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 5
This week's episode of The Mayor's Mixtape gives follow up to the permitting process with the City of Pueblo for economic development, which was discussed at the Work Session with City Council. Additionally, Mayor Graham gave an update to the three officers injured in the shooting last week. Pueblo Memorial Airport announced a new air provider with Denver Air Connection and recently received "Best in Colorado" for an asphalt paving project. Mayor Heather Graham also discussed the "Graham Grocery Tax" and how to generate revenue for the City of Pueblo with the budget deficit to fund City services. Lastly, Mayor Graham answers questions from the listens.
Don't forget to submit your topics or questions to mayor@pueblo.us.
Welcome to the 5th episode of Mayor's Mixtape, and I'm Haley Sue Robinson, director of Public Affairs for the City of Pueblo, Heather.
Mayor Graham:Graham, City of Pueblo, Mayor, still the Mayor today, still the Mayor.
Haley Robinson:And behind the mic.
Brian McCain:Brian McCain, Chief of Staff.
Haley Robinson:That way we don't have just a random voice popping in. So you can find our podcast on YouTube, Spotify, apple, BuzzSprout, uh, local channel 17, basically wherever you get your podcasts, you can find this one. So don't forget to like, subscribe. Also, if you're interested in suggesting a topic or submitting a question for the mayor, you can email mayor@pueblo. us and we will check out your topics, suggestions, things like that. Let's get into it, mayor. Okay, so last week was a pretty heavy week here at the city. Before we get too far into the episode, I wanted to see if you had any updates on our three officers that had been involved in the shooting last week and their recovery, or anything else you wanted to share.
Mayor Graham:Today has been a week since a very terrible incident last Tuesday night. Luckily, all officers are okay as okay as they can be, right. So we have two officers that went home last week and we have an officer who is still in the hospital. All three of them have a long road of recovery ahead of them, so we're continuously thinking about them, being supportive to them and trying to help them and their families in any way that we can. We've had a great community outpour for our law enforcement and it truly means a lot to the department and to the chief and to myself on the community and how they've really come and back the blue in this case.
Haley Robinson:Yeah, we had a lot of local community support, but I know we also had support from around the state.
Mayor Graham:Like around the United States. We've seen the Chiefs press conference from California all the way to the New York Post on Friday. So I mean it's good, it's great coverage for what truly matters, right. It's unfortunate that it took officers being shot multiple times to wake this community up, but here we are and let's hope that something good comes out of it.
Haley Robinson:Yeah, Okay. So last night we had a regular city council meeting and we normally kind of do a little bit of a city council recap. Last night at the city council work session, there was an update regarding legislation. Anything you'd like to speak to directly at this?
Mayor Graham:point I think we're still waiting for. I think chief of staff can give a little better update on that.
Brian McCain:The failure to appear, which is the one that was the first one that kind of kicked off this whole thing really, with us getting involved. I believe it's on second reading. Today they debated the Senate Bill 3, which was the gun bill, as everybody calls it that passed last night on the House side. So the failure to appear, senate Bill 62, it should be up today. From there there's another failure to appear bill that we've talked about and it sounds like that one might die in committee. And then we've heard rumblings that there might be a third failure to appear bill introduced that will impact our municipal court. So we're monitoring that.
Brian McCain:The extreme indifference bill. That is up on Monday, the 31st, so this coming Monday. We've been pretty vocal on that, both as a council, as the mayor, as a city, along with other communities. So we'll update you on that one next week. And right now they're kind of in the crunch time because the long bill comes out, which is the budget. So they're basically trying to push everything through as fast as they can. So some of them may not even come up. They may shift their priorities, concentrate on other things, and then we'll also see some late bills introduced, if they get permission to put them in and that's where we're at.
Haley Robinson:Okay, great Thanks for the update. Additionally, there was discussion about Pueblo's economic engine. Much of the discussion last night was centered around permitting the process with the city of Pueblo other government agencies. Did you want to follow up on?
Mayor Graham:Yeah, so this has been kind of an ongoing issue in the city with CDOT. Specifically, when we're talking about the Boulevard Corridor, because it is a state highway, it is controlled by CDOT. You get your access permit from CDOT, you do not get it from the City of Pueblo. And so for the last several months I've been working with a couple of different developers who are on the south side of the Pueblo Boulevard, where you have the Culver's, the What A Burger, Starbucks, Quick Trip coming maverick, so all of those different, uh, businesses that are located on the boulevard. As you know, there's no stoplights in between um Prairie and I-25 and or there's one on Northern.
