on somebody's property and saying this is this person's property i feel like that that shouldn't be the hold up i feel like there's a way to identify somebody's property yeah and then lastly and this is i don't know for for jessica or for the city manager but i mean just general thoughts on kind of creating and implementing a process like this i mean i know we don't currently have a process in place nor do we have a facility but if we were to implement something like this what are your thoughts on what it would look like costs things like that i mean i know that's kind of nebulous because we don't know how much we're going to take in and all that but i i'd be curious what your thoughts were you know jim or jessica who wants to take a stab at that or how long offer a couple things that other cities do that may or may not be successful some have a container that's put to the side that looks like a you know a rolling kind of trash can and they'll put items in there they'll leave them for an additional 72 hours if somebody comes and collects them and then the abatement company comes back and picks up the trash can other cities have put things into evidence which can become problematic if you're trying to have people identify it's a storage situation so they essentially if there is something identifying they become evidence and people would have to come to collect their evidence so those are two things i've heard from other cities that they do i'm not sure how successful they are we've not looked into those options here and i'm going to add too that there is a jurisdiction that might even be denver they ask the person that's going to a shelter do you want to store something right what do you let that person identify what they want to store and if it's not if it's storable if it's not going to create a health hazard by being in a can or a basically a trash can with a lid if it could be stored safely then we could set it could be set aside and that person then would have say a receipt to identify which container is theirs and then they can claim it after a certain period of time um i think i saw council members devonik had his site i agree with uh what councilmember gardner said i'm sympathetic to this idea of the government collecting possessions but i also have a concern that is our process that we can actually use to determine ownership to know that this isn't actually stolen stuff i mean i wouldn't want somebody who had their property stolen and then it was at an encampment and then that encampment was then abated and that property was then shelved and not to the rightful owner so what i think that this is a lot harder to put into practice than in theory i think the theory of it's good but the practice makes it pretty tough and may be unworkable frankly you have to save yourself so whenever you're doing other people's stuff oh councilmember coombs sorry i mean it seems to me that we can establish some type of process right we can sort out from it anything that's you know infested or contraband and just direct staff to establish a process you know whether that process is perfect i don't think is the um the real meaningful question here it's that we are actually directing staff to establish a process that can work for the folks who would otherwise lose their items altogether and as we heard from folks testifying that that has really severe negative consequences for their ability to get housed and to no longer be in the situation of unsheltered homelessness councilman councilmember mario thank you okay so it sounds like there is like in theory support for the concept so i can work on the language since we will have to vote on this a second time and see if we can come to an agreement there city attorney joyce outlined a process that denver uses i'm interested in looking at that a little bit further to see if we can mirror a process but hopefully some amended language will help the the conversation and and support at the next council meeting so i will i guess retract my amendment now and we'll bring that up for next time okay i think that's a good idea i think you do have most of us that would like to support this idea so um we'll look forward to um bringing it back with with some more language and she has one more amendment oh sorry one quarter council remember combs question for the city attorney i know in the past there's been a question of whether something constitutes a substantive change and if that requires an additional reading of an ordinance if councilmember muriel were to bring a more detailed change of this nature for the next meeting would that then require a third reading or could we pass it now and then get the details by the next meeting no th this will be this would be a substantive amendment so you would need another reading and you're you're going to need a financial impact on this as well and since the financial impact could be so long that's why it's a substantive amendment uh mayor abraham i think this is a important issue and there may be other issues so i you're okay with this having a third reading are we is everybody are you okay with that council member mario okay and then you have a third amendment yeah if we could bring the page back up that would be great okay so okay so another issue um that i have with this ordinance um is kind of the adding section 11. so essentially this would be an effect in perpetuity i think my proposal is to have a sunset on this this ordinance and to have an annual report evaluating the effectiveness of this ordinance at said time i think if we're talking about um real like real solutions solving city problems i think that we we really need something to this effect we need a a time certain of when we'll we'll come back and re-evaluate this and to to have our city staff report on what what has happened as a result of the abatement and i outlined some areas that i thought might be i would want to know more if i'm evaluating the effectiveness of camping abatement ordinance so at a minimum yeah so i i would like i guess we sh i should make the motion i'd like to move to add section 11 to the proposed ordinance is there a second second um okay so we have um the motion by councilman mario second by uh councilmember medina mayor thank you um thank you mayor for time i would i accept the all but the first sentence uh with one year sunset i don't accept the language in terms of transparency accountability i do accept so um but uh but if that first sentence is there i'll certainly oppose the entire amendment well it can we put it back on the screen it disappeared so while that do you mind if i just go ahead count okay so it reads this ordinance shall be in effect until one year from start date and that would trigger the review um and then city council can vote to reaffirm the the