The Mayor's Mixtape
Mayor Heather Graham's weekly brief of current events related to the City of Pueblo.
The Mayor's Mixtape
The Mayor's Mixtape-Episode 3
Mayor's Mixtape Episode 3 Mayor Heather Graham discusses a variety of topics. She gave an update about the HARP Boathouse and Channel Expansion. Where does the money come from and how is this good use of public funds? Mayor Graham covered the City Council meeting from March 10 and the purchase of the former Professional Bull Riders building on the Riverwalk along with the theft from merchant ordinance. She also takes questions from the public and answers whether she is for or against Daylight Saving Time. Another hot topic includes the current mayoral recall petitions.
Have questions or want to submit a topic for the podcast? Email mayor@pueblo.us to have your questions answered and your topic discussed.
All right, welcome to the third episode of Mayor's Mixtape. I am Haley Sir Robinson, director of Public Affairs for the City of Pueblo. This is Mayor Heather Graham, star of the show and the reason that we're here. I do also want to say I should introduce our producer and our voice from off camera, because a few folks have asked Our Chief of Staff, Brian McCain.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:We had a few people who reached out to me and said, hey, we need to introduce the voice on the mic before he just starts talking out of nowhere, and I said, okay, that's great feedback, but this is our third episode. It's available on YouTube, apple, spotify, buzzsprout, channel 17. We also created a new space on the website, on the mayor's page, for Mayor's Mixtape, so there's no reason that you cannot listen or watch the podcast. Getting accurate news, exactly Getting accurate news. We also want to encourage our listeners to email us, ask you questions, maybe suggest a topic, mayor at publicus. So welcome to do so. I know there's plenty of topics that we can cover and sometimes there's just not enough time, but that means there's next week right.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, great. So let's get into something that, mayor, you posted about yesterday, actually, on your personal Facebook page and you posted a great picture of the Riverwalk Boathouse. Very exciting, you can see it from I-25. Yeah, it looks great, and this has been kind of a hot topic. I think it's very controversial. It very controversial, yes. Uh, folks are I'm not sure why, but they're either really excited about it or absolutely furious. I would say you're either hot or cold. There's kind of no in between.
Speaker 1:Um, it seems like we've talked about this a lot, yeah, however, I was looking at the comments yesterday on your facebook page and there seems to be a lot of frustration, confusion.
Speaker 3:Misinformation.
Speaker 1:Misinformation, my favorite topic About the funding source, so I thought that would be a really good topic to talk about today. Sure, can you walk us through the Boathouse and Channel Extension project? Sure, and why would we fund something like this? One of the questions I saw was why would we fund something like this with our budget deficit?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, what I can tell you is the city's funding portion of this project was only a million dollars.
Speaker 1:Of a 16.
Speaker 3:A $16 million project and asset that now belongs to the city of Pueblo. So back in 2018, there was a ballot issue. It was a 1A ballot issue and it listed it was a countywide ballot issue that listed several projects that they wanted to see done within the community with your tax dollars. 1a funds and the Boathouse and Channel Extension were two of the projects that were listed. Another project was Hobbs Field, the road to the jail, eastside Streetscape, downtown Main Street and Union revitalization projects. So there were several projects that were listed that this money is going to go to and it's going to help be the funding source for these projects.
Speaker 3:So I completely get. It happened all the way back in 2018.
Speaker 3:And you know, it's 2024 before we even broke ground on this project. But it took a long time for the city to secure the money from the county and secure the additional funding sources that were needed because of the time in between the time that the money was allocated and the time of the project start date. So the Pueblo County gave the city of Pueblo $9 million towards the project. When I first got into office, I worked really hard to try to find other grants and funding revenue sources in order to make sure that we could secure the $16 million for the project.
Speaker 3:So I received a million-dollar dollar grant from the city Department of Local Affairs, yep, in which it asked for a million dollar general fund match. So that's where our million dollar general fund match comes in. Okay, we were able to allocate some ARPA spending that we hadn't previously done. So we used about $1.4 million in ARPA dollars that weren't allocated yet to finish the project. We got $200,000 from the Urban Renewal Authority and we took $3.3 million out of half-cent sales tax. So the Riverwalk, the Boathouse, those were all part of the RTA project and, per the RTA guidelines and half-cent sales tax guidelines, you can use half-cent sales tax monies to fund RTA projects.