Haley Robinson:No, oh, no down at the other end.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, right before you get on. Yeah, there is.
Mayor Graham:But CDOT is requiring these businesses, essentially whatever business gets their co first, you put in additional stoplights, um degress and increasing lane medians, sidewalks, all of the infrastructure that you need up and down the boulevard for traffic safety. Yeah, this is really not fair to the developer. Whichever developer gets their permit first, right, because all of the burden will be placed on that developer, on that one entity, on that one entity. So the city staff has been working with the developers, with CDOT, to try to come up with a plan on the total cost for the infrastructure for that whole part of the boulevard and the city would come up with a developmental agreement for that infrastructure to be placed so that these businesses can open. We can attract more businesses, since it's such a hot area of development.
Mayor Graham:Yep, a city incentive? Okay, because we want to see sales tax.
Mayor Graham:We want to see businesses.
Mayor Graham:We want to see people come to Pueblo. We want to see people get off I-25 right there and and make a stop to get gas or to one of the fast food restaurants or come more inner city if you will. And so you know, I had brought this topic up to the city council at the retreat, knowing that there was an issue. These projects are several millions of dollars, like upwards of 15 million dollars for the entire Boulevard to get the infrastructure that it needs for all of the businesses to operate. I had pitched the idea to the city council to use half-cent sales tax, regardless if it's bringing primary jobs into the community or not, it's bringing jobs. It's bringing sales tax dollars. It's bringing more businesses, which we know we are in a dire need of. So this kind of came up with the idea of pitching to the city council. At their retreat, some of the city councils were on board.
Mayor Graham:Some of them told me we shouldn't be incentivizing fast food restaurants. So it was really interesting last night when the developer showed up and now all hands are on deck and you know, now they want to see the community. What can we do as the community? So I think that that's that's gonna help, I think that it's really gonna be able to to push getting this project started. We talked about it being an urban renewal district, which it is, but the urban renewal district will run out of time before any of these entities are built, so they're not going to generate that additional TIF revenue. So we've talked about expanding the district. We've talked about bonding the infrastructure, taking a loan from House and Sales Tax to get the infrastructure in the ground. So this is something that my department and myself have been working on for probably six months. Oh, okay.
Haley Robinson:So it wasn't a new topic. It was not a new topic.
Mayor Graham:Some people thought it was, but it was not a new topic. These businesses have been held up and it's unfortunate, but they're not being held up by the city. They're being held up by CDOT and their access permitting, because their access permit is onto the boulevard, so they have the right to request certain infrastructure to go in, and it's unfortunate because it bottlenecks the development that's happening on that side of town.
Haley Robinson:So do you think that's why we haven't seen the development in years?
Mayor Graham:yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're talking $15 million for just that stretch of the boulevard, that's an additional $15 million so it's on the cost of the developers and if there's not some way, some agreement or, you know, some fee that they each pay for this infrastructure to be going in, whoever pulls the permit first is the one who's going to have to pay for it, and that's not fair. It's unfortunate.
Mayor Graham:So, we're going to keep working. Hopefully we're going to figure out a way to get the infrastructure paid for so we can bring McDonald's, Chipotle, Chick-fil-a, Starbucks, slush, wob tires, quick Trip, circle K. There's quite a few businesses that are going to be held up because of these access permits your name's close to eight.
Haley Robinson:Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, thanks for clarifying and for the update. Yeah, another thing that happened. Last night at City Council during the regular session, we had a recognition for the Best in Colorado Award with our Aviation Director, Greg Pedroza of Pueblo Memorial Airport, Mike Skinner with Dibble Engineering and Mike Dietz of Pyramid Construction. This was from Tom Peterson. He's the Executive Director of the Colorado Asphalt Paving Association and you were actually at the awards ceremony on February 19th when this was originally presented, so can you talk to us a little bit about what that awards ceremony was like or what this means for ?
Mayor Graham:Yeah, it was awesome. You know we're not always awarded awards on asphalt right. It was really cool to be a part of and this region too, in southern colorado roads within the city, the airport um, right outside of the city. I think that they received four different awards for asphalt paving. Our own airport received a big award for asphalt paving, so you know there's always lots of chatter in the community about paving roads road rehabilitation, what that looks like, and so it was nice to be honored for something that somebody sees that we're doing right especially at the airport right.
