AURORA | City lawmakers on Monday approved an initiative to evaluate how the city can better support families and expand resources linked to livability and affordability.

Councilmembers Alli Jackson and Amy Wiles co-sponsored the resolution to direct the city manager to move forward the Family Plan Initiative. The measure would establish a working group to conduct community engagement, analyze city resources and programs for families and develop recommendations to address gaps or increase opportunities. 

The council approved the plan on a 7-3 vote, with council members Françoise Bergan, Stephanie Hancock and Angela Lawson opposed. Bergan and Hancock called out the resolution for lacking a cost estimate and not being first heard by a city council committee meeting, although they said they had no problem with the substance of the resolution.

As part of evaluating existing programs, the resolution specifically calls on the working group to look at the Aurora SAVE program, which is intended to reduce youth violence and interaction with the justice system, and the Aurora Youth Commission, which gives recommendations to city council.

Jackson told the Sentinel before Monday’s meeting that the resolution is intended to kick off a process of gathering data and addressing some concerns from the community. The resolution does not allocate funds to the effort and utilizes existing staff for the working group.

“We’re just trying to get a good kind of grasp on what the needs of our families are and what they look like,” she said.

Jackson said she envisions the Family Plan Initiative as a multi-year project similar to the city’s Build Up Aurora effort, which evaluated the city’s infrastructure needs and ultimately recommended three bond measures to fund $264 million in projects.

The initiative calls for a wide range of targets, including analyzing childcare, transportation, recreation, housing, food security, public safety, civic engagement and intergenerational programming.

Some of the concerns Jackson has heard and hopes to address are a lack of childcare availability and potential issues with the Aurora SAVE program. 

At an April city council meeting, several people alleged the SAVE program targets minority families. The Aurora Police Department said in a social media post about the SAVE program that it’s a “focused, intelligence-led initiative grounded in data and supported by proven research.” The post said every person contacted through the program has a connection to gun violence.

Jackson said focusing on families allows the city to examine a number of issues, including safety and affordability, while appealing to common political ground.

“I see it as a way to uplift the entirety of Aurora in addressing families because I think they’re left out of the conversation,” Jackson said. “All sorts of stuff touches families, so I just think it’s a nice neutral point to enter a conversation.”

At Monday’s meeting, Jackson’s conservative colleagues took issue with the process of bringing the resolution directly to council, which skipped over committee discussions, and not detailing the financial impact.

While the resolution doesn’t allocate funding and utilizes current staff, Bergan said she wanted more information about the impact to staff time. In response, city staff said they would update the council if the amount of staff time or resources used on the initiative would create a fiscal impact. 

Hancock, who raised the process concerns, said she felt the initiative was being rushed by the new progressive Democrat council majority and worried it would “set a precedent.”

“Here’s my problem with this — we did not go to the appropriate committees to vet this and here we are on the floor vetting this thing,” Hancock said. “I’m trying to understand, what is the emergency that we had to come do this tonight?”

Councilmember Alison Coombs pushed back sharply on the accusation of precedent setting, pointing out that past councils, headed by a Republican majority, have altered the agenda on the weekend before the Monday meeting and have foregone fiscal notes.

“We should have conversations about procedure, but this body did not start with this precedent today,” Coombs said.

During the back and forth, Jackson urged the council to support the initiative so that the city can “start to create more avenues for Aurora families to participate in the civic actions.”

Since lawmakers approved the initiative, the plan is to start with a brief survey to understand the family demographics of the city and learn what needs exist.

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