Aurora city officials said this week they are re-evaluating how they will handle opening a warming center during frigid winter temperatures.
The statement comes in the wake of an early closure last weekend that prompted controversy among some community members.
And while officials did not rule out using the Aurora Transportation Center as the warming center again, which the city has done since 2014, they did say it has become more difficult to use a facility that also is used by the public for other reasons.
“I don’t believe I can overstate … how difficult it is operating a warming center in a public place,” said Alex Alexandrou, the city’s chief management officer.
The Transportation Center is the city’s Metra station and includes a ticketing area, but also has several businesses in it.
Alexandrou spoke at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting about why the warming center was closed earlier than planned this past weekend. Most of what he said echoed what was in the city’s news release about it Sunday.
The warming center at the Transportation Center had been open overnight since Jan. 13, and city officials on the afternoon of Jan. 19, a Friday, decided they would keep it open through the day Sunday, but not open it all night Sunday. The decision was based on weather information saying the temperature was rising, Alexandrou said.
On Saturday evening, 18-year-old Eliahias Martinez, of Aurora, is accused of coming to the center with a firearm, pointing it at several people and also striking someone at the center, according to Aurora police.
He has been charged with armed violence, aggravated battery in a public place, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault with laser attached and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, officials said.
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Richard Irvin said “people inside the center” were in danger, “including our staff.”
Alexandrou said the gun incident was the worst of about 50 incidents, large and small, reported since Jan. 13 at the center.
“Our staff at the Aurora Transportation Center has been faced with an onslaught of challenges,” Alexandrou said. “Everyone involved has never seen a set of incidents like this season.”
But some members of the public and at least one alderman suggested the city might be exaggerating the number of problems.
Ald. John Laesch, at large, said he has been unable to see police documentation of up to 50 incidents.
Thew Elliot, of Wesley Methodist Church in Aurora, pointed out that after the Methodist church opened its doors overnight to cover the time the city closed the Transportation Center, “none of the volunteers or I experienced a single moment of violence or fear or threat.”
Elliot, speaking at the council meeting, said the city even publicized Wesley as a warming center without church permission.
“You either knowingly put us in danger or you exaggerated the risk,” he said.
Alexandrou said some of the incidents were minor, and police were “able to de-escalate” them. But he said the incidents have been taking place.
“I’m not exaggerating these, and I kind of take offense to the inference that I am …” he said.
When Laesch asked why, after the gun threat had been neutralized, the city did not reopen the center, Alexandrou said the “staff was traumatized.”
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“We didn’t think it was right to put them right back in,” Alexandrou said.
On Wednesday morning, Irvin honored city employee Brian Moreno for his work in calling 911 and helping usher guests outside to safety during the gun incident last Saturday night. Moreno was a staff member at the warming center.
“For those of who signed up for the military or to be a police officer, you expect at some point your life could be in danger while doing your job,” Irvin said. “But when you are staffing the warming center, you don’t expect that. I only hope that we all would have the calm and professionalism you showed in handling the situation.”
Alexandrou pointed out the city called Hesed House, the homeless shelter, and asked if they could bring people from the warming center there on Saturday. The city provided a ride to anyone who wanted to go there, although Alexandrou pointed out that some of the people at the warming center are unable to go back to Hesed House for violating its rules in the past.
Laesch said Elgin now has a warming center open through March, and suggested the city open one 24 hours, seven days a week, through March, or raise the threshold of opening a center to when the temperature is 32 degrees or below. Right now, the city opens the Aurora Transportation Center as a warming center when it’s 15 degrees or colder.
The warming shelter in Elgin is in the First United Methodist Church, and was approved by the city to be open from Dec. 1 through March 31, but is administered and run by One Collective Elgin, a not-for-profit, with volunteers, not the city.
City officials have said they are looking into how to go forward.
“We have gotten suggestions from the community,” Alexandrou said. “Like all our city programs, we’re going to re-evaluate and look and see what to do in the future.”