The mayor of Aurora and five current or soon-to-be members of its City Council have asked the city manager not to enforce an indoor mask mandate instituted by Tri-County Health because the agency doesn't have authority over the entire city.
Signed by Mayor Mike Coffman, two council members and three council members-elect, the letter asks City Manager Jim Twombly to not have city personnel enforce an indoor mask mandate for people 2 years of age and older, which was approved Monday night by Tri-County Health's board.
After a spat with Douglas County in late summer, which ended with that county breaking away, Tri-County has authority over only Arapahoe and Adams counties. But Aurora spans all three, the officials said, and thus the requirement cannot be employed uniformly.
But Becky O'Guin, spokeswoman for Tri-County, said in an email the part of Aurora that's in Douglas County "is residential and not subject to this order, which applies only to public indoor settings."
"While TCHD has appreciated collaboration with cities such as Aurora in enforcement of past PHOs and would do so in the current situation as well," she wrote, "this sort of collaboration is not a requirement for our city partners, and we expect that we will largely be enforcing the order through education and in response to complaints."
Coffman said Tuesday morning that the letter was a request, and that he had agreed to meet with Tri-County after Thanksgiving to discuss the order. The piece of Aurora that is in Douglas County is small and residential, he said.
Had six sitting members signed, he said, the letter would've been a requirement, meaning the city manager would've had to stop enforcing the order. But three of the signatories — Danielle Jurinsky, Steve Sundberg and Dustin Zvonek — have yet to be seated. Mayor pro tem Françoise Bergan and current councilman Curtis Gardner also signed the letter.
"It's really a reflection of a general frustration that in one city, you know, we’ve had one health department with some uniformity and that uniformity is broken up," Coffman said. "Now we’re fractioned in three different parts in our city, and it’s very frustrating, and it’s very hard to deal with."
Because of Tri-County's fractured authority, itself a product of mask order fighting, the letter's authors asked Twombly to only enforce orders that come from the state and have uniformity across all of Aurora and Colorado. As of Tuesday, that would mean no mask order at all: Tri-County Health and other metro agencies have moved ahead with their own orders because Gov. Jared Polis has not shown any interest in requiring face coverings statewide.
He has instead advocated for counties to come up with their own approaches, saying local control is the best path forward.
Asked Tuesday if Aurora's situation is a sign of the limits of Polis' position, the governor said masking was the decent thing to do and people should do it.
"If the state orders a mask mandate, then I think the city of Aurora should enforce it evenly across our city," Gardner said. "This is not an anti-mask position; this is a consistency position."
Messages sent to spokespeople for the city of Aurora and for Tri-County Health were not returned Tuesday.