campaign ordinance if indeed it is solving these these issues that we are interested in solving so that that's my intent there in the chairman council mayor at any time at any time the council can vote to repeal and they don't have to wait a year to do so if there are six members that wish to do so they can do it that at any time any other discussion uh councilmember mcconnell thank you man um so we have actually used this a few times since i've been on council i think the most recent time we used it was with the vehicular nuisance ordinance that several of us had some hang-ups with that agreed that something needed to be done so i think it's a good faith effort to support this kind of an amendment it doesn't mean that the ordinance will die after a year because if it's actually working um and doing what you know folks have promised it would do um then it would make sense to renew it so i don't understand what the hesitancy to include this in the ordinance we've done it before i think it's a good way to demonstrate that even though folks are not in complete agreement or even not in much agreement at all that it's worthy of demonstrating the efficacy of the policy especially given how much consternation and discussion we've had on this issue city attorney i think on the vehicular nuisance ordinance it was um i think it goes in it it's in effect but it can be evaluated in a year do you remember the language on that because it wasn't it had to be you know re-voted on so so this is written as a sunset meaning it goes away right you can write it as review in a year i think that's i think that's the two different points that we're looking at so councilman maria would you be amenable to having it not be a sunset but having it reviewed i mean i i think if why would we continue a ordinance that isn't effective is kind of my right so it would it would be reviewed if it wasn't effective then it would go away right no i mean that's my understanding okay mayor so i'd prefer to include the the start date but if others are not okay with that language then i guess we can strike that but i'd like to keep that okay mayor yeah mayor pretended it would automatically go away the way it's written a review it would not and but if you take out the first sentence then it is a review after a year then you'll have the the information and should um and it wouldn't automatically go away unless there were six votes to have it go away i mean mayor pro tem yes council member lawson couldn't a to the city attorney if couldn't a council member of course bring up in a year or whatever they what time frame they see fit to bring up another ordinance if they see that this is not working absolutely is that correct yes with some of the gaps that maybe it's not working correct okay mayor pro tem council member gardner yeah that's my concern is how this is written uh essentially so the first sentence the ordinance should be in effect until one year from the start date if that's the case then after one year it goes away and makes the rest of it a moot point there would be no reason to have an annual report and a review because it's written as if the ordinance would just go away and so i think the only way to to make the annual report worthwhile worth our time is to have it to where it's a review after one year which is essentially what's described in in the you know following two or three sentences councilmember maria yeah i'm hearing some opposition to that first sentence um i think that's a fair point councilmember gardner um i i do think that we should have language around a date certain to evaluate the effectiveness and if it's not effective then it should be structured as such that it would end hence the the sunset that the beginning sentence of this but i hear your point around kind of the order of operations um so oh councilmember marcona was at you that was i apologize i thought you were done i think she was still talking did you want to add something because yeah did you want to add something if i may or pretend go ahead councilmember marcano thank you um so i know that we used language for the what i refer to as the car smokers ordinance that was passed before i think it was passed in 2018 and it was one of the first i think it might have actually been our first meeting in 2019 that it came back up for review and the way it was written it required someone to move and second um to keep it in effect and when we got the review information um that was that was discussed uh both in the backup and then i think briefly before the vote took place it died for lack of emotion uh because it was completely ineffective so councilmember murillo is that kind of what you were trying to shoot for here or you would just need to move and second to keep it in motion uh yeah that could be a yeah a legitimate way to address the the points that i listed councilmember mcconnell oh mayor sorry i'd offer uh an amendment uh um to strike the first sentence this is an amendment was amendment to the amendment okay all right i'll se i'll second okay councilman mario has seconded that no you didn't oh i am okay i moved it so okay so so we vote on if i understand this procedurally we vote on my amendment and then we vote on the moral amendment so you're you're voting on striking the first sentence correct correct yeah okay so we're voting katie do you get that we're voting on striking the first sentence as a substitute motion or amendment yes we are adding that verbiage and we're about to open the vote thank you okay so the vote has been open to strike the first sentence of council members third amendment okay the motion passes with six yes votes and four no votes four no votes from council member coombs council member marcano council member and council member mario okay and so now you're about to now to back to the real year yeah oh sorry so we need do we already had a motion or did we if you don't have a motion i'd like to move to i think i think you did and then yeah we had a second with medina okay okay okay so now we're voting on the original yeah as amended we're voting on councilman member maria's motion on this third one but without that first sentence oh it disappeared we have to remove that first sentence for you guys okay thank you okay now is open to voting council member mario e-scribe's just not working for me right now but i support the amendment that i proposed the motion passes unanimously to approve councilmember murillo's amendment okay thank you are we back on 14a now is there other are there any further amendments okay oh councilmember marcano thank you i do not have an amendment but i do want to just say some and give some comments on the overall uh ordinance if i may all right so we've had a lot of discussion uh tonight on you know ways to i guess put a little