Speaker 3:So, we were able to cobble together all of the money to start the $16 million project. So we didn't just take $16 million out of the general fund, we took a million that was a match to a grant. We moved some money around when it came to the ARPA dollars that we were able to allocate to the projects. That was federal funding. The Renewal Authority gave us $200,000. The majority of the money came from the ballot issue from 1A at $9 million, which was voted by the citizens, which was voted by the citizens overwhelmingly for one of the projects to get finished. The city is currently working on two other projects that were also so the east side streetscape they allocated a million dollars to that and four million dollars to the union and main street renovation.
Speaker 3:but you know, here we are again several years later and projects have stalled, stalled and everything is more costly now. So again it's going to take the city looking for grants or other revenue sources to be able to start the union and Main Street project just because of the time it's taken. So it's really important when the government gets funds to start the projects immediately before the project price skyrockets, like we've seen with the boathouse. The original cost for the boathouse was $11 million a few years ago, so with the price of inflation, concrete that was the biggest bump up yeah.
Speaker 3:You have a $16 million project, but if the city wouldn't have received the DOLA grant and wouldn't have allocated the million dollars from general fund, we would have lost the $9 million from the county. So it's really, you know, do we want to lose these dollars? Do we want to see this project go through, or should we look for other funding sources and try to put the money together to get the project done? And that's what we did. So, super excited, the boathouse will be done end of November, right alongside with the Da Vinci project. So I think we're going to have a lot of action on the river.
Speaker 3:Yeah, on that, that area yeah, I mean, if you look, you know the channel is already um pretty much laid out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at this point so I think it's, I think it's completely dug, and then they've begun to pour some of the concrete.
Speaker 3:Yeah, uh, towards the front it's really exciting for the city, um, it's exciting for the citizens. It's an asset to the city of Pueblo, and I'm looking forward to the opening day of the vote house.
Speaker 1:Okay, great for clarification to understand the revenue sources, the funding sources and help people understand. So we essentially spent $1 million in order to keep $9 million from the county and then really, if you look at it, it's a community-wide, community-supported project with so many revenue sources. Yeah, okay, cool, okay. That's very helpful because I think a lot of folks were very confused and really passionate, which is understandable when we're facing questions about the budget and how we're spending. I think it's important to answer the questions to folks.
Speaker 3:Totally, but it's important for people to understand it too. So I know it's a lot of different funding sources, so we should make sure that we're doing a good job communicating where all this money came from and why the city council and the commissioners thought it was important for this project to get off the ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but originally it was voted by the taxpayers. Voted by the taxpayers Great, okay, so let's switch topics. Let's talk about city council updates from last night or Monday night, if you're watching this later. City council had a pretty lengthy discussion regarding R1 and R2. So that was the financing and then the actual purchase of the PBR building. We talked about this pretty in-depth last week on the podcast, but just wanted to see if there was any follow-up on your end or more information that you maybe wanted to share about this.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So both R1 and R2, the financing for the project and the project passed last night 5-2, which was great because all seven members of city council gave me direction, my staff direction, to move forward for this project. So it was kind of frustrating last night when people started talking about well, I don't know if we should purchase this because of our budget deficit. We've had a budget deficit for the last five years. Every year we've transferred money out of reserves in order to balance the budget. This is nothing new for the city of Pueblo, but what was interesting is, you know, the councilors gave direction for us to make this expenditure for our city employees, for our staff, for the betterment of how the government runs. So it was frustrating but you know, I'm glad that the five members who gave the direction to move forward continued to vote in the way that they said they were going to vote.
Speaker 3:It's an important project. It's a costly project. It's taken a lot of time. We've been working on this project since last year. Last year the city of Pueblo offered PBR $8 million to purchase the building. We were unsuccessful. They wanted to go with somebody else. Ultimately, I think that deal fell through and somebody else purchased the building came to the city, wanted to see if we wanted to look at it, we were so interested.
Speaker 3:Well, first I wanted to see if we wanted to rent it for office space. The numbers didn't make sense to rent it for office space. It made sense to purchase the project. In the mix of all this, we've had a couple buildings that have deteriorated so badly that I've had to move staff members around.
