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 4
Mayor Graham is back with a recap of City Council Work Session with updates about increased Pueblo Police Department patrols in the downtown area along with presentations from Sheriff Lucero, Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority and Pueblo County Historical Society and Heritage Museum. Hear about legislative updates, upcoming informational town halls related to Ballot Measure 2A, the newly launched Pueblo 1,000 initiative from Safeside Recovery and #LuckyToLiveInPueblo.
Looking for more information about the upcoming ballot measure?
City of Pueblo's Franchise Agreement with Black Hills Energy and Ballot Initiative 2A
Submit your questions or topics for consideration of the podcast at mayor@pueblo.us.
Welcome to the fourth episode of Mayor's Mixtape. I'm Haley Robinson, Director of Public Affairs for the City of Pueblo. This is Mayor Heather Graham and we also behind the camera or behind the mic, we have Chief of Staff Brian McCain.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 3:That was somber.
Speaker 1:That was nice and brief. I do want to remind everyone that you can find this podcast on Apple Spotify. I am really excited to announce we have over 100 downloads on Buzzsprout. Oh wow, that means people are listening to you, mayor.
Speaker 1:People, this is the media, yeah yeah, exactly, and then we also have replays available on YouTube and Government Channel 17. We've been posting it on your Facebook page, so there's lots of places that you can find the podcast. You can listen to us, watch us share it with your friends. Also, if you're looking to suggest a topic or want to ask a question of the Mayor, you can email us at mayor@pueblo. us, and submit your questions and maybe your topics that you want us to cover. So welcome. You had another busy week, Mayor Graham.
Speaker 3:Yes, another one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and let's jump right into it from a little bit of follow-up from last night's work session. One thing that was mentioned last night was the police department update. Chief of Staff, McCain said that we've increased patrol in the downtown area in the last couple of weeks. One thing that stood out was we had officers out on overtime two volunteered, two were forced overtime to patrol on Wednesday and Thursday and last week they wrote 16 municipal citations, one state citation, conducted 31 business checks, made one one felony arrest and issued one PR bond. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about these patrols, and I guess I mean some of the success we've seen so far this was an effort by the police department to help with some of the issues that we've been seeing in downtown the break the shootings into businesses.
Speaker 3:you know just the disregard for people's personal property and business property in downtown. And so you know we had some officers volunteer, a couple that were forced over to come in and help and work some extra hours, and it was fruitful. 16 municipal citations. They won't be in jail because they're municipal citations, thanks for the clarification.
Speaker 3:But I think that putting the pressure in the downtown area is a need and I think that we have seen some of the issues subside over the last couple weeks and we're going to keep with the efforts until we see no more issues in the downtown area. So I'm really happy with the police department and glad that they were able to assist with those efforts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fantastic. Okay, so along those lines of the work session last night, we had a couple of guests. Last night we heard from Sheriff Lucero, Executive Director of Urban Renewal Authority, Jerry Pacheco also had the Pueblo County Historical Society and the Heritage Museum. Did you want to provide any follow-up to any of those presentations?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was happy that the Sheriff came to talk a little bit about what his role is as the sheriff, how he runs his jail, the offenses he's taken into jai l. The chief and I have been trying to work with the sheriff since December about taking additional municipal offenses into the jail. So those are our city offenses. All of these offenses are arrestable offenses, but unfortunately the sheriff doesn't want to put those people in jail only if they're filed under state charges. And I think you know what we heard last night is it's mandatory for him to put people in jail if they're filed under state charges, but unfortunately all of our municipal rules are not state charges. So you have trespass, theft, disorderly conduct, damaging, defacing or destruction of property Under $300 are not going to be a state offense, but they're still going to be a petty crime and they're still the crimes that we continue to see happening in our downtown area. So essentially, what the sheriff stated last night is you have two people commit the same crime, right, and if the officer cites them under a state charge, the sheriff has to take them into jail. If they're cited under a municipal charge, the sheriff doesn't have to take them to jail, nor will he take them to jail because he's not obligated to take them to jail. So I think that the city council and the citizens kind of learned a lot about what it looks like for our police department when they're going out and issuing citations in the community, which are what individuals are then put into jail, what individuals are issued a PR bond and continue to wreak havoc on the streets, and so I think that that was eye-opening for city council that that was happening.