bit of lipstick on the pig but the issue that sticks out to me still is that this entire ordinance this entire exercise is built on a foundation of lies and utter bs we've been misrepresenting what this does to our community um from elected officials from candidates for office from local media all over the place so i want to apologize because i respect the people of aurora too much to lie to you to try to earn your vote to try to you know promise you that this is going to actually make any kind of meaningful uh change in your day to day so here's what's going to happen when this passes because i'm pretty sure the votes are there and i'll just tell you what has been happening on i-225 and mississippi there was a camp next to best buy that camp got abated those people moved over to abilene literally started setting up camp on the sidewalk that camp got abated those people moved down to west holgate creek behind uh folks neighborhoods over off of laredo that camp got abated those folks moved down to islip made their way up islip set up at ilf in 225 that camp got abated those folks moved into heather ridge that camp got abated those folks moved into the jewel wetlands that camp got abated those folks ended up back you guessed it at mississippi in 225 because what we're doing is just like i said before setting money on fire accomplishing absolutely nothing fulfilling campaign problem that doesn't address the root causes of why we have this problem so my last ditch effort here is to introduce a motion to table this indefinitely because it does not and will not do a damn thing to improve the quality of life for our residents it is as cruel and inhumane as you can get it does not change materially the living conditions for folks in our city housed and unhoused alike and what i would like to instead have us do is open up our piggy bank we are a very well financial very well-run financially stable city and invest heavily and aggressively in permanent support of housing we know that that is the solution to homelessness whether it's done at a small scale like denver did they were able to house nearly as many folks as we have estimated on housing aurora in a short span of time whether it's done like helsinki did where they have over the last decade eliminated chronic homelessness in their city or whether it's being done successfully in houston as we speak where they have more than halved their chronically unhoused population and see a point in time in the near future where they will have zero effective homelessness because they've invested in housing first camping bans don't work the people who continue to sell you they do are lying to you taking advantage of your trust and good faith for their own personal benefit and for the benefit of their donors it is pure politics it's disgusting it's despicable and you all deserve better so what i would like us to do is table this indefinitely put this foolishness aside and deliver a real solution for the people of our city second to table this second okay we have a second for uh council member coombs discussion mayor thank you uh mayor patel arjuna vote and look forward to uh bringing a resolution forward soon to discuss the appropriate conduct from members of this council okay thank you and i i will just say that you know the the when you talked about the camps moving once they're abated we didn't have a camping ban ordinance and this camping ban ordinance is to require that we have shelter for them so i would hope that rather than moving people you know over and over that we will be able to help some individuals that um that do need assistance and and i know you know everyone keeps saying that we we're not doing anything we spent 4.1 million dollars just just recently on homeless services you know with with uh second chance with bridge house with salvation army with uh restoration church day resource center comitus we i i just want the public to know that it's not like we don't do anything for our homeless because we do a lot we have done a lot and we've used cares money we've used arpa money we use marijuana money and then cbd g monies and s e s g monies so there's a lot of resources and then i think we're looking at having more resources to come so any further discussion on tabling or should we move to the vote mayor president council member coombs then council member marcano yeah so i just want to point out that we certainly have some programs and some funding but we also took 10 million out of what we were originally proposed in arpa funds to put towards shelter solutions and are now discussing even not necessarily using the five million we did set aside so we do some but we have not in fact done all that we can do we also gave half a solution on the pallet shelters so i want to be clear that we are not doing everything we can do call for the question we have the mayor is asking for a call for the vote is there a second needs a second second okay we have a second katie and we are voting on the call for the vote city attorney i'm sorry can i ask uh oh did we drill appointments did we vote on on on the table we have not voted okay we need to vote um sorry on the um marcano motion to table okay the vote is now open okay so everyone this is to table um this is the table the ordinance indefinitely dan i'm sorry just to clarify do we need to vote on the tabling indefinitely first or mayor's secondary motion to call the question we're voting on the tabling first motion to table okay that's what i that's what i thought i think that is that what we just recalled question then because it was it was wrong we are voting on tabling and definitely is that correct yes that's what we're voting on council members of aung we only need your vote [Music] okay the motion does not pass with four yes votes six no votes with councilmember medina councilmember mcconnell councilmember coombs and councilmember mario with yes votes oh now we'll deal with calling the question that was actually kind of backwards actually that was the vote on the call for the question oh my god yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry so now it's the vote on the table motion oh my god okay we are not it's very confusing you you voted on the table you voted on the table that's what was on the screen right right you voted on the table so you're back to did we vote on call for the question no okay well you have to vote on call for the question first yes just we have just got two votes just go back and we're now to the original motion as amended council member marcano all right thank you ma'am i just want to suggest that maybe we should stop abusing call the question and let folks actually have conversations um because i did want to add that you're right we do provide homeless services but they're very they're part of