A Look Back

Guest post by Lenore Herskovitz

On February 19, 2022 the  City held an “ in person only” Annual Planning Retreat. The attendees consisted mostly of Council members, the Mayor, the city manager and 4 members of the public. The only record of this meeting was a written summary provided by the facilitator Heather Bergman. This year’s retreat is scheduled for January 28 so it seems like an opportune time to look back at the status of the priorities that were set last year.

The priorites fell into several categories including:

• affordable housing
• homelessness
• sustainability/resilience/climate change
• public safety
• economic stability
• parks and development (in part, distressed and abandoned properties)

These topics were assigned 4 designations to determine the focal efforts of the City in moving forward: potential new initiatives, staff circle backs, current efforts and study sessions.

During one of the retreat exercises, the councilors prioritized 6 potential new initiatives:

1. addressing homelessness emergency response;
2. developing innovative solutions to workforce home ownership;
3. taking a proactive approach to distressed properties;
4. addressing the Safe Lots ordinance change;
5. addressing rental housing options; and
6. developing additional dog parks.

When the city manager was asked if she thought the 6 goals were achievable, she cut the list in half citing staff shortages and budgetary constraints.

So where do we stand as of January, 2023?

On the plus side, a Safe Lots  ordinance change took effect, but according to Councilor Vincent, only one church in Lakewood ( located in Ward 2) is participating in the program.

Distressed properties finally made the Council agenda as a study  session on December 19, ten months after the retreat. On February 6, 2023 there is a study session scheduled with a presentation on the Strategic Housing Plan. It is uncertain what this entails. The use of the term “strategic” is interesting because staff had altered the name of the Strategic Growth Initiative (SGI) to the Residential Growth Limitation Ordinance, which has a more negative connotation. Now the word “strategic” is being used to describe staff’s housing plan.

Last spring the majority of City Council members voted to disband the Development Dialogues the day before the group planned to address inclusionary zoning claiming it was redundant because the Housing Policy Commission would be dealing with this issue. This commission spent 2022 focused on short term rental (STR) policies. On January 23, 2023 there will be a first reading of the STR ordinance. More than 8 months have lapsed without dealing with inclusionary zoning. What progress could have been made if the Development Dialogues had been permitted to do their work on this?

Regarding public safety concerns, Councilor Janssen held a well-attended community meeting independent of City Hall to discuss this very important topic. Speakers included an Aurora City Council member and a state legislator. The majority of council members have been reluctant to address public safety concerns in spite of the rise in crime and repeated attempts by constituents and Councilors Janssen and Springsteen to discuss these issues at Council meetings. On January 9, at the most recent Council meeting, Councilor Janssen submitted a request for legislative modification to create a Public Safety Committee. This will be discussed further at the upcoming retreat.

At the last annual planning meeting a mid year follow-up was discussed but never happened. Presently, the evaluation of progress on priorities occurs annually. Once a year accountability is not sufficient. Perhaps after priorities are established on January 28, updates can be presented to the public at City Council meetings on a quarterly basis to let the community know exactly how issues raised are being addressed. Hopefully then we will be able to look back at 2023 as a year of goal fulfillment.