Speaker 3:Some departments I have three people working to an office. So, you know, I think it's a good purchase. I think that it's a capital investment for the city of Pueblo. We took a COP out on it. It'll be paid over 15 years. You know, I don't think that our bond council would have necessarily let us, you know, spend the money if they didn't think that we could make the payment over the next 15 years.
Speaker 3:So I understand the budget constraints, but I also understand that we need to look for other revenue sources other ways to have income into the city so that we can purchase buildings, we can do infrastructure, we can do road repair, we can have amenities and we can do projects. That's just how it works. You have to have money to make money. Sorry, you have to spend money to make money. Yeah, um, and I think that you know it's important for our employees to have a safe working environment, to have their own office space, and I think it's important for the citizens to be able to have a space where they can go and have, you know, many of the departments that they might need to hit all in one day under one roof. I think that it's going to, uh, be a plus for the community as a whole.
Speaker 1:So one thing that you mentioned was uh, that was interesting in that was bond council. Yeah, so explain to me. We talked last week about cop's, which is certificates of participation. What's bond council?
Speaker 3:so they're. They're the ones that really help um, you help guide the city in financial aspirations, whether that's loans, bonds, COP's. We worked the same bond council when we took out the COPs for the three fire stations. So they're really the coordinators, really help the city. If we have to put buildings up for collateral against the COP or against a bond, they help us do that they do the evaluation process.
Speaker 3:So yeah, so it's, uh, it's, it's a whole, it's a whole group of people that work together in order for the city to make large purchases this way.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's just, it's what government does, sure, but, um, basically what I, what I hear from that is, it's it's an entire process that's checked by outside sources that ensure that the city's making a sound financial decision. Absolutely Okay, great Okay. Also, last night's theft from merchant ordinance it passed unanimously seven to zero and that dropped the threshold for theft from $300 to $100 with an automatic jail sentence. This is something that you originally brought forward. We talked about it last week at sunset and so it was time to update, and you wanted to update it with a lower threshold so that we can stop theft. Anything else you want to talk about with this ordinance or kind of follow up about it.
Speaker 3:I think with the $300 minimum we saw a 30% reduction in theft from merchants. So I'm excited to see what happens, maybe just for the rest of the year.
Speaker 3:If 1147 legislation that we've been actively fighting at the Capitol. If that passes, there will have to be some amendments to the way we sentence the mandatory jail, the habitual offender. We can't do any of that. So for the next nine months this ordnance will go into effect. So I'm excited to see what it does for our merchants in the community and hopefully it helps people and it has an immediate consequence for people who want to steal.
Speaker 1:And we're able to track that type of information, because, as I understand, Chief Noeller normally sends CompStat like a weekly review. Yeah, what all is encompassed in that, or how are we able to track?
Speaker 3:so we track it through municipal court and the tickets that are issued merchant for theft tickets. Okay, um, that come through.
Speaker 1:So so seeing an increase or decrease will help us track it exactly. Okay, great, okay. Um, I know this is continuing to be a hot topic for us. It will, through the legislative session, any updates about legislation, right?
Speaker 3:now you know. So that House bill it did you know, we watched it last week.
Speaker 3:It kept getting postponed and postponed and postponed. It ended up passing out of the House 37-27. But we had some great advocates, like Ty Winter, who represents a portion of Pueblo, who got up and spoke in favor of Pueblo. You know the legislative breakfast was pretty hot on Saturday. We had the senator here who was a sponsor of this bill. It was interesting. One of the questions that he was asked is what was your stakeholder process and who did you talk to at the city? And you know his answer was something to the fact of well, I received emails. So I'm not really sure who sent the senator the emails, but it wasn't the Mayor. Um, and we still have not had any conversation about this bill or what this bill will do to the community. In fact, I don't even think the senator has ever been to municipal court, ever stepped one foot in municipal court to see what we do, how we do it municipal In Pueblo.
Speaker 3:Municipal Court. He's never been. No, which is interesting because he used to be a city employee. Sure, so we look forward to when it goes to the Senate. We will be, you know, testifying again and pushing the needs for Pueblo. It's really one of the first times that Pueblo has shown up, so I'm excited to see what happens and, you know, hopefully, if there's no amendments, we can work with the governor for a veto.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, great Thanks for the update. Oh, chief of Staff has an ad oh here we go.