what i like to call the patchwork of services that we provide none of these are actually a solution in and of themselves and part of the success of the housing first model of houston helsinki and even denver is that those programs don't rely on that they basically consolidate that get folks housed and then connect them with services after the fact and that's why they're so effective and you know able to actually address the problem as opposed to doing what we do where you know we're helping folks literally not die which i do not want to devalue but at the same time we're pushing them around our city through our what i call our soft camping ban our status quo which this ordinance just enshrines um so it's important that we tell the whole truth there yes we do do some things but we don't go anywhere near to the level of permanent supportive housing and that actually is demonstrated to work none of the other stuff that we're doing works and those are just the facts okay thank you we are now um moving on to 14a so we have a motion well there was already was there was there a motion and a second on 14a right there was a motion in the beginning by mayor kaufman and council members of onyx okay that was the first motion and second made okay discussion mayor pretend councilman mario thank you and i appreciate you all entertaining the amendments um that was again me trying to address issues that are i think structurally flawed out of this um ordinance um i think again it's it's been made abundantly clear that we only need to offer shelter not actually have the number of shelter beds so i i remain that i don't agree that we're that like the timing of this ordinance is just is is suspect at best but it has issues because we don't even have enough shelter beds if we're really truly trying to house all of our neighbors and community members i've said that already another issue that i have with the timing of this ordinance is around the fact that we haven't actually explored uh staffing time so what i mean is in our in the first iteration you know several months ago when the mayor brought this to a discussion i asked our staff what one of the issues what the issues were in in trying to process um these abatement requests the issue is that in 2021 we had three times the amount of the just in volume of of complaints to for the city to abate different homeless encampments so the issue was that though we had such a big increase in complaints and you know calls for service in that regard we didn't have three times the staff so we were experiencing a bottleneck that was incorporated city manager incorporated that into our last budget they were hired at the beginning of this year so it is now february end of february this person has only had a couple of months to do their work so we'll never know we won't be able to figure out the effectiveness of that position so i think again it's premature for that reason as well as not having actually having enough beds to shelter folks i think that in terms of it being costly and inefficient we're going to be opening ourselves up to legal liability lawsuits um with the way it's written our police department we've heard many times that we are understaffed and there are more you know calls that our police department would like to prioritize over sweeping folks so when we think about what our priorities are we're going to be diverting very expensive police department staff away from addressing major crimes violent crimes youth violence we've talked about this in this meeting away from that to move them and we know that it's not actually going to solve anything we're just moving people so i i'm opposed because we're not even using our staff resources effectively we haven't seen that full-time staff efficiency we're going to be misusing police department resources i bet our house i believe our housing department would need to hire another full-time staff to be able to manage the implementation of this as well and then you know let alone we we know the the numbers in terms of denver's um camping ban they they have a camping ban it's not exactly effective and they spend millions of dollars annually to um abate their their camps and i would much rather that those dollars be invested in proactive solutions as opposed to reactive solutions so we should be focusing on funding the housing plan we have the first ever strategic housing plan for the city of aurora that was implemented december 2020. so that also hasn't been in effect long enough for us to actually have tangible solutions we should be we have a great plan best practices um vetted by you know other what other cities have done we should be funding that we should be proactively pursuing those solutions to be able to maintain and increase our affordable housing stock so we're already doing some of these things right we actually are doing these things we are trying to proactively doing that we're just not resourcing those areas um we could be using the american rescue plan act instead the the dollars of federal dollars the federal arpa dollars to again fund some of these solutions there's i believe five million dollars that we have allocated towards a housing solution and then another five million dollar reserve that we have yet to determine what to do there's a proposal and discussions that our staff have had to create a homeless campus or a housing campus on the anschutz medical campus where our current day resource center is at in partnership with other community members why aren't we doing that right like that's the solution those are partners are the campus could help support step up to support this community those are all things i would much rather spend those millions of dollars that we are potentially going to be liable for by enforcing this um you know as opposed to being reactive so i think we should be proactive and funding the things we are currently doing instead of passing meaningless resolutions that have no teeth and that we know the language here doesn't align with the the narrative and rhetoric that we've heard around being compassionate because this is not in any way shape or form compassionate that's all i know we're still i'm gonna vote on 14a and i i don't want to cut off discussion but i do want to remind everyone it is 11 36 we do have a lot of staff here um so you know if you can i i just would urge you to to let us go ahead and vote on 14a we still have to get get through um 11a and then the other items um on the agenda can i just say something sure the problem i have with this is that within the 72-hour notice and i think that what's going to have to happen because this probably will pass is that you need to the mayor or communications or something needs to let the people know that along 225 that is organized by cdot so they