Mayor Graham:We're trying to talk about economic development at the airport, bringing in a new airline at the airport, and so we want to make sure that our runways are tip-top shape and so that we can attract new businesses and better airlines to come into the community. And we got an update this week from the federal government.
Haley Robinson:Yeah, we heard about new essential air service. So our new airline provider, Denver Air Connection. That was announced last Tuesday and actually yesterday they announced ticket sales, that's, 12 weekly flights from Denver to Pueblo and connections to other airlines so that folks can travel elsewhere. And that was I mean. We've been waiting for that for a long time, yeah.
Mayor Graham:I think Chief of Staff can talk more about how long we've been waiting.
Haley Robinson:Yeah, give us a little bit of a I don't know like history update or tutorial for those that don't really understand a central air service or how this process works, maybe.
Brian McCain:Yeah. So these smaller airports, so kind of the short story back history of it. The federal government used to regulate airlines up until 1978. So to have a certificate for your airline you had to fly twice a day, seven days a week. And then in 1978 they deregulated that.
Brian McCain:So the fear was these smaller airports like Pueblo, your Lamars, your Alamosas Grand Junctions, that that would just kill it because the airlines would pull out and just fly from Denver. You know they wanted the big contract. So the federal government put in a central air service and what it is is an airline will bid to the federal government and the Department of Transportation to receive this contract in which they will fly out of these smaller airports twice a day, sometimes more, and the government will subsidize those flights. So the federal government wants to pay these airlines to fly, regardless. If there's one person on the plane or it's full, the federal government will subsidize those seats for it.
Brian McCain:So through the process, different airlines I think there were five or six total put in this bid for the essential air service contract for Pueblo. So Pueblo actually has no say in it. Initially we supported, we held community outreach events, stakeholder meetings of what people wanted, what the city, wanted citizens, et cetera, and we went with Breeze. You know Breeze, we thought would be something different. They wanted a flight to Las Vegas and Phoenix but at the end of the day, the federal government and department of transportation looks at all criteria and all aspects of it and they felt that um Denver Air Connection was the best fit for pueblo and I. I don't know when they start flying. I haven't seen that yet first May first.
Brian McCain:So they will be flying 12 times a week out of the Pueblo airport to Denver round-trip flights.
Haley Robinson:And I saw yesterday flights are $59, round-trip $59. So $59 to fly.
Brian McCain:Pueblo to Denver yeah.
Haley Robinson:That's way less than the gas it's going to take me or you know potentially the parking I'm going to have to pay.
Mayor Graham:No, it's going to be cheaper if you get your gas in Pueblo because we have so many gas stations that it's driving the price of gas down. It's true. It is true.
Haley Robinson:But there's free parking at the Pueblo Airport. I have to pay if I go to Denver True true, you know a lot cheaper. Pros and cons. Yeah, exactly, so that's exciting news. We're really excited. Next month, we'll be welcoming Denver Air Connection here in Pueblo and have like a big kickoff so that folks can get more information about that. So very excited. Okay, Mayor, let's jump into a hot topic. Oh yeah, that everybody really wants you to talk about, but we haven't talked about yet on this podcast.
Mayor Graham:why haven't we talked about it? because it doesn't exist.
Haley Robinson:The idea of it just exists. For those of you listening wondering, what are we talking about? Grocery tax, Graham's grocery tax, yeah. So before we dive into the actual grocery tax details, let's first talk about city's sales tax rate, because that's kind of where this all started. Sure, can you give us a little bit of a breakdown of what it looks like with our general fund and how the city collects sales tax or revenue generation
Mayor Graham:of the city? revenue generation comes from our city sales tax. Our city sales tax is 3.7% in total, so 3% goes to the general fund. That's how we pay for all the services. All the operating City infrastructure is 3%. So three pennies on every dollar that you spend in the community comes back to the city. Okay, point two is our public safety sales tax um, that was 2b it was 2b.
