Increased public oversight of the police, guaranteed basic income and increased housing density in some areas of the city — those are just a few of the recommendations that are being made by Aurora Mayor John Laesch’s transition committees.
The Public Transition Committees were formed last year to gather community-based feedback to shape the city’s priorities during the Laesch administration across topics such as finances, sustainability, housing, public safety and education. The committees’ full recommendations are set to be published later this week on the city’s website, but overviews were presented during a public forum held at the downtown branch of Waubonsee Community College on Saturday.
During the forum, the chair of each transition committee gave a quick, roughly five-minute presentation outlining their recommendations at a high-level. Then, forum attendees dug deeper into those recommendations with committee members during breakout groups.
The Public Safety Committee was tasked with making a plan to enhance community well-being through an all-encompassing approach to public safety that took into account innovative methods of crime prevention and that strengthened community involvement in public safety.
The committee’s chair, Avalon Betts-Gaston, said its members made its recommendations so that “we can begin to think about public safety a little bit differently.” The core of their recommendations, she said, came from thinking about prevention.
“How do we prevent harm from happening in communities in the first place?” Betts-Gaston said. “Public safety has traditionally been rooted in deterrence, right? And while deterrence does have a prevention component, it really does not address the key, root causes of what produces harm in our communities.”
Specifically, she listed these root causes as poverty, housing insecurity, lack of youth programming and systemic exclusion.
One of the ways that the public safety transition committee recommended addressing those root causes was by putting in place a general basic income program, through which low-income residents would get $500 per month. This recommendation came out of thinking about how to address poverty in a sustainable way, according to Betts-Gaston.
The committee’s other recommendations for harm prevention included mentorship and mediation programs, plus stopping laws from forcing people from their homes based on conviction status.
Another core area of the public safety transition committee’s recommendations was around “reimagining justice,” which focused on “shifting the city’s response to harm away from punishment and towards healing, accountability and care,” Betts-Gaston said.
One such recommendation was to expand and improve Aurora’s existing Civilian Review Board, established in 2020 to review civilian complaints and improve interactions between the public and police. The recommended expansions and improvements, Betts-Gaston said, should make sure there is independent oversight of the police and that law enforcement practices are inclusive.
Plus, the committee recommended establishing a “restorative justice practice program” to address police complaints, which would be overseen by the Civilian Review Board, according to Betts-Gaston. She said this program would represent a “significant step towards fostering systems of care and accountability,” and it would be anchored in “community engagement and restorative principles.”
Other recommendations included repealing any crime-free nuisance ordinances around housing, establishing an Office of Immigrant and Refugee Rights and creating a program that diverts young people away from the justice system.
The Housing Committee was to build a comprehensive plan to address accessibility and affordability for all Aurora residents that also focused on green building initiatives, and to make recommendations on how best to support those in the city without housing, with recommendations focusing in particular on home ownership.
Committee chair Rick Guzman said his group’s recommendations were based around three pillars: survivability, mobility and stability.
The survivability pillar featured recommendations aimed at getting people who are homeless into housing.
One such recommendation was to create a community center or hub, Guzman said, that is supported by faith and community groups. This hub could also double as a disaster preparedness center, plus as a warming or cooling center during extreme weather, he said.
Another of the committee’s recommendations was for the city to support more permanent supportive housing. It is well know and well documented that focusing on getting someone into a permanent home before anything else is “the answer to long-term and chronic homelessness,” Guzman said.
“We could actually solve homelessness in a community our size in a reasonable timeframe if we really laser-focus in on this recommendation,” he said.
The housing committee also recommended creating more affordable housing units in the city. The majority of people who stay at Hesed House are employed and could afford rent of $500 to $1,000 per month, Guzman said, but those rent levels just don’t exist in the local market.
As for mobility, the committee made recommendations focused on home ownership and addressing the “missing middle” housing — those types of residential units in between the single-family home and the mid-rise apartment. Things like duplexes, triplexes and cottage courts are often more affordable and can fit well into a neighborhood, according to Guzman.
There are a lot of zoning restrictions that stop those types of developments, he said, so the committee is recommending the city do a comprehensive zoning audit. That way, the city can look at increasing density in some strategic areas, aligned with business growth plans and climate goals, he said.
Other committee recommendations around housing mobility included starting home share pilots, creating down payment assistance programs and building more pathways to home ownership.
The committee’s final pillar, stability, was focused around those who want to stay in their homes but are finding it challenging.
Some city policies may unintentionally put some of this pressure on residents through fines and similar actions, according to Guzman. So, the committee recommended Aurora instead help people stay where they are at by, for example, providing micro grants for smaller urgent home repairs instead of fining the homeowner.
There are many reasons people may find it hard to stay where they are, and the lack of access to food is one of them, Guzman’s presentation showed. To address that issue, the committee recommended Aurora help create a community grocery collaboration that would bring together food pantries and do things like food recovery, he said.
Also, the committee recommended awarding companies and developers with “wage fairness points” for paying high wages, which could help a firm win a city contract bid over another, according to Guzman’s presentation.