Speaker 3:The sheriff agreed to continue to work with the City last night on efforts and what we could do in a partnership to make sure people are held to the highest consequence when they break the law. And although these municipal offenses might be minor compared to some of the other offenses that we see, these are really the low-level crimes that are plaguing our community. These are the calls that I receive questions about. These are the types of calls that you continuously see the police out issuing citations, whether that's trespass, loitering, theft, and so it's unfortunate the way that our own jail within our City of Pueblo works and how they take people. But I think you know, with the continued concern. The sheriff said that he was willing to now work with the city last night after several months of meeting and going back and forth, and so I think that he heard our concerns last night and we're going to be happy to move forward and hopefully work on making sure that the individuals who commit these low-level crimes are held to some consequence, whether that's four hours or four days or 40 days or whatever that looks like. If you break the law, you should have an immediate consequence.
Speaker 1:So this is basically the 16 citations we just previously mentioned. That would be an example of municipal, of municipal that folks cannot go to jail. So we had one state charge, so that would just be one person that was put in jail last week with patrol on union main street, downtown area. Correct, okay?
Speaker 3:so. So those are. Odds aren't good, right? We're writing a lot of municipal citations and nothing happens, and people are frustrated with it. So unfortunately, there's not a state charge for every municipal offense, nor do we want to overburden the jail or the sheriff with some of these low-level crimes, but I mean some of them. We see individuals who, over the course of a week, get 10 of these municipal charges. Those are the types of people that we're targeting. We want to make sure that they're facing a consequence. Okay.
Speaker 1:So that was a good update to help folks understand how the process works, how we can work with the sheriff's office and what role the Police Department plays versus Sheriff's deputies.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's a real misconception in the community about what we're allowed to do as a Pueblo Police Department and what the sheriff's role is in all that, what the state legislator's role is in all of that, and so it's a really complex situation, you know, and if you don't know, the odds and ends on the inside and you're on the outside just saying, hey, why aren't police picking people up? Why aren't these people going to jail? Why are they being let out of jail? There's a little bit more to the story than you know, than just the sheriff not wanting to take people or the police not doing their job. It's complex.
Speaker 1:So that was a good work session presentation. Any other follow-up you want to get from last night?
Speaker 3:We had Urban Renewal Authority. They came and talked about a partnership between the City and Urban Renewal.
Speaker 3:The urban authority is an arm of the city and for revitalization, urban development, um really helping with blight in our tiff districts, um, and so you know they came and talked about their blight spotlight uh initiative that they're going to be bringing forward. My departments have already been working to put a list together. We have 26 houses located in Bessemer and on the east side that could potentially be demoed, revitalized, and so we look forward to working with Urban Renewal to speed up the process. I've been working on trying to find additional funding, resources and avenues for Urban Renewal, because it is expensive to knock down a house. I mean, a small house is like $100,000, depending if they have to do environmental design or if it's a floodplain or if it has asbestos. So it is costly to knock down the houses and there's a lot of legality behind it. If the houses are still owned by individuals, try to track those individuals down. So I think that we're going to be putting a plan together on what that looks like, with the Urban Renewal Authority and the City giving direction on what properties we want attended to first, and so we're really looking forward to that.
Speaker 3:The third work session that we had was the museum, um, you know that currently occupies B street. So a couple weeks ago we had spoke about, you know, if we bought the PBR building, what departments could potentially move, what those moves would look like if the city could sell the properties. Will the city sell the properties that these departments were in? And so we did have several folks from the museum come last night and talk about the work that they do at the museum. So we're going to be working with the museum whether that's renegotiating their lease. They're on a month-to-month right now. Um, it was interesting. We had uh pulled their lease agreement and they have been there for like 20 years and they pay 84 cents a month to uh really rent the space out, and so you can see how times have changed, and so I think that the city is going to be looking to renegotiate their lease, and just recently we negotiated a lease for the Da Vinci Project and another city urban renewal owned property just on the Riverwalk.
