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10 22 24 Aurora Council Member Steve Sundberg on measure to investigate nonprofits
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This premium QLED smart TV delivers breathtaking brightness and lifelike color that brings every holiday movie to life. The Quantum Pro features wide viewing angle and anti-glare film, so everyone at your gatherings gets the perfect view, no matter where they sit. With built-in apps like iHeartRadio ready to go, you can stream your favorite holiday music right out of the box. Leave $200 on the 75-inch Vizio Quantum Pro smart TV at Walmart today. Stay with his Colorado's Morning News, Marty Lenz-Genaganda, Good Morning Allegations. We've had a variety of lawmakers, City Council members, the mayor, from both Aurora and Denver, all on discussing obviously what has now become a national story that we've seen from your perspective. I'm not completely sure where Ward 2 is when it comes to specifically when we're talking about these gangs and these apartment complexes. What are you experiencing and seeing in Aurora at this time? Well Ward 2 is out to the northeast, the largest ward, so where all the development is taking place. One of these apartment complexes in my ward, whispering pines at Colfax and chambers and it descended into a small humanitarian disaster as a result of armed individuals wreaking havoc within this place and disrupting the apartment complex where the ownership of the management could no longer set foot there. Councilman, do they have Venezuelan ties or are they a gang? Well, let's just call them bad actors with firearms. Some people don't like the word gang, but back in November, they beat up the property manager there and he was no longer able to set foot on the place and threatened his family with text messages. After that, who was in control of these places? Who were the original lease holders? There's a lot of questions there, but the good news in this apartment complex and the other is that the lender assigned a receivership, someone to come in there and start fixing things up, checking leases. I drove by there the other day and I could see that trash is being raked up. You've got doors being reassembled on the place, windows being fixed, preparedness for winter time, so I think it's a win-win situation in that regard rather than a city just shutting the place down against public angst. Councilmember, when we talk about this, we've also seen when it comes to Aurora that there was that measure to investigate any nonprofits that have been given money in the state and the city in order to serve migrants. You were a yes vote on that. What is the ultimate goal of this investigation and do you believe that some of these migrants have been brought in from Denver, from other areas into Aurora's nonprofits? Well, to solve a lot of our problems there, it takes partnerships with a number of nonprofits out there and there's so many good ones. I believe that there are a couple of them that acted unethically in the sense of taking Denver money, taking state money, placing hundreds of families within Aurora in apartment complexes without the follow-up. So they had a few months of rent given to them or given to the apartment complex, sounds like. And then these two nonprofits just walked away, not checking with the migrant family after four months to see if they could continue to pay their rent or if they had a job. So that case management was lacking with a couple of these. And I think that's irresponsible and unethical for those nonprofits to do that. And I think they need to be looked into, look, if there's nothing to hide, why be afraid to open up your books and show us? Because we want to find out what happened. There are some good actors out there with nonprofits. And Daniel Jurinsky and I met with one of them several months ago. They were boasting of this plan to do such a thing within Aurora, excited about the grant money they received. And I'm someone who is very active in our affordable housing projects. And I knew there's a limited inventory. There's a competition for scarce resources, for housing in Aurora. So it concerned me. And I said, "Well, why don't you focus on Boulder, focus on Denver, these cities that are boasting of being sanctuary cities. Start there." But we've got a housing shortage in Aurora already. Councilman, I was going to ask if you have conversations, which I assume you do because you work with her with Councilwoman Jurinsky. I'm trying to get beyond the rhetoric with those. So because she's alleged that Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, Governor Polis, they have sent migrants over to Aurora. They may be coming over. But do you believe that they're intent with the Denver mayor and our governor, they're doing that specific to Aurora? Well, there was proof of it. Mayor Johnson filled up one of our hotels. Daniel Jurinsky's cook just happened to be there to find out that they kicked out of the hotel, all of the American citizens, and put migrants in there. And she stood up against that. I met with a Denver Councilwoman several months ago that admitted that Denver put hundreds of migrants in hotels on our border in Denver. And she also admitted to me that they're practicing onward travel quietly for a lot of these migrants there, giving them money to take the bus on down the road. Councilman Sunberg, we spoke with Mayor Johnston on Friday, and he said that placing migrants into housing in Denver, that's what they've been doing. And Aurora is not providing any services. The idea that Denver migrants have been moved to Aurora is completely false. So we've had a lot of very frustrating back and forth between a he said scenario of what is truly happening. But it sounds like you're saying just the opposite of what the mayor in Denver is saying. Well, I say he did it indirectly by helping to provide funding and grants to nonprofits that then put migrant families all over the Denver metro region, including Aurora. Councilman. No, go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead. I thought the management of the buildings, I wanted to go back to what you said a few moments ago in the conversation about the buildings and if they are, if there's gang activity, how much of what's happening with some of these apartments, the one in your ward and others where they're managed poorly because that's something else we've heard, that the management company, I think it's CBZ or something like that, are not the best stewards of the apartments. And they're trying to blame the gangs for their issues with being lack of good stewards of the facility. Well, I think it's a combination of the two. I think they're not going to win landlord of the year back in 2023 or earlier when they were taking care of these places. But it sounds like they were howdable and there were some issues they were addressing. But then they were, again, they were taken over by some violent, intimidating individuals with firearms for certain and in three of these places. I first heard about it from our housing department at the beginning of this year and then through a lot of members of our police department just describing the danger of these places. And let me ask you this, why would ownership with millions of dollars in equity in apartment building simply walk away from them? I don't know. That's why we're trying to figure out NAS because there seem, we get different answers from different people that have seats at the table and other people that don't and we're trying to vet and get to those answers. We're going to wrap up with you here because we're running short and you've been very gracious with your time. To get into the segment with you, we had mentioned that Aurora America, Mike Kaufman and Todd Chamberlain, a new police chief have refuted the claims of the gangs. Are you in conflict with what they're saying or is there a gray area or a nuance where they don't understand and you understand differently or vice versa? Well, I believe it's the opposite with our new police chief. He recognizes the problem. They've identified gang members, they've made arrests. I think Mayor Kaufman, I respect and I love the guy. He has to protect the reputation of our city but also he did admit there was a problem. So he was walking a fine line there and there was a problem. Our city management admitted it to me and there is a litigious aspect of it that they want to walk a fine line with but the important thing when this thing happened was we should have intervened very early to intercept these bad guys. It took state and federal help to do so. I think it should have been done sooner but our former police leadership was weak on this issue. Aurora City Councilman, Steve Sunberg, thank you so much for your time this morning. Also coming up at 819 this morning, we'll dive a little bit more into what we've been seeing in Aurora with the Aurora Sentinel editor. There's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally. Like growing up with a bank you can count on. Like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one member FDIC. 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