Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin’s second State of the City address this year started with the Aurora police and fire departments on center stage and ended in the announcement of a major house music festival to be held in the city.
The mayor decided to break his State of the City address this year into quarterly speeches, each focusing on a different theme. This week’s speech near the end of the second fiscal quarter focused on public safety and city engagement with its citizens.
But in Irvin style, it managed to be heavy on entertainment too, with the announcement at the end that in honor of the 40th anniversary of house music, the city will hold a House Music Festival Sept. 28 at RiverEdge Park.
House music is considered a genre founded in Chicago out of the ashes of the disco phenomenon, music that “defined a generation” – his generation – according to Irvin.
The festival will feature “Kickin” Kenny Cahill and Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, two house music icons, and both were on hand to lend a club feel to the end of Irvin’s speech.
“We’re going to give a show here,” Funk announced from the stage.
“It gets bigger, it gets bolder,” Irvin added.
It’s not the first time Irvin has used the State of the City stage to make a major music announcement involving his youth. He announced at the end of the 2020 State of the City address that later that year, rapper Snoop Dogg would do a RiverEdge show. But a week later, Illinois was gripped with the coronavirus pandemic shutdown, and the Snoop Dogg show was canceled.
For most of the speech on Wednesday night, Irvin’s voice lowered and rose to tout what he sees as accomplishments of his administration in the area of public safety and community engagement. He was interrupted numerous times with clapping and sometimes standing applause by the large audience at Purpose City Church on the city’s far northeast side, made up of many public safety workers and volunteers and supporters of the mayor.
“Aurora is one of the best cities to start a family in, one of the most diverse cities, one of the happiest cities, in which to achieve the American Dream,” he said.
One of his major announcements was that the city would move Fire Station 4, along Sheffer Road on the East Side, to a new facility on Indian Trail next to the Aurora Police Department building. The Aurora Fire Department administration would be moved from the Central Fire Station downtown to the new facility, forming a public safety campus.
Irvin said the change would move Aurora “into the future.”
He pronounced the state of public safety in the city as “strong, and becoming more formidable every year.”
Irvin took time to recognize the 911 operators who answer emergency calls – pointing out that his mother was a 911 operator – and to give an award to the Citizen Police Academy for its 30th anniversary.
He also announced that the Citizen Police Academy alumni – all 250 of them – will lead the Fourth of July Parade next week as co-grand marshals.
In other announcements, the mayor:
• Said he will seek formation of another cultural advisory board, the Asian-American Advisory Board.
• Said he will look to add to the number of city-sponsored alliances – currently there is the Interfaith Alliance, the Mentoring Alliance and the Realtors Alliance – by creating a Mental Health Alliance and a Barbers Alliance.
• Announced a new partnership with Hello Fresh by which the company will provide donated food for the community. The company donated a refrigerated van to the city to help deliver the food.
• Said the city will seek a new special census to get a better count of the city’s population. He also solicited help in that effort from the public.
slord@tribpub.com