Speaker 3:So this is something that we've just done. So we look forward to continuing conversations with the museum. You know, maybe they would like to expand their space and take over the whole B Street space. They said that they were kind of crammed for space. So these are conversations that are still going to be had and still had by the City Council, and those departments won't be moving for a couple months. So we know that there's a lot of time and conversations to be had. So we know why they were coming to city council to make sure the city council knew how valuable their work that they do is there. And I think in return we're going to work something out. Whether they end up taking the whole facility or a renegotiated lease or what that looks for, we're hoping for a win-win for the community and for everybody moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what I heard last night from both the folks that presented and then from council was that everyone just wants to be a good partner, and I think we have a lot of great museums in Pueblo, we have a lot of support for our history in Pueblo, and so it was good to hear that folks felt like, hey, there's a path forward, we just need to find out what it is yeah, just sit down and have the conversations, but those weren't conversations that we could have before the purchase of the building.
Speaker 3:Sure, until it's all said and done, we don't know. We just don't know who's going to be moving, or if it was even going to happen.
Speaker 1:Or if it was going to happen.
Speaker 3:This is the second time that this could possibly happen. So there's conversations to still have, but we appreciate their presentation and them coming to City Council and telling them a little bit about what they do. It's always good when people come to a work session like that, because if you don't know that you have a museum like that in your community, you kind of get a little bit of spotlight, yep, and so then hopefully more people engage and go visit and spend some money there. So it's always good when we invite our partners to come and present at City Council.
Speaker 1:Agreed. okay. And another thing that we have at the beginning of every work session, or nearly every work session, is talking about legislation. We heard from our lobbyist, Gill Romero, last night that 1147 looks like it's going to die and that's largely in part to the lobbying efforts not only from the city but from folks across the state. But are there other legislative updates that we need to know about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could jump in. So today, City Attorney Carla Sikes is up in Denver and she's testifying in opposition against Senate Bill 62, which is Senator Hendrickson's bill that he sponsored, was a prime sponsor on the failure to appear charges in municipal court. What this does is target basically it targeted Pueblo and we've talked about it taking away our ability to charge criminally for failure to appear and some other stuff that we used as a tool to. Going back to the jail conversation, get some of these people that are committing the low-level crimes on the street into jail. So, Senator Hendrickson, he introduced that. We originally went into it as an amend status or opposed as is. They did not amend it sufficiently. So Carla Sikes is up there testifying against it in opposition that we just want that gone.
Speaker 2:But interestingly enough, there's another similar bill called Court Actions Related to Failure to Appear in Court and what this is is a CML-sponsored bill that addresses some of the issues with the other failure to appear bill and it fixes the issues and it's, while not great for how our court system works, our municipal court system in Pueblo, we can live with that one. So the idea, with Carla testifying against it, is to say hey, let's get rid of 62. We understand your concerns but there's this other bill supported by the Municipal League and that's 1276, that addresses some of these issues you have and you know what we can live with this. It's kind of a I don't want to say compromise, but it's sitting at the table and this is just a better option. So hopefully she gets that you know, gets a good word in and they rethink that. And then the other one, 1147, that will be in a hearing, I believe Monday the 31st.
Speaker 2:The Mayor and all of City Council has submitted letters and comments in opposition to that. Talking to our lobbyists, he does think that that will be killed. In the Senate I don't think there was anybody in support of that bill, except maybe one or two criminal defense organizations and almost every municipality I've seen on it as opposed to it. So his good work up there, along with the other communities in the, the municipal league there, hopefully get that one killed. But that one, that's one that will basically strip, going back to the jail laws where the state doesn't have an equivalent. So we use our municipal court to charge these lower level crimes. This would get rid of that tool completely and that's why we're completely opposed to that.
Speaker 1:Because it strips us of our home rule authority.
Speaker 2:It basically says we'll have to charge everything in state court.