have a different policy when you get into where i live at where it's the the terry creek park that's a whole different situation that we haven't even discussed i mean kind of what i have an issue with is we knew that this was coming up last year i think there should have been some conversations with the state because that part is not going to be abated at all and those individuals will probably go into that area so i i just think i wish there was some language in here because a 72-hour notice may be maybe something that you're going to do within the city but we still have to look at those other areas that we're not that are not jurisdictional with the city of aurora so i think when people call us you have to understand that c dot along 225 that's c dot we have a seven we have an iga with them that's seven days along where the state park is we haven't even had a conversation so you're gonna see people there you're gonna see individuals that are housed there until we maybe can work something out so i just wanted to put that out there because that's not really has been discussed and i think that that's going to have to be a reality as when you call council members and say they're over there that we don't have you have to the 72 hours may not be realistic in some parts mayor proto thank you councilmember gardner thank you um yeah i i have a lot of thoughts on this um i you know i really appreciate all the commenters tonight that came in both i guess in person and on the phone um i i think it was disappointing to me that um some folks used it an opportunity to dunk on the police department again um that's old and tired um you know we really need to focus on what the issues are as it relates to this policy and i think you know it's important that we focus on that as we have this debate we need to do this it's one tool in the tool belt this will not solve all of our issues with homelessness in aurora if it did it would have solved it in denver as well however i think it is one tool in the tool belt that we can use because our current status quo is not working i've had responsibility before for a um a business location that had an encampment on it where the police had to respond eight different times because they couldn't serve a trespass notice because we did not have a policy like this in place that is not acceptable um further our our first responders are already going to these locations and they're they're encountering things like needles human feces booby traps a whole variety of things in another jurisdiction there was a firefighter that has a broken leg from falling into a hole trying to protect a homeless encampment we this is a public health issue this is a sanitation issue not only for the residents in the rest of our city but also for the residents that are living in these homeless encampments um you know so i i appreciate what councilmember lawson said i think it's going to be important as we communicate this to the community that we level set um what this is going to look like what it's going to solve what it's not going to solve what it's going to address what it's not going to address so that that way there's realistic expectations but but in general i think this is an important tool for for us to have so i will be voting to support it okay thank you any other discussion mayor pretend councilmember marcano thank you ma'am i just think it bears repeating that this is quite literally what we're already doing and it hasn't done anything so why would we enshrine this in our code and actually remove flexibility from staff when it's been unsuccessful as public policy for the last several years already so it just it beggars belief that we're trying to like to start you know do a logic pretzel here i guess it this is a waste of time and money and i again strongly urge a no vote and urge you all to support permanent supportive housing and i'll just make a statement that um i think it's important to look at the majority of our residents in our city and we've received at least i have emails phone calls i've seen social media posts from residents that live in my ward and throughout the city that are very concerned about the encampments and the safety of those encampments and and so you know if you want to say you you've heard from people why i've heard from people that want us to do something probably eighty percent of this entire aurora population wants us to do a camp uh a campa encampment ban and so you know i'm listening to my residents and that that is my duty to make sure that they're represented as well and you know you mentioned houston earlier they do have a camping ban and i know that they have done really great things to to help homelessness and to come up with solutions and i think this is this is being responsible to those residents and businesses that that are crying out to us to do something while we currently have services and we can look for more opportunities to you know to to help our homeless whether they have addiction problems and we need to get them into rehabilitation or you know we have people that have mental illness that that we can um you know we're funding or a mental health campus and if we can get them resources there there's a lot of things i think that we all agree you know whether what what um side of the aisle you're on i think we all do have compassion we do want to help people we might have different ways of getting at a solution but i think this is this is something that we have to do other discussion before we vote mayor tem uh councilmember jorinsky one one comment that i would just like to make is that um currently uh the the homeless issue i feel mostly falls on the backs of business owners in aurora you know i've witnessed firsthand you know they come in and they need you know they they need they need things toilet paper soap paper towels these are things that they need and and they are being taken out of small businesses i'm not saying we need to deny them of these things i'm saying we need to offer alternatives than this being on the backs of the small business owners in aurora right now because that's exactly where this lies right now okay further discussion mayor pro tem council members of anik yeah earlier um council member mark ronaldo talked about the need for us to be honest with our constituents and he's he's absolutely right and when we talk about the root causes of homelessness we have to be honest that when it comes to addiction and mental health issues that the city in and of itself isn't equipped to deal with those issues on our own we have to rely on the state and county governments to help us with those areas the one thing that the city should be responsible for the the top priority of any local government should be public safety and there is just no question that these