Mayor Graham:It was a ballot issue that I ran in 2022. That pays for 24 officers. It also pays for all their body worn cameras and new technology. That generates four to five million dollars a year, but that money is earmarked specifically for public safety, can't use it for anything else. And then Point 5, which is our half-cent sales tax, goes to PEDCO. Okay, so the city of Pueblo only collects 3%. That tax rate has been the same since 1972. Okay, yeah, so a long time, right, it's 2025.
Haley Robinson:It's 2025. So 50 years.
Mayor Graham:Got it Um, since we have increased sales tax um before. That sales tax in 1956 was 1% and then it raised to 3% in 1972. And we have not raised um sales tax that goes to the general fund. We have had the 2B and we have had PEDCO, or half cent sales tax dollars that are earmarked and allocated to certain funds, certain projects within.
Mayor Graham:The city can only be spent, so we can't use any of that money for general fund purposes. So 3% it's a very low sales tax when you look at all other cities in Colorado. Also, when you're looking at other cities in Colorado, they have several different types of taxing. So they might have a food consumption tax right, which is the grocery tax. They might have a public improvement tax for capital improvement projects or roads. They might have special district taxes. If you go and you're in Denver and you're in downtown Denver and you're in the milk market area around Union Station.
Mayor Graham:Several blocks in that district have a special tax that just helps go to pay for improvements within that district. So within that specific area. So when you look at, you know we've been looking at what other communities are doing. How are they generating more revenue? What do you have that's not so volatile? That's just not one, one dollar amount coming in to the city. That fluctuates up and down depending on how people are spending in the community.
Mayor Graham:So when I took the budget to city council in november, we had a lot of conversations about revenues, expenditures, and I believe that the city of pueblo has a revenue problem. When you don't raise your sales tax for 50 years, um, it's crazy that the city has been able to operate the way that it's been operating. In 2020, we know COVID happened. We know there was tons of federal stimulus dollars that came. People were spending, spending, spending. Our reserves had never been so high. Our savings, our budget has never grown this big and now it's's, you know, 130 million dollars steadily because of inflation, because of the money that came in through federal stimulus. So we really have to take a look at what we're going to do revenue wise in order to create a larger tax base so that we can do more capital projects, so that we can pay our employees better, so that we can do more capital projects, so that we can pay our employees better, so that we can have better amenities for our community. And I do not believe that three cents on every dollar is going to get us to where we need. It's going to be hard to attract businesses. It's going to be hard to attract companies. It's going to be hard to attract families here. It's going to be hard to keep businesses and existing families here that we already have when you don't have the amenities that you see up and down the front range and other communities. It's really hard to beautify your community if you don't have the dollars to spend.
Mayor Graham:So city council asked us to come forward with some solutions. What could you do? How could we generate more dollars? The only way that the city makes money is on taxes and fees. That's that's how we pay our people, that's how we provide services and, since we are 100 percent service driven, that's what we do. Sure you know police, fire, public works, streets, parks. It's a service that you're, that you're right, provided right. Yeah, it's a quality of life. Um, going to the parks, going to the pools, the going to the pools, the kiddie rides, having a nice street to drive on, having your streets plowed during the summer all of that is paid for by taxes and fees that come into the city, that's how we make our money.
Mayor Graham:And when you don't increase that, it's really hard to keep up with inflation, the cost of goods, the cost of everything that's been on the rise. And so city council says, hey, Mayor Graham, can you bring some solutions? Can you bring what other kind of? What other cities are doing right? So our sales tax department put together a whole slide deck. We came to city council and presented I think it was early in January just some different options and what those potentials could be right. So if we raise sales tax overall, we would be taxing every good that you buy. You wouldn't be taxing food because food is exempt, but we would be clothing, shoes, cars, retail.
Mayor Graham:Anything that you buy that has sales tax.
Mayor Graham:That would increase right High sales tax, that would increase right. So instead of increasing tax overall over everything, we looked at something that the city of Pueblo is not currently taxing, which is food, and people are very upset about taxing food. They think it's inhumane. They think that I shouldn't do that.
Haley Robinson:Well, and we admit, like groceries are expensive, we do, yeah, costs are on the rise, yeah.
Mayor Graham:But it's an additional revenue source that we're not currently taxing. That won't be so volatile, won't be so up and down, it'll be streamlined because it's not being taxed right now.
Haley Robinson:Is this something that other communities do?