Speaker 2:So we'll have no teeth in our municipal court and a lot of our municipal court charges and offenses. There is no state equivalent to it. So it'd be impossible to charge these people that, say, are stealing $300 multiple times, breaking windows, that sort of thing. It just goes to state court and then in that as well, you would turn everything over to the DA. So then you have a DA. That's just like the city can't hire people right now, understaffed, and you dump that caseload onto the district attorney. In the meantime, the state and the joint budget committee they have stripped all funding for our defense council I forget the term, it's like indigent defense council in our municipal court and also in district courts.
Speaker 2:So the the state being broke, as everybody is right now, they're taking that money away unless somebody steps up and gets that back, because we use that to provide defense for everybody that comes into municipal court and it's not just us, it's district courts, it's other municipalities and the state's saying, well, we're going to take that money back, so we're going to put it on you. So again, the state, they're hurting for money right now, the city's hurting for money right now, everybody is, and when this bill goes through we are required to pay for this defense. But we have no money to do it because we rely on the state money.
Speaker 2:So we're going to have to backfill that if it passes, yeah, and that was really the governor's um opposition on that one, when he he sent somebody from dola dola to testify, because it's really take everything out of it, from the criminal stuff to the state charges. It's a unfunded mandate that is going to cost the city and other cities a ton of money so okay, all right, thanks for the update that was.
Speaker 1:that's a lot Another thing that we talked about last night. Mayor, you have some town halls upcoming. You and President Aliff are going to be hosting some informational town halls related to the ballot measure 2A, which will be on the spring election, slated for May 6, 2025. Can you talk to us about those town halls we're going to be?
Speaker 3:hosting five town halls over the next six weeks really trying to answer community questions on what the ballot issue says, what it means, what the off-ramp is, what that potentially means. When we get our study back from GDS, we will be providing additional information. So we really just want to help correct the narrative of kind of what Big Black Hills is putting out there. Black Hills has a lot of money to campaign. You know, I've seen it personally. They are currently running a commercial. You know Graham's Grocery Tax, so you know where they're taking their focus off of, how they're predators on our citizens in the community and they are running a campaign just against me as the Mayor, saying I'm trying to, or I've already introduced, you know, a grocery tax to the community, which is false, fake news, so you can see where your ratepayer dollars are going. It's going to campaign against your mayor. Nevertheless, you know. Know, one thing that we talked about last week is, uh, the franchise fee, the franchise fee that everyone keeps talking about what
Speaker 3:will that look like to the community if we decide to off-ramp? Um, how much money does the city make off the franchise for your get from block hills every year? It's about 3.4 million dollars. Um, but you know, I want to make sure that the citizens know. So I dug out one of my Black Hills bills from the restaurant Okay, and I want to make sure that the community knows that you're actually paying the franchise fee to the city at 3%. So if you flip your bill over all the way at the bottom, you know taxes and fees. My fee for the month was $51 that I paid your franchise fee, my franchise fee that just goes to the city for the collection of the franchise agreement between Black Hills and the City. So we get a lot of questions about you know what will happen if the voters vote yes to opt out, if it's feasible, the city takes off ramp in August. What's the worst case scenario on what could happen? And the reality is.
Speaker 3:The worst case scenario is the city will lose $3.4 million a year on the franchise fee. It will, right off the top, save the ratepayers 3% because you won't be paying that additional 3% to the franchise fee. That then pays the city and then we will look for a path forward on who's going to provide energy. Are we going to provide our own energy? Are we going to join a co-op?
Speaker 3:There's several different options that the city can look to take after that, but we've been getting a lot of questions about that franchise fee and what does that mean? And what does it mean when you talk about taking an off ramp and, you know, getting out of your franchise agreement, that's what that means. It just means that you're not going to be paying 3% to Black Hills. That is then going to, you know, pay the city. So these are just some of the topics that we'll be talking about um in our town halls. Um, just trying to educate people on the timeline. What we're looking at, um, you know, as a, as a ballot, as ballot language, and an issue now.
Speaker 3:There's only some things that city staff can do. It has to be, you know, in their off time.