Speaker 2:Just one more thing. One of the questions that was brought up was that the JBC basically cut the funding for its defense counsel for indigent or people that need assistance in the court and we actually do use that municipal court to pay for our defense counsel. But as of now that's cut and a bill was brought up that said that they were going to add more judges. What he was referring to was district court judges and just for the districts, and from what I saw somebody said that there would be funding for that in that bill and I did not see that anywhere in it. But just so that people are aware that the money that the state gives us for defense for people is gone as of right now.
Speaker 1:It's all been cut. It's all been cut.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not finalized yet, but that's what the JBC wants to do because the state, much like the City of Pueblo and a lot of other municipalities across the state, they're in a deficit as well. So they're cutting across the board right now and that's some of the funding that they're going to pull back.
Speaker 1:Great. Everybody's facing a budget deficit, not just us.
Speaker 3:So it happens when the federal government pumps, you know, tons of millions and trillions of dollars into the economy and then, when you're back to reality, you flatline and there's a shortfall and you have to figure out what kind of cuts you're going to make, what the best expenditures of your money should be. So it's difficult. I think every community is facing this right now, and so we'll see how it plays out Okay, so now's the time to take some questions from our listeners.
Speaker 1:Here's a good question we got via email Mayor, where do you see the City of Pueblo in a year and a year from now, with the quality of life?
Speaker 3:Well, hopefully a year from now, the quality of life improves even more than it already has In the past year. The administration is going to continue to clean up the city, you know. Hopefully we will have a new operator of our homeless shelter.
Speaker 3:And I look forward to what we're doing with the transitional housing and the property as a whole. We're going to have a boathouse, we're going to have a Da Vinci Museum. Hopefully we have some economic development being brought into the community. But a year from now, I hope that the city is more on track than it is now. I hope that the quality of life improves. You know this is you know. One thing I was thinking about is why I'm looking at the comm stat reports that I received from the police department is it's March and I'm going to knock on wood, but the city of Pueblo has not had one homicide yet this time last year we had eight homicides. So you know, I think that we're seeing a crime decrease in the City of Pueblo.
Speaker 3:You can see by the statistics that violent crime, violent crime. We still have some work to do on petty crime and the crimes that affect the quality of life of the citizens, but I think that we're all working really hard to make sure that Pueblo is the best that it can be, and so I'm excited for a year from now and to look back and see how far we've come, because we've come a long way from a year ago now, so excited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so today's March 11th, You've been on the job for a little over 13 months. So in your viewpoint, the quality of life from 13 months ago?
Speaker 3:it's improved. It's improved and I think that the citizens would agree.
Speaker 1:And we can expect that for the future as well. Absolutely Great, okay. So, Mayor, this is controversial. It's like the elephant in the room that we need to talk about. Are you ready? Yeah, okay, daylight saving time. Are you for or are you against it? Against, against.
Speaker 2:Totally against.
Speaker 1:Okay, Brian, this wasn't the question for you, this was the question for the mayor.
Speaker 3:but at least we know how our chief of staff feels yeah, I think everyone is, you know, dragging a little around the city.
Speaker 1:You know, with the time change, you got your coffee in hand, yeah.
Speaker 3:What coffee I had my second coffee today. I'm actually surprised it's not your third early, but um, I see my clocks don't even change yet I did notice that mine isn't either in my office. Yeah, um, but I'm, you know, I like the day, I like having sunlight, you know, later than five o'clock when we leave work. Yeah, instead of leaving in the dark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like it too.
Speaker 3:So I think that more people are out and about. You're going to start to see all the trees budding on Union.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, that's one of my favorite views.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you could tell allergies are in the air. So I think that this is one of the best times in Pueblo is when you know it's not too hot, but it's not too cold, um, and the sun's out a little bit longer. I think everybody likes that in the community.
Speaker 1:Okay, so for now you're for daylight, saving town for it until it potentially changes and we never do it again. Yeah, and then you'll be fine.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It won't be the hill you die on.
Speaker 3:That's not. It's definitely not going be the hill. Okay, there's other, there's other hills sure, of course, absolutely okay.
Speaker 1:Um, so, in all seriousness, the actual elephant in the room, yeah, recall yeah let's talk about it
Speaker 3:yeah, so um, for the last several months sure um, there's been a group of unhappy citizens who are very unhappy with me and, uh, they've executed their you know petition. It's been approved by the city of Pueblo. It was approved Friday.