encampments being on the sides of our highways or just beyond fence lines in our neighborhoods or next to our businesses these are serious public health and safety issues for our residents and for those in the encampments and this proposal is the the one step that we can take as a local government to start to push some of those people who are in encampments who've disassociated from society and from support into a shelter situation where they can get that so i'm in support of this and i'm i'm thankful that we're finally doing something because the status quo has failed us and we deserve in our residence and those in the encampments deserve better okay thank you can we go ahead and mayor pro tem i have a question for staff yes go ahead um so my question is we know that we have a budget for clearing encampments that we budgeted for should this ordinance require more costs like cost more than we have budgeted what do we do to cover the budget gap between what we've budgeted and what we would need to enforce this well there's always an opportunity to come to the spring workshop with supplemental budget i'm aware of that but i just i wanted to see if staff had any thoughts that they had put into this already since it's likely to be more costly than what we've already been doing sure council member coombs so we currently have a budget for this in the 2022 budget we're tracking it closely working across the departments and with our contractor that does abatement and so if we get to a point where we're getting close to overspend that we will bring it back for a supplemental you know either in the spring or we would have to address it as part of a budget request for 2023 okay thank you okay and then i did just want to also point out that one of the other primary responsibilities of local government is land use and housing and so to say that public safety is the only area that we have levers of control i think is inaccurate and incomplete and so we could be doing things to house people not just shelter them okay all right and i i do want to make a comment that uh council members avonik talked about but you know public safety is the number one priority for citizens in in the city of aurora that consistently say that over and over we're just for the public we're not a county we are only a city so our revenues do only come from sales and use tax primarily 10 from property taxes so when we talk about social services we have to remember that we need partners from adams county arapahoe county and douglas county to assist us it should not that we should not really have the entire burden on our shoulders they they really need to also step up to the plate and help us further discussion otherwise we'll go ahead and vote on 14 a with the amendment that passed with council member maria's third amendment okay councilmember muriel i'm sorry and mayor we do have a tie vote so you can vote to make i mean to break the tie to to the passage of item number 14 a the mayor of all time the motion passes with six yes votes five no votes no votes from council member medina council member marcano council member combs tonight [Music] stop we pay you don't forget that and we're gonna be back here you're gonna see us watching in the streets you need to leave you need to listen to us you need to stop us you take our money and then you screw us we are taking a recess [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] work to have sufficient shelter options for individuals mayor i move uh item number 11 is there a second second discussion uh number 11a is i've never leave any as a companion to fort ordnance 14a proposed order that's 14a and it directs the city manager to to provide to search provide and maintain appropriate shelter options for those individuals from the encampments that are abated may pretend question yes council member maria so question for our city attorney how does this differ than what we're already doing city attorney how would this resolution change what our current processes are because my understanding is that the city manager and our staff are already implementing our housing strategy which includes like maintaining affordable housing i don't know how it relates exactly to the housing strategy we i wasn't done explaining though and that that's not the point the the point is that we're already doing work that is expanding our our housing options including our shelter options so how does this differ the shelter options we have a need to have a shelter option to abate a camp so we need more options available so that we can continue to obey camps and provide services to those people that need assistance to get out if they are homeless to get out of their cycle of homelessness aren't we already doing that with our housing strategy is pursuing shelter options we we've had a couple of recent requests no i i don't believe what's we're searching for with housing strategy i think that's that's permanent housing where the shelter option is temporary service temporary housing providing services does that sure are you sure thank you jessica i just want clarity i mean the this feels like a redundant resolution when i i i was under the impression that we were already pursuing options to shelter our own house councilman memorial sorry i got up i forgot about the resolution i apologize um so we have through covid been looking at temporary um shelter options in utilizing covet dollars so what i would suggest with this is staff would bring back a list of shelter options to the march 21st study session wherein we can look at the cost per bed we can look at timeline to implementation we can look at more temporary options more long-term permanent solutions related to what different sheltering options would look like so that's what the resolution for me would be directing is directing staff to come back to council with you know a matrix of options to be considered and just for clarification so i thought we were already having that conversation because we had five million dollars allocated in arpa dollars for like a homeless shelter facility so i thought we were already going to have that conversation yes that conversation is currently happening and that could be one of the options on the list of different solutions understanding that a new shelter facility or a rehab of a building for a shelter facility is going to be a longer timeline than the implementation of the ordinance and okay i just i i feel like my question is answered we're already pursuing these types of options regardless of this resolution as as was just outlined by our staff and i was just going to say often times council members do resolutions that just direct staff so you know this is not a new situation we do this quite a bit and it's just to put basically you know in in writing