Aurora lawmakers added a new fee and increased another in Monday night’s meeting, addressing kids on dirt bikes and failure to appear for people who need interpreters in court, respectively.

The council unanimously passed an ordinance that charges $250 to parents and guardians of minors caught riding dirt bikes in the city.

Councilmember Francoise Bergan sponsored the ordinance, which adds a level of enforcement to a city code that bans “off highway vehicles.”

Per the new ordinance, parents will be charged if their children are found riding vehicles that are not street legal in Aurora.

The idea behind the ordinance is to give police the ability to enforce city code when it comes to minors, who would previously just get a warning and no further punishment for riding non-street legal vehicles.

“This is all about safety,” Bergan said. “It’s a dangerous situation to have young kids out there in the roads with trucks and vehicles, so we want to prevent any kinds of accidents.”

There has been an increase in accidents and injuries to minors due to reckless dirt bike riding on city streets in Aurora, according to the ordinance.

Aurora Police Officer Steve Spanos said off-highway vehicles have become “such a problem” citywide.

“My emails and phone messages, 60% of them revolve around these dirt bikes,” Spanos said. “Per our statute … they’re not allowed anywhere in our city. Not in our parks, not in our neighborhoods, not on our streets. It has certainly risen to a level of concern.”

The ordinance passed less than a week after a crash between an ATV and a dirt bike killed a teenager Friday, according to Aurora police. The crash happened in a city green space and killed an 18-year-old, on the dirt bike. Three boys were on the ATV, police said. Their ages were not specified.

The ordinance passed unanimously.

Councilmembers also cast a final vote Monday to raise the fee for defendants in court who fail to appear and needed an interpreter.

Court interpreters are in high demand, council documents say, and when defendants fail to appear without notice, costs for interpreter services are put on the city. 

Previously, the fee charged to defendants who need interpreters and fail to appear was $35. Final passage of the ordinance Monday raises it to $90.

Councilmembers Alison Coombs, Ruben Medina and Crystal Murillo stood as the three ‘no’ votes on the ordinance, which passed with ‘yes’ votes from the rest of the present councilmembers.

Coombs, who expressed concerns about the ordinance being discriminatory at its first reading, said the council should be addressing the failure to appear problem in general rather than penalizing just those who need interpreters.

“It is not clear how this is a fee that is not discriminatory towards certain groups of people,” Coombs said. “If our concern is failure to appear, then we should be addressing failure to appear.”

The fee increase unfairly adds an “additional burden” to people who speak other languages, Murillo said.

“I have deep concerns with the fact that this could only possibly apply to a certain amount of folks,” Murillo said. “In Aurora, one in five are foreign-born, we have over 160 languages. I don’t agree with the move to triple the fee.”