Speaker 3:We can't be using taxpayer dollars to campaign, so we're never going to compete with Graham's grocery tax, because I would assume that that was several thousands of dollars on primetime TV. So unfortunately we won't be doing that. But we just want to educate people and answer questions and try to get to as many pockets in the community to make sure people understand what's going to be coming to their mailboxes for the May 6th election and what that ballot language says what it?
Speaker 3:means and what our next steps. So the first town hall that I'm hosting is going to be at Graham's, the Northside, graham's Grill, Jerry Murphy, this Thursday at 5.30,. President Aliff will also be joining me just to answer, you know, some questions. There's no formal presentation, we're just going to kind of go over, you know, what are some of the frequent questions we've got. What does the timeline look like, moving forward and really just let people, you know, take it home, consider it and maybe come back if they have more questions. So we'll be hosting five of those, at the library, I think, or all the other locations, and then at Graham's. But people can find all that information on my personal Graham for Mayor Facebook, you know, because the city cannot campaign.
Speaker 3:So, we, as elected officials city council and myself, you know can bring awareness and can campaign you can campaign either way, so I just want to make sure people that information is getting out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I also last week worked with our Director of Public Works, Andrew Hayes. We have a ballot measure explainer video, which is different. I'm glad you clarified because I think there's a lot of folks who are pretty confused on what city staff can or cannot do. Why can't you spend money and campaign Right? And also, what can city staff do when we're talking about the ballot measure? But that's part of the feasibility study, so that'll be coming out in April. We'll be releasing that information to the public, um, and that's what it is. It's information. It's we as city staff can't campaign for against the measure while on city city time, um, but we do have a ballot explainer video for people to understand what does a "yes vote mean, what does a no vote mean? And then we have a landing page on the website so that folks can understand what does this all mean? What are my questions? And then it sounds like they can attend your town halls if they have maybe more personal questions or pointed questions even.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're happy to answer and, okay, you know tell, we've been working on this for you know quite some time, President Aliff and I, so we're able to dive in and answer the questions and kind of talk about, as elected officials, what we'd like to see forward. Councilor Maestri had some good questions last night at City Council about what the next steps would be, what the process would be, and so when even council people are coming to ask the questions, we think it's a good idea to make sure that we're getting as much information out, whether you vote for it or you don't, just to make sure people make an educated decision on May 6th, okay great.
Speaker 1:Okay. So switching gears a little bit. Yesterday we saw a big announcement from SafeSide SafeSide Recovery is the current fiscal agent for the Pueblo Shelter and they put forward a big initiative called Pueblo 1000. So they are inviting 1,000 people in Pueblo to make a reoccurring, regular monthly donation of $25 a month and their big goal is to raise $300,000 a year for the next shelter operator. So we have an RFP out for management of the shelter and I know you got some questions about Pueblo 1000 and what you thought about it, so I thought I'd bring that up as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's a great idea. I mean kudos to SafeSide for thinking about the future of the shelter. Whether you know they're a successful applicant of the RFP or not, you know they really want to make sure the unhoused population is taken care of and they have proper funding, you know, for the next year to come. Right, so that's you know. Kudos to them. And speaking of the shelter, so the RFP was due back. We received interest. We haven't necessarily looked at what that interest is yet.
Speaker 3:I have an ordinance coming forward on the next city council meeting. I know that the city council is. You know we're having budget talks. What does that look like for 2026? And so I was able to go through several different capital improvement projects since 2017. And go back and see you know where we have funds that hadn't been spent and the projects have been finished, and so we've moved a lot of money around and we've been able to find enough money to fulfill the RFP through the end of 2025 without taking money out of our reserves. So you will see an ordinance come through on the 24th, turning that into a capital project specifically for the shelter, from May on, that's when the award.
Speaker 3:Yep, we had city council. They wanted to kind of have some different options like what would it look like if it was a city department? What would it look like if it was an RFP? What is the cost difference? What is the staffing difference? How is that going to impact the city budget? And you know my recommendation and what I'm bringing forward is a the RFP process and you know, continued partnership with somebody, because the city, you know the city doesn't know everything about providing professional services and peer support to unhoused individuals.
