However, that didn't stop critics from making their case to Aurora City Clerk Kadee Rodriguez at protest hearings on August 29 and August 30 at the Aurora Municipal Center.
Specifically, strong-mayor opponents say they were misled into providing support for the proposal by putting their signatures on ballot petitions that didn't fully warn or inform them of what it entailed.
It's against city code and state law to sign a petition that someone doesn't fully understand. Because of this, strong-mayor naysayers believe the signatures should be tossed out.
"The fact that this petition didn't comply with city code makes it invalid up and down, through and through," said attorney Mark Grueskin during his opening statement at the August 30 hearing. Grueskin represents former Aurora city official Charlie Richardson, who is spearheading the anti-strong mayor campaign.
Richardson, who attended the hearings last week, argued that the whole petition should be made invalid because many of its signers didn't know that it violated city code and state law by not including the summary on more of the pages to explain what they were supporting.
"The summary and the warning are critical," Richardson told Westword. "[Petition signers] are typically day laborers, and there's no realistic expectation — especially with this item — that they be knowledgeable, and that leads to the critical importance of the summary."
“It wasn’t a matter of flipping a single page or two [to see the warning or summary]," Grueskin explained at the hearing. "It was flipping through the bulk of the packet."
“It wasn’t a matter of flipping a single page or two [to see the warning or summary]," Grueskin explained at the hearing. "It was flipping through the bulk of the packet."
The strong-mayor proposal would give the leader of Colorado's third-biggest city CEO-like powers to hire and fire without checks from the city council, and to have a bigger say in the budget.
The Aurora City Clerk's Office determined on July 25 that the strong-mayor proposal had enough signatures to make it to the 2023 ballot. Soon after, Mayor Coffman revealed that he had been in support of the proposal from early on; later, public records revealed that the GOP mayor had donated $10,000 to the campaign that gathered signatures to put it on the ballot.
However, Mountain State Solutions, an advocacy group, announced in a statement that it didn't believe the proposal would make it to the 2023 ballot because "opponents were able to delay the process just long enough for the ballot initiative to miss a critical deadline."
The Term Limits & Empowering the Mayor for a Better Aurora campaign began circulating the petition in May, with the goal of getting the strong-mayor proposal on the November 7 ballot. The petition was turned in on June 26 — twenty days after the deadline recommended to allow time for it to go through procedures mandated by the city charter.
City officials had told proponents that the proposal still needed to go through the protest hearings that took place on August 29 and August 30 and had to be approved twice by the Aurora City Council.
Still, the proposal has a chance to make it onto the ballot as soon as 2025.
If the protesters made their case strongly enough at last week's hearings, Rodriguez may determine that petitioners didn't follow regulations, or she may remove enough signatures to reverse the decision that it had a sufficient number of legitimate signers.
Rodriguez heard the last eight protests against the proposal by Aurora citizens and Richardson.
Suzanne Taheri, the attorney defending the proposal and a former Republican candidate for the Colorado Senate, countered that the petitioners did "substantially comply."
Attorney Suzanne Taheri argues to Aurora City Clerk Kadee Rodriguez that the strong-mayor petition gathered signatures legitimately.
Bennito L. Kelty
Speaking to Rodriguez, Taheri said: “We did substantially comply. We did act in good faith. And to the extent that some people weren’t advised because they didn’t look at it, we don’t know if that is true or not true. I don’t think they have enough evidence to show the extent of that non-compliance.”
Aurora resident Cassandra LaBelle argued on August 29 that the city clerk should dismiss all the signatures collected on June 1 after LaBelle provided photos showing canvassers gathering signatures at the post office without permission, which is against federal regulations.
"They know they did wrong," she told Westword about the proposal's proponents. "It's very clear to everyone that they were misleading people. I wanted to get it on the record, and I wanted to, if possible, make them do this again the right way."
Taheri argued that LaBelle "didn't actually sign the petition," and that she has "presented no evidence as to which signatures would be removed." Even if she had, Taheri added, "it's not grounds for removal of entire petition sections that she believes [a canvasser] was circulating somewhere he shouldn't be. The remedy for that would be a trespass from the post office, not a private action to remove signatures."
Resident Margaret O'Bayley Burkhart, meanwhile, asked for just her signature to be removed, saying she was misled to support a petition that would empower a mayor that she doesn't like.
"The gentlemen that put the petition in front of me also told me that it was to set term limits for the mayor, so I signed it, because I would love to have Mike Coffman out as soon as possible," she told Rodriguez. "And then I found out later on that it was [Coffman] who put it to people, and he lied. So I definitely want my name off the petition."
Taheri countered by saying that Burkhart never testified "that she wasn't given an opportunity to look at the summary" of the petition. "The instructions don't say that the petitioner has to show them the summary or make sure they understand the summary," she charged.
LaBelle maintained that Aurora deserves to be able to consider this proposal in a way that is more up front. "I don't know if Aurora wants the strong mayor government or not, but they deserve the right to choose that, not based on misleading petitioners who are violating federal regulations," she said.
Taheri told Westword that just because a handful of people who signed the petition claimed they were misled doesn't mean it should overrule the more than 12,000 signers who haven't complained. "I don't believe a small portion of people who said they just didn't read it is really evidence of some systemic issue," she said. "And they didn't present any evidence to the contrary."
Rodriguez already ruled on August 25 to take four signatures off the petition as a result of previous protests. She will now have until September 11 to decide on the protests brought forth last week.
"The gentlemen that put the petition in front of me also told me that it was to set term limits for the mayor, so I signed it, because I would love to have Mike Coffman out as soon as possible," she told Rodriguez. "And then I found out later on that it was [Coffman] who put it to people, and he lied. So I definitely want my name off the petition."
Taheri countered by saying that Burkhart never testified "that she wasn't given an opportunity to look at the summary" of the petition. "The instructions don't say that the petitioner has to show them the summary or make sure they understand the summary," she charged.
LaBelle maintained that Aurora deserves to be able to consider this proposal in a way that is more up front. "I don't know if Aurora wants the strong mayor government or not, but they deserve the right to choose that, not based on misleading petitioners who are violating federal regulations," she said.
Taheri told Westword that just because a handful of people who signed the petition claimed they were misled doesn't mean it should overrule the more than 12,000 signers who haven't complained. "I don't believe a small portion of people who said they just didn't read it is really evidence of some systemic issue," she said. "And they didn't present any evidence to the contrary."
Rodriguez already ruled on August 25 to take four signatures off the petition as a result of previous protests. She will now have until September 11 to decide on the protests brought forth last week.