Speaker 1:By the clerk's office in law.
Speaker 3:By the clerk's office yes, and it's not approved for content. It's approved to form. So we know the city doesn't look at what's in it, what it says, if it's true. If it's not true, they just make sure that the form is correct. And so it was approved.
Speaker 1:friday they have 60 days to get uh like 6200 signatures, which is a large amount um and that's um, that's 25 of the previous election for the position, and so in this case it was the re uh, the runoff election for mayor yep um, and that's where we got the 6200 number for signatures yeah, so it's 62 valid signatures um have to live in the city of pueblo. Registered voter address is correct.
Speaker 3:Signature verification yep, okay, um, you know verification Yep, okay, you know, just in my experience with my liquor licensing and petitioning to get liquor, getting 6,200 signatures is difficult. You know, just because you have to verify everybody. You know their name, their address and do their voter registration. So you know, I think it's going to be very difficult for them to get 6,200 people that are upset with me to sign their petition.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what do you think about the 11 pieces that are on the petition? How do you feel about, maybe, some of the things that they want to recall you for, maybe gas prices?
Speaker 3:Yeah, gas prices. I think Councilor Martinez said it best last night. She didn't know city council or local government had the authority to raise gas prices, so that would include the City of Pueblo, Mayor, not also being able to raise gas prices.
Speaker 1:You cannot raise or lower.
Speaker 3:I cannot raise or lower gas prices, but you know, just in math, the more gas stations that come to Pueblo, the lower the gas prices, right, sure, we welcome gas stations and these gas stations that are coming to the city, you know, they must see that there's about to be a boom in the city, because why are you bringing so many gas?
Speaker 2:stations into our community, I mean.
Speaker 3:so I think that's a positive thing. Okay, when we have these huge gas chains wanting to bring multiple gas stores to the community and gas prices are dropping, so I think that's a win for everybody.
Speaker 1:Okay, anything else that you want to look at on the petition or combat, or.
Speaker 3:Well combat. You know 99 percent of everything that they've um alleged.
Speaker 3:I think it's very opinionated and um I think that the majority of the community voted me in for the reasons that these individuals are so upset about. So, um, obviously I'm doing something right if people are wanting me out of here for cleaning up the city, for increasing public safety and transparency and accountability in government. I guess we'll just see what happens. So they have 60 days, 6,200 signatures. Then it will go to vote of the people and so I will hope that if they get the signatures that you know my supporters and people are happy with what we've been doing in the community show up, but I doubt it will get that far. Over the last week I've had a ton of support from community members and you know really saying that this recall is BS and that these were my campaign promises and I'm fulfilling them and people should be happy about that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so one thing that you just touched on is like happiness, and one thing that's in the in the petition is that you don't necessarily listen to your constituents who complain which is interesting?
Speaker 3:Sure, because I think I've met with over 600 people.
Speaker 1:Last year.
Speaker 3:Just last year, yeah.
Speaker 2:Probably not even this year.
Speaker 3:This year, Sure. What also is interesting is the three people who are petitioning to get me out of office. I've only ever met one of them who came to my office They've never, met with you, never met with me, okay.
Speaker 3:Not reached out. You know, obviously Facebook yelled at me about you know issues that are going on, but you know, for people that have such a problem with me, my door is always open and we can always have, you know, conversations about any of the 11 things that you want to recall me about, and so it's interesting that you can receive you know so much hate, so much negativity from people you've never even met, never even bothered to sit down and have a conversation about why you do what you do.
Speaker 3:It's just an assumption and I don't think it's fair and we'll continue to do what we've been doing. I don't regret any of the decisions I've made this far and we're just going to keep up the good work we've been doing in the community. Okay, see what happens Great.
Speaker 1:Mayor, you have anything else to add to today's podcast? Any other topics you think we should cover?
Speaker 3:Not that I can think of right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, I think that's a good stopping point for us. Uh, again, I want to invite folks to follow us on youtube, apple, spotify, buzzsprout. Um, we repost this on the Mayor's facebook page. Uh, Mayor, Heather Graham, it's also on our government channel 17, and we, of course, invite folks to email for a topic or a question, maybe something they want you to talk about more in depth. You can email mayor@ pueblo. u pueblous and like subscribe. Share this with your friends and neighbors.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we hope everybody has a great week and we'll see you next time okay, until next time.