Mayor Graham:Yeah, let me tell you about what communities do it Crested Butte, Delta, Durango, Evans, Federal Heights, Fort Collins, Frisco, Glenwood Springs, Golden, Grand Junction, Greeley, Gunnison, Gypsum, Lafayette, Lakewood, Lamar, Longmont, Louisville, Montrose, Crested Butte North, Glen Parker, Ridgeway, Rifle, Silverthorne, Snowmass, Steamboat Springs, Sterling, Telluride, Thornton, Vail, Westminster, Wheat Ridge, Windsor, winter Park and Woodland Park. So there's 66. They all tax their food.
Haley Robinson:Yep, they all tax food.
Mayor Graham:Their tax rate on food on average is about 3.5%.
Haley Robinson:Okay.
Mayor Graham:So it's a significant amount of communities that tax food. They have another revenue source to bring into their coffers. Sure, and for example, if the city was to tax food at 3.5%, we would receive an additional $13 to $15 million a year at 3.5%.
Haley Robinson:That's pretty significant.
Mayor Graham:Yep. So what that looks like on somebody's grocery bill is, if your bill is $200, you're going to pay anywhere from $5 to $7 in tax that you don't currently pay, which I understand. It's $5 to $7 more. It could be that extra item for somebody you know that you'd like to purchase. I totally understand that, and so you know, when we've been looking at kind of what other communities do one of the communities that I really like and and what their ballot language says and what they've been able to do is greatly so. You know, their sales tax, their tax on food, is earmarked for specifics, so it's for streets, parks, recreational facilities and public buildings and roads, so it's all for infrastructure. They use it to fund their capital improvement. Their tax has passed every five years since 1990.
Haley Robinson:That's 35 years.
Mayor Graham:Yes, but it's all about accountability too. It's they're able to show their community that if you grant us this tax, we're going to do X, Y and Z over the next five years, and they lay out projects that they're going to.
Haley Robinson:So it's specifically outlined each time it goes to the ballot.
Mayor Graham:Yep, I don't know if it's outlined specifically, but it talks about earmarked for those certain projects.
Haley Robinson:It has to be a parks project or roads.
Mayor Graham:It's not going necessarily to wages, it's really going to help the infrastructure within the community. So this was just one idea that was brought from the city council in Greeley. They also have a program If you are low income, if you can provide that you've lived in the city for 10 months and you can provide your financials to their finance department. City for 10 months and you can provide your financials to their finance department, you'll get a hundred dollar rebate, uh, for yourself and each of your family members every year out of the same fund, so that the the hardship of the taxes is lessened for um, those community members that have a hard time already so like a family of four, if you're at a certain threshold, that would be $400 back each person $100 for each person.
Haley Robinson:I'm a family of four. That's $400 back.
Mayor Graham:Okay, yeah, so there's also relief, yeah, and potential helpful ways, but this is just one idea that we have brought to city council. It's definitely turned into much more than it was.
Haley Robinson:It's pretty controversial. It is. Folks get really heated on social media. I think you've done close to eight to ten news interviews about it. There's been a lot of discussion about it.
Mayor Graham:And the discussion will continue about it. Um, there's been a lot of discussion about it, yeah, and the discussion will continue. The you know the idea is to increase revenues in the community so that we can have capital um, we can have amenities.
Haley Robinson:So I wanted to talk a little bit about, uh, capital improvement projects. Yeah, I know, I mean, that's also another really hot topic for puebloans, for our citizens. Um, we receive folks all the time asking when is my road going to be paved? When are you going to fix this sidewalk or this pothole? When can I see a new dog park or whatever amenity that they want to see? So can you kind of talk to us about what capital improvements look like and that?
Mayor Graham:fund. That's. That's all your infrastructure in the city, whether it's parks, roads, building maintenance, sure, um, anything the public touches, that's paid for by the public capital, mostly infrastructure. So, um, you know, in in 2023, um, the city allocated 22.1 million dollars at a general fund to capital improvement project. Okay, we had money at the time. That was, you know, the tail end of covid, so people were still spending. Um, it was affordable to the city to do that much in capital. 10 million of it went straight to roads. The other 12 went to other capital projects within the city and that was that was due to um our TABOR funds.
Haley Robinson:It was due to our TABOR funds being able to debruce so theruced.