The Sustainability and Development Committee was set to develop a “bold climate plan” that empowered residents to “embrace energy-efficient homes and renewable energy through accessible incentives,” a plan to preserve the city’s natural green spaces and to lay the foundation for a “green-collar economy,” city officials said when the committees were announced.
The largest of the committee’s recommendations, as presented by chair Kris Murphy, was a schedule of over 80 actions that are intended to achieve the goals laid out in Aurora’s 2019 Sustainability Plan and Laesch’s vision for the city. Examples of these actions include adopting stretch energy codes, piloting a reusable cups program for concerts at RiverEdge Park and banning single use plastic shopping bags, according to a poster of the actions displayed during the breakout groups held later in the forum.
While some of the actions listed on the poster dealt with policy actions, like recommending the city adopt an ordinance requiring businesses to compost food waste, many of the actions listed on the poster also centered around educating the public. Alongside the schedule of actions, the creation of a robust, multi-language community engagement and education program was another of the committee’s broad recommendations.
“Without people knowing what to do, they’re not going to do it,” Murphy said.
Plus, the committee recommended that city staff focused on sustainability should participate in regional environmental initiatives to make sure Aurora is represented and informed.
In general, the sustainability committee focused on no- or low-cost solutions, Murphy said, because the intention was for these initiatives to actually save the city, residents and businesses money.
The Supporting Youth and Education Committee was tasked with developing after-school programs and education initiatives that empowered young people and offered educational opportunities for all students.
The committee found — according to member Neil Sekhri, who is also a student at Neuqua Valley High School — that there are already a lot of great services offered in Aurora, but that not enough of the city’s youth were benefitting from them because relatively few residents were aware of them. Knowing this, and that resources are limited, the committee focused on maximizing the use of current resources, he said.
One recommendation made by the committee was the creation of an accessible after-school enrichment network. This program would be a “hub of activities,” Sekhri said, that could help students with their academics and their personal interests.
“What we would do there is bring in organizations, bring in camps and programs, that would help these youth really learn whatever it is they want to learn just so they have a safe place to go after school,” he said.
A different but similar recommendation of the education committee was to create an integrated network of youth-serving organizations. This network would help existing organizations that serve youth come together and talk regularly so that they can more easily collaborate and combine their strengths, according to Sekhri.
Another of the committee’s recommendations was to create a family and educational destination in downtown Aurora. The idea, Sekrhi said, was to have all kinds of enrichment activities at a vendor-style event where families can meet different organizations, sign up for various programs and just come together.
Plus, the committee also recommended creating a centralized, up-to-date resource directory for families.
The Finance and Responsibility Committee was tasked with creating both a 100-day goal and a four-year budget and finance plan, which was planned to look towards new funding sources to ease the tax burden on Aurora residents.
But chair Shannon Buckley said the committee “threw that out the window” because of the urgent budget position the city was in at the time. So instead, the finance committee focused on creating recommendations around getting out of that budget situation and looking towards the future.
The first of the committee’s recommendations was for the city to have cost discipline through smarter management. That meant cutbacks on discretionary spending, training, travel and more, Buckley said, so that the city could control spending without slashing essential services.
The prioritization of capital projects was the committee’s next recommendation. The city should establish a debt prioritization framework to defer or phase in lower-priority capital projects until the city’s revenue can stabilize, according to Buckley.
Plus, the city should get more of its residents involved with processes like creating the budget, she said. The committee’s recommendation of increasing transparency and community trust mainly centered around aldermen’s use of their ward funds, for example, by creating a more transparent process to determine how those funds are used, Buckley said.
The finance committee also recommended Aurora do feasibility studies around two new taxes: one on entertainment or amusement and one on single-use bags, like in Batavia.
Aurora Deputy Chief of Staff Nicholas Richard-Thompson told The Beacon-News that many of the transition committees’ recommendations will be going before City Council for consideration, although some will be tweaked. Plus, some of the recommendations have already been put into place, he said.
With the recommendations, though, the Mayor’s Office will be “radically practical” and make sure that they don’t cause any financial or structural harm to the city, Thompson said.
The transition committees were a continuation of Laesch’s transition team, which was active for roughly one month between when he was elected and when he was inaugurated. Unlike that team, with its members picked by Laesch, the Public Transition Committees’ members were selected after an “in-depth application and vetting process,” city officials have said.
To be chosen to serve on a Public Transition Committee, applicants had to live in one of the four counties Aurora is in — Kane, DuPage, Will and Kendall — or have connections to the community in a meaningful way, had to demonstrate a strong commitment to serving the Aurora community, had to be willing to actively participate in meetings and make meaningful contributions to the committees’ work, had to be able to work collaboratively and respectfully with individuals from diverse backgrounds and perspectives and had to have the time each month for committee meetings.
Laesch said during the forum that he had hoped the committees would be done with their work by last summer, but that the “budget crisis” Aurora experienced last year “dominated the city’s time and attention.” But now, as 2026 begins, he can start moving his agenda forward, he said.
Alongside the transition committee recommendations, Laesch said during the forum, Aurora is also in the process of creating a strategic plan to look at internal operations and “some bigger things that involve more professional consulting.”
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