Speaker 3:We can maintain and run facilities and buildings, but that's really not our specialty. So I would like to have a nonprofit partner, work with the city and be able to help provide those wraparound services to the community, with the city still paying the utilities, and building maintenance and the overhead costs and then helping pay for their employees.
Speaker 3:So this RFP was a little bit over $500,000 that they would receive over 12 months. So we'll be able to, you know, if city council approves this ordinance, we'll be able to have the funding through 2025. And then we'll look at doing a line item for 2026 if council approves. Um, you know, I think that they've been really receptive to what I've done with the shelter already. So, um it's, I work with safe side day to day, with the shelter day to day, and so I think that this is going to be the best path moving forward. So I want to make sure that we don't have any disruptiveness when it comes to the shelter or the operator.
Speaker 3:So I look for city council support on funding the RFP to operate the shelter through 2025 and we'll see that on the 24th.
Speaker 1:Cool. So it sounds like we kind of have two options that will help set us up for success and help stabilize things through the rest of 2025 and ensure that the shelter is able to continue running. Yes, great, okay, awesome, okay. One last thing, probably before we wrap. You put on your Facebook page last Friday the city has a campaign this week called lucky to live in pueblo. Um, and you decided to talk about how you feel like you're lucky to live in pueblo because of citizens like Ted Freeman. Yeah, yeah, and you received a lot of positive response from that. Um, do you want to talk a little bit about why you feel lucky to live?
Speaker 3:in our city. Yeah, you know, specifically with Ted Freeman, he's a frequent flyer at City Council. In our discussions on Friday, we learned that he's been coming to City Council for 20 years, really involved in city business. Every Friday he walks City Hall and you know we have TGIF, where he pays my staff a happy Friday and have a good weekend, and so you know why sometimes it can be, you know, difficult to listen to citizens' complaints. You have citizens like Ted Freeman who shows up and even when he has complaints, he continues to tell the staff that they're doing an amazing job. Sure, and you know he really wants to help, you know, push the city forward, and so that's something that we can all appreciate from Ted. So, yeah, I'm lucky to live in Pueblo and lucky to represent citizens like Ted Freeman who are engaged in civic responsibility when it comes to the community.
Speaker 3:He spends his time you his time coming to me with ideas on things that he thinks should be Reading researching, presenting new ideas for your consideration, yeah, move forward, and so we hear a lot of criticism about the government and about the city government, and I get a lot of criticism myself, and so it's always good when people just don't come with complaints, but they come with solutions and they come with ways to help their community. And that's something that I really appreciate about Ted Freeman is he's always well, why don't you look at it like this? Or, you know, did you know? 10 years ago this happened, and let me bring you one of my research papers, and there's been times when I have taken his research papers and went back and read and watched and said wow, he has good information to share.
Speaker 3:I had no idea that this happened. I didn't know that this happened this way, and so he's even educating me on things that have happened in the city. So, yeah, lucky to live in Pueblo for citizens like Ted Freeman and, you know, many of the other great citizens who call and want to help with solutions and who want to help with continued support of our efforts in this administration.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool, so lucky to live in Pueblo. It's a Facebook Instagram campaign. Folks can participate all through the week until March 22nd. I know yesterday I saw posts from the riverwalk from CSU pueblo, Pueblo Police Department, Greater Pueblo, Chamber, Parks and Recreation. So we have a lot of, a lot of support and, um, even just the comments that, uh, people commented back and said why they feel like they're lucky to live in Pueblo. It's pretty exciting. So we invite you to join in on that on our social media channels for the rest of the week. Anything else for the Don't blow away. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, we do have a red flag warning, so be careful, fire danger, things like that. Don't blow away.
Speaker 3:but and enjoy spring break. It's gonna be spring break next week it is, it is talking. So enjoy spring break. Don't blow away, take your claritin okay, that sounds good.
Speaker 1:Uh, we also want to remind folks to like subscribe. You can listen on apple, spotify, buzzsprout, youtube, wherever you get your podcasts or maybe you're not a podcast person but you want to watch on local Channel 17,. You can do that as well. And, don't forget, you can email mayor@pueblo. us, for topics, questions and things like that. So until next time, Happy Tuesday, see you next week.