Mayor Graham:They didn't have to return the funds to the community. They allowed the city to keep it and invest it into infrastructure. So $22 million in 2023. In 2024, $12.5 million. That was kind of the end of the money that we still had, and last year I was only able to allocate $3 million to capital because we just could not afford it For this calendar year, yep, for this calendar year For 2025, we will $3 million.
Haley Robinson:$3 million down from $22 just two years ago. Yeah.
Mayor Graham:Okay. So when we talk about increasing revenue, it's to increase revenue so that we can continue to provide infrastructure needs, capital improvement projects and amenities to the computer or computer to the community. And I mean you can just see right there just the decrease, um, in what we're allowed to invest into capital just in 2023. Um, that that left stuff still with a 8.7 million deficit in 2025's budget. So this tax was up 1.1% in January, but I mean we've got to be way up in order January of this year.
Mayor Graham:Yep, we've got to be way up in order to be able to provide capital for 2026's budget. We only have about $19 million left in our reserves. Okay, um, that's the low end of what we've had over the last five years, some some years, you know there was 40, 30, 20 million, so 19 million. So when we talk about the city having to take money essentially out of its savings account every year to make sure our bills are paid at the city, that $19 million isn't going to go very far.
Mayor Graham:So that's another year or two, depending on what wages are. So, as wages compound every year, health insurance costs raise. We see that at the city like, as well as when people see it in their households, and so that's something that we have to look at. Um, where are we going to make cuts? What are we going to do? And so it's been an ongoing conversation. I hope to, on the podcast, talk a little bit more about the budget. In the next, uh, few weeks, we're going to be kicking off our budget season here at the city when is that, uh, you, probably the end of this month.
Mayor Graham:Really, we've already kind of started having conversations,
Haley Robinson:Do you ever not talk about the budget?
Mayor Graham:No, it's every day I carry a budget book everywhere I go.
Mayor Graham:you know, just so I can make sure that I'm answering the questions correctly and making sure I'm doing a complete overview on how we're spending money in the city. So we have a lot of work to do, but I feel pretty confident that people want better amenities, they want better infrastructure, they want our city employees to be paid. The city of Pueblo was in the top five one of the top five largest employee providers in the community and so we've talked about employee layoffs. You know we don't want to do that. We want to make sure people are employed. We want to make sure people are employed well, we want to make sure that they're spending their tax dollars in our community, and it's you know, we see it come full circle. So they're hard conversations to have. It's unfortunate that I'm the one that has to have them, but I want to make sure that the city is set.
Mayor Graham:There's going to be enough money in our reserves for my term, but for whoever comes in after me, the city council for years to come, the city employees and just for the community for years to come I want to make sure that you're better off now than you were before and that you have money to spend and that you have money to make purchases and do projects and have amenities that our community deserves. It's really why we're talking about this now. We're not waiting until the last minute. So we started these conversations last year. But the idea behind the grocery tax, the increase in sales tax overall this is where it came from. It came from city council asking me to provide solutions to a problem. That's my job as the mayor. I'm happy you know to do it and I'm happy to work with them to look at what's the best way forward for the community. No tax issues can be passed without a vote of the people.
Haley Robinson:It has to go on the ballot.
Mayor Graham:Whatever we decide to do will be presented to city council. City council will have to approve the language, approve for it to be on the ballot and then the community will vote on. You know, do you want your tax dollars raised? I will tell you that in 2022, when I ran 2B the public safety sales tax for the additional officers and their technology that passed 76 percent of their community. The community wants to fund the police department, they want to fund law enforcement, they want to fund public safety. So you know, people understand it. It's there, it's a need for, it's the need, yeah, and we wouldn't be coming to the the community if it wasn't need.
Mayor Graham:It's not going to be in need next year. We have enough funds to get us through next year, but it will be in need in the future.
Haley Robinson:Okay, so one thing that I've heard a lot as far as the grocery tax, can you talk a little bit about? One of the questions we get is why don't we tax restaurants? You're a restaurant owner, right? You have three restaurants here in get is why don't we tax restaurants? yeah, so why don't we tax restaurants?
Mayor Graham:Well, you tax the restaurants, collect the sales tax for the prepared food.
Haley Robinson:So we already tax restaurants.
Mayor Graham:We already tax restaurants. Okay, if a tax measure passed where you know groceries would be taxed, restaurants would pay a substantial amount on you know, the food that they're purchasing from wholesalers, oh, from your food providers, sure yeah, or Sam's, or you know wherever you go to make ends meet For your wholesale, or whatever. Okay, so people pay sales tax already on prepared food. They just do not pay sales tax on raw food from grocery stores.