that that we are asking for shelter um alternatives and and to come forward to us at a different date um on the 5 million i believe that was a set aside and what i understand it it could be not necessarily just for the the one proposal that was brought forward at the workshop but it could be for other homeless ideas correct yeah it's very broadly stated as you know a homeless emergency shelter is actually how it's stated broadly thank you other discussion i just asked a question so jessica i just have a question for you so this obviously i didn't support the camping ban but i'm going to support this because we do need now we do need shelter options so realistically can you tell me approximately how many we have now and when this becomes effective law in 30 days which i'm sure it does how many more opportunities or shelters can we have do you think as we're starting to move forward on this because we will need some so can you just give me like an approximate i know you're coming back to the study session but i think that's important question yeah so we currently um have um about 200 250 without it being cold weather depending on how people are doubled up so that's kind of our current capacity and i don't know that we can produce a whole lot of new options within 30 days of when exactly the ordinance is implemented um however we can again come back with some realistic timelines for what it would take to implement additional beds um you know fairly quickly so so then can i ask the attorney something if a person is offered they don't they're offered their we say that we we're supposed to offer them a shelter place correct and then they go and then their place is not offered then can that person come back and do any kind of complaint against the city sue the city if they're not if if we're saying that we're offering them a shelter space or space somewhere in one of our safe places and they go and there they go there and they're not offered one because they did accept that they would go do they have could they file a complaint against the city can they sue the city can there be something against the city i don't see a cause of action for them to sue the city no okay they're voluntarily going we are not forcing them to go so i see no cause of action for them at all but if there's no option and we said that there could be an option if there is no option available we do not abate the camp we do not move those people okay okay further discussion mayor pro tem yes council member combs so my question is i guess i just want to make sure we're very clear about what we're doing here because the concern i have is that what we end up doing here is creating a minimal amount of shelter for the purposes of being able to abate more camps and not for the purposes of really addressing this issue so i just want to clarify jessica when you're bringing what you're bringing back to council are you also going to be bringing back funding requests adequate to meet the full need or is it going to be just within the funding that we already have this is what we can do so we will bring back a list of options with associated costs and so if council provides direction on which shelter options they would like staff to further pursue then that would generate a funding request in some way back to council but even once council decides which option they'd like to pursue we probably would need to refine the costs and get some more information back to be able to make that funding request all right thank you further discussion or shall we vote on the resolution it's just a resolution yes it is go ahead all right thank you man um jessica my question for i guess more of a comment really for you um is when we're looking at a plan i would like to see a permanent supportive housing plan with costs and opportunities for partnerships with the county and the state come as a result of this resolution i don't think that we you know need to be just trying to achieve the bare minimum to you know justify moving people along our city indefinitely um because what i want to make clear for the folks who are still listening is that we are currently embarking on the path to becoming seattle or los angeles or another one of those big cities with camping bans and a huge homeless problem because none of them have ever actually committed the resources to solving the problem i don't want us to repeat those exact same footsteps so if so again permanent supportive housing seems to do the trick wherever it's implemented at the right scale i want us to have that success as well so please please include that and what you're bringing to us with the resolution i think that's really really imperative i think that'd be great for us to see okay further discussion let's go ahead and vote katie on 11am councilmember coombs sorry okay the motion passes with nine yes votes one no vote from councilmember mario okay i am now turning the meeting back over to the mayor of finalizing ordinances i understand that item 15a 15f and 15g pass unanimously during first reading and may be taken under consideration and voted upon as a single item so it's it's a similar procedurally to a consent calendar so um i don't believe that katie has to read the title dishes for these so uh the question before us is the adoption of item 15a 15b and 15 it's i'm sorry 15a 15f and 15g um motion uh mayor all right motion to prove 15 a 15 f and 15 g uh it's been moved by mayor pro tem second bye zevonic seconded by uh council members of anik uh to uh approve on number 15 a 15 f and 15 g a discussion seeing no discussion call for the question the vote has been open okay the motion passes with the nine yes votes no one vote from council member marcano to approve ordinances 15 a 15 f and 15 g clerk now please reject title dot number clerk i'm sorry mayor i missed click though that's my fault clerk now please read the title out of number 15b okay councilmember connor we put you as a yes so it passed unanimously thank you you're welcome item 15b is ordinance 202205 an ordinance of the city council of the city of aurora colorado approving the amended and restated service plan for atec metropolitan districts number one and two and authorizing the execution of an iga between the city of aurora colorado and the districts um brief presentation by staff yeah good evening um we have an amended and restated service plan for the atec metropolitan districts number one and two this district along with aurora highlands numbers 125 first creek ranch and the aacmd district will serve the aura helens development with a combined total residence of 41 823 this proposed service plan does not follow the city's model questions of staff are seeing none motion is in order uh motion motion to approve 15 b move by may um america tim oregon seconded by uh