If an Aurora city councilman’s decades-long fight to make the city a county unto itself is to succeed, it will have to overcome the doubts of numerous skeptics.
Commissioners in Arapahoe and Adams counties, the main two jurisdictions that Aurora spans, as well as former Aurora council members said Sunday they were unsure that the benefits of consolidating Aurora into a single county would outweigh the burdens.
“I’m not convinced you can form a city and county and not have increased cost,” said Bob LeGare, a former Aurora City Council member who opposed the idea of an Aurora city and county 10 years ago but said he is trying to keep an open mind about the current proposal.
On Saturday, at a special council meeting, Councilman Steve Hogan presented a proposal to make Aurora its own county. In 1996, voters defeated a similar plan. Hogan, who said Sunday that he has been working on this issue for 25 years, was also behind that effort.
In addition to Arapahoe and Adams counties, Aurora, a city of close to 300,000 people, occupies a portion of Douglas County.
Hogan proposes that Aurora take over all the tasks the three counties are currently performing for the city. That means centralizing everything from human services and elections offices to the courthouse and the jail.
The centralization would also give Aurora control over how homeland security, transportation and Scientific & Cultural Facilities District money is spent in the city.
“We ought to be creating our own identity,” Hogan said.
But others raise questions about whether a city and county of Aurora would be worth it.
Rod Bockenfeld, an Arapahoe County commissioner, said Arapahoe County is doing a good job of providing services to Aurora residents. He said consolidating into a city and county could mean higher taxes for Aurora residents.
“I think (the proposal) challenges us in Arapahoe County to look at whether we’re providing the level of services we need, and I’m confident we are,” he said.
Adams County Commissioner W.R. “Skip” Fischer echoed Bockenfeld’s concerns about costs and questioned whether Aurora residents really want the change.
“I don’t think they’ve ever done a survey of whether the people want this,” he said.
And no less an eminent Auroran than former Mayor Paul Tauer, the father of the current mayor, said he has concerns about the idea.
While Tauer said he has not seen the proposal and didn’t want to pass judgment on it until he did, he said a city-and-county changeover would cost residents at least some money. Aurora would have to build a new courthouse and a new jail, as well as hire new people to work in those places, he said.
“There’s just so much that has to be looked at that I don’t know about this particular proposal,” he said.
Hogan argued that if Aurora became its own county, tax money currently going to other counties would allow Aurora to hire the extra staff it needed, that the city could get by with its existing courthouse and that a new jail wouldn’t be an exorbitant expense.
“That’s not an overwhelming cost, to be able to serve your residents like you want to,” he said.
The council won’t begin debating the issue until at least March, Hogan said. If the council approves the proposal, it would still require two elections, one citywide and one statewide, for the proposal to become reality.
Tauer said that regardless of the outcome, it’s important for Aurora leaders to think about the issue.
“In a way it’s a good thing that it’s come back up so people can talk about it,” he said. “But whether in fact it’s a good thing or not we can’t say for sure at this point.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