Mayor Graham:So when you go to McDonald's, when you go to Graham's Grill, when you go to Angelo's, you pay sales tax.
Haley Robinson:Got it, okay?
Mayor Graham:They collect it for the city, submit it to us on the 20th of every month. So you pay tax on food that's prepared at a restaurant.
Mayor Graham:It's not a service tax. There's a lot of folks who are confused.
Mayor Graham:It's a sales tax. It's not a service fee. You're not paying it to the restaurant for them to prepare your meal. You're paying it on the food that is prepared. Understood At 7.6%.
Haley Robinson:Okay, yeah, okay, thanks for clarifying that. Okay, we did have a couple. We had a question prepared or sent in from one of our listeners. The question was has the city ever thought about a tiny home community? Obviously, there would have to be approvals, but has anyone ever considered that, and what would that look like? That's a great question.
Mayor Graham:When I first got into office, you, I think, came with me to Denver.
Mayor Graham:And we went and looked at a pallet shelter home facility off of Peoria in Denver and what that would look like. We took a couple tours, met with a couple pallet shelter companies pallet shelters, the tiny homes. Right in the middle of all this there was a grant application that the city could apply for in order to receive funding for tiny homes, pallet shelters, and so the city applied. We received, we were a recipient of the grant in order to receive funding for tiny homes, pallet shelters, and so the city applied, we were a recipient of the grant. We were notified this year that we received the funds and so we've actually been working on trying to purchase some of these tiny homes or pallet shelters in order to be transitional housing for our shelter on 4th Street. In order to be transitional housing for our shelter on 4th Street.
Mayor Graham:We've already gone through the zoning process to get the land in between the 728 West 4th Street and 710 West 4th Street, that big piece of property where we knocked down the house and the parking lot.
Mayor Graham:Sure, We've already worked to get that rezoned. We've been working with a company in Pueblo who's been helping us look at different kinds of modular small housing and what could fit on the property and what would be the best use of these grant dollars, and so that is in the works. I'm hoping that we see that come full circle by the end of this year, and so, yeah, it's a great question and it's something that we've looked at. That is the only area within the city of this year, and so, yeah. Um, that is the only area within the city of pueblo that is currently zoned for a tiny house, one for for this type of yeah uh housing, and so we're gonna continue to work towards getting some of those tiny homes put in the area okay,
Haley Robinson:so, um, essentially
Mayor Graham:that would work as like transitional housing for folks that maybe were leaving the shelter or, um, uh, a stop gap before folks secure an apartment.
Haley Robinson:Sure.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, absolutely. It's four walls and a door of your own um,
Haley Robinson:and secured their own.
Mayor Graham:You could have a pet,
Haley Robinson:Um. Yeah, it's cool,
Mayor Graham:it's a great opportunity for us
Haley Robinson:okay, well, so that was a really good question.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, that was a good question,
Haley Robinson:great, okay, um well, with that, I think we're gonna wrap for today um,
Mayor Graham:Just want to remind people that I am hosting a town hall or yes town hall tomorrow at 5: 45 at barkman Library.
Haley Robinson:That's Wednesday.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, tomorrow, okay Right, yeah, it's Tuesday
Haley Robinson:Well depending on when they're going to watch it.
Mayor Graham:So that's why that's Wednesday at 545, the 26th
Mayor Graham:President Aleph and I will be there to answer questions about Black Hills, the ballot issue that's coming on May 6th to citizens in Pueblo, city of Pueblo, on May 6th to citizens in Pueblo, city of Pueblo, and so if anybody wants to get their questions answered, that would be a great time to show up and ask questions and we'd be happy to answer what we can at this point because we don't have the study back.
Haley Robinson:When's the study coming back?
Mayor Graham:First week in April. We're hoping we have it yeah.
Haley Robinson:And there'll be a work session presentation April 7th. Yes, okay, great. Yes, okay, great, okay, that's it. No thanks for that reminder, okay, so again, we invite everybody like subscribe Apple, youtube, spotify, buzzsprout, wherever you get your podcasts, local channel 17. And you can submit your questions or topics for next week at mayor@ pueblo. us, via email, and we'll see you next week.