councilman lawson to approve item number 15 b discussion i see none uh with click please um call well call the question on number 15b the vote has been open council member coombs councilmember i'm sorry councilmember coombs also remember coombs had to log off okay she said yes okay the motion passes with eight votes and then the affirmative one no from council member marcano chloe now please read the title title um item number 15 c item 15 c is ordinance 2020 206 an ordinance of the city council of the city of aurora colorado accepting designation as the approving authority for the first creek ranch metropolitan district approving the consolidated second amended and restated service plan for the aurora highlands metropolitan district's numbers one through five in first creek ranch metropolitan district to be known as the world highlands metro district number six and authorizing the execution of an iga between the city of aurora colorado and the districts representation by staff this service plan is is similar to the previous it is also working with the atec metropolitan districts and the air metropolis area coordinating metropolitan district to serve the aurora helens development with approximately 41 823 residents the service plan is also not in compliance with the city's model questions to staff seeing nonemotion is in order mayor it's been moved by mayor mayor for tim bergen seconded by sundberg seconded by councilmember sunberg to approve item number 15 c discussion i see no discussion the question before is the option of item number 15 c uh call for the question the vote has been open the motion passes with seven yes votes two no votes from council member medina and council member marcano lori now please read the talent item number 15 d item 15d is ordinance 202207 an ordinance at the city council of the city of aurora colorado approving the second amended and restated service plan for aerotropolis area coordinating metro district and authorizing the execution of an iga between the city of aurora colorado and the district brief presentation by staff the aerotropolis coordinating metropolitan district also works in conjunction with the aurora highlands district as well as the aacmd district and is also serving the oral helens development with 41 823 residents the service plan is also not in compliance with the city's model questions of staff are saying none motion is in order mayor had approved to move along 15d i'm sorry it was a motion council uh moved by council member sunberg second by jarinsky councilmember jorinsky uh to approve item number of them what are we on 15e uh discussion i see no no discussion uh the question before is the adoption of item number 15e call for the question mayor i'm sorry i believe we're on item 15d ordinance 22.15 d that's 15d okay the question before says the adoption of number 15d call for the question the motion passes with eight yes votes when no vote from councilmember mercado question before says adoption provider number 15e uh with click please um read the title to item number 15e ornitz 202208 an ordinance of the city council of the city of rural colorado amending sections 2-2 of the city code pertaining to legal holidays mayor brief presentation by staff no i don't want a presentation mayor i'm making a substitute motion um that we reinstate the day after thanksgiving holiday and then allow employees to use a personal day is it substitute motion it's a substitute motion i need a second second is uh second by customers um mayor can i just clarify one thing when we say use a personal day so they would have three personal days to two personal days yes yes yes sorry that's how i that's what i meant okay uh discussion can i i just want to make comments that i have heard from um some of the employees of the city and that that seemed to be the preference so i just wanted to state that further discussion uh sitting down the question before says the adoption of item number 15e call for the question the motion passes with eight yes votes one no vote from council member mario uh with clerk please read the title item number 17a all right item 17a is resolution 2022 52 a resolution of the city council of the city of aurora colorado finding a petition for annexation of a certain parcel of land located in the west half of section 30 township 3 south range 65 west and east half of section 25 township 3 south range 66 west of the 6th principal meridian county of adams state of colorado to be in substantial compliance with section 31 12171 crs and giving notice of a public hearing on report unproposed annexation 6.097 acres representation by staff i had to thank somebody for coming all right good evening the item before you is a resolution finding a petition for annexation and substantial compliance for parcel located within the aurora highlands development this parcel is six acres located generally northeast of 26th avenue and e-470 along gun club road right-of-way the proposed resolution finds that the proposed annexation meets substantial compliance with state statute and provides a notice of public hearing on this annexation the parcel falls within the city's annexation boundary and meets contiguity requirements this will be incorporated into the existing roh highlands master plan and is being pursued to accommodate a future hospital site there will be an associated right-of-way vacation and subdivision plan being pursued by separate application but reviewed concurrently with this annexation process the initial zoning ordinance will be presented to city council concurrently with the annexation and will follow the city's comp plan will be zoned mixed-use regional mur consistent with the adjacent existing zoning the annexation follows state law and this annexation will be considered over three council meetings step one in that process before you this evening council considers the approval of the resolution making finding that petition is in substantial compliance with statutory requirements and sets the public hearing date the resolution will set that hearing date for april 11 2022 and there are two council meetings in april concerning this annexation we do have outside council here but they do not have a separate presentation so we're here to answer any questions questions to staff are seeing none a motion is an order mayor a motion to approve item 17a uh it's been moved by councilmember gardner second by mike sent by councilmember gardner to approve item number 17a discussion seeing no discussion the question before says the adoption of item number 17a call for the question the motion passes with nine yes votes and zero no votes public invited to be heard mayor we do not have anybody on the line or in the chambers meeting you john [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] you