Take a trip back in time with me to the spring of 2023. 

Let’s take this journey after Sentinel Editor Dave Perry in his June 18 column went down a dead end inferring that Mayor Mike Coffman somehow deserves credit or even a nod for backing a new city council measure to ensure Aurora landlords adhere to the law.

In 2023, United for a New Economy (UNE) was helping tenants at 1568 Nome St. organize against their slumlord, connecting them with city officials to bring the squalid conditions they were suffering through due to CBZ’s neglect to light. I and several of my colleagues were invited to tour the property, and documented what we saw through photographs and a lengthy email to the city attorney’s office. Ultimately, this led a few of us to introduce a rental registry ordinance crafted in partnership with UNE and the directly impacted tenants which would have created a system that allowed tenants to submit evidence to the city and provided a means for the city to crack down on slumlords before they become a larger problem for us all.

The ordinance would have doubled the number of code enforcement officers in the city, required regular property inspections (to include special inspections when ownership turns over) to be conducted by the city, and stiffened penalties with the goal of making business as usual for slumlords unprofitable and to make retaliation against tenants unlawful. The net benefit to renters would be a right to safe, clean, and dignified living conditions backed by the city, and all Aurorans would have benefited from a reduction in derelict properties owned by people just looking to extract as much wealth as possible from our neighbors.

This effort was shot down by the Republican majority at the time, with former Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky and Coffman being the most vocal opponents of the measure. Before this vote, Coffman saw the conditions the 1568 Nome St. tenants were living in. Despite this, he said that the current process was sufficienteven though he and every member of the Aurora City Council knew what the conditions at the Nome property were like. Every. Member.

Nome Street and other properties owned by CBZ were later used as a political prop by the Trump campaign, Jurinsky, and Coffman to propagate the lie of Aurora being “taken over” by gangs. Coffman later walked back his lies after receiving flack from the immigrant community in Aurora, but by then the damage had been done.

The only group Aurora has been “taken over” by are special interests groups seeking to profit off our collective labor while impoverishing more and more people, aided and abetted by the candidates they buy each election cycle, with Coffman being their highest return on investment.

Coffman is not a friend to tenants or working-class Aurorans. He hasn’t been over his nearly 40 years in office, and he hasn’t suddenly turned a new leaf now that he’s finally in the minority on council. He’s behaving in the same way he has during his whole political career – opportunistically changing his position in an attempt to brace against the political headwinds around the corner at our next municipal election, and in hopes that Aurorans will forget his complicity fueling the anti-immigrant lies that caused reputational and economic harm to our city.

Let’s give credit where it is due: to the voters of Aurora who in November 2025 elected four new council members not beholden to special interest groups, providing our city council with the political will for Mayor Pro-Tem Alison Coombs and Councilmember Ruben Medina to build on the work we began in 2023 and pass a long-overdue ordinance to crack down on slumlords operating in our city. This victory belongs to you.

Juan Marcano is the former Ward IV Council Member, current Colorado Transportation Commissioner, and prays that 2027 is the year when Mike Coffman’s teflon finally wears off.

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