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 8
This week's episode captures a City Council recap, a break down of sales tax with the January and February reports from 2025, updates about HB11-47 and SB62 at the state legislature and a preview of this week's event with the City of Pueblo. Mayor Graham will host a townhall Tuesday, April 15 at 5:45 at Rawlings Library. Pueblo Memorial Airport hosts a ribbon cutting with new air provider Denver Air Connection on Wednesday, April 16 at 10:30am. The Public Utilities Commission hosts a comment session for Just Transitions on Thursday, April 17 from 4-6 at CSU Pueblo Hoag Hall.
Don't forget submit your questions and topics via email mayor@pueblo.us. Join us each week for a new episode.
Welcome to Episode 8 of Mayor's Mixtape. I am Haley Sue Robinson, Director of Public Affairs for the City of Pueblo.
Mayor Graham:City of Pueblo Mayor Heather Graham.
Brian McCain:Chief of Staff, brian McCain.
Haley Sue Robinson:The man behind the mic. As you know, you can find our podcast on Apple, spotify, buzzsprout, youtube, also on Channel 17. And we want you to like subscribe. You can also submit your questions or your topics. You can email us at mayor@ pueblo. us, and find us that way. Mayor, let's jump into a little bit of a recap from last night's city council meeting. Last night, city council voted 4-2 on the resolution encouraging voters to vote yes on the ballot issue 2A for the May 6th special election. Did you want to follow up?
Mayor Graham:with anything on that. Yeah, I mean. So they're just going to continue down the path of, if deemed feasible, the city will potentially look at taking the off-ramp in August. So I know that there's still a lot of outstanding questions on what does feasible mean? What are the options after? But like we've been saying that this is a long road 5, 10, 15 years out, until we would even see rate decreases so I think the city council is wanting to explore additional options in order to deal with Black Hills Energy.
Haley Sue Robinson:They're looking more long term besides just the franchise agreement in August?
Mayor Graham:Yeah, absolutely
Haley Sue Robinson:Great. Okay. Also, additionally this is something we've been talking about quite a bit City Council approved the funding last night of $464,847.70 for funding for the RFP for the Pueblo Shelter. So then, what does this look like to move forward? Because there was a question last night as to why this was potentially less funding than originally put in the RFP. I think you explained that a little bit last night.
Mayor Graham:The funding for the RFP will still be the $584,000. We can't earmark those funds in this year's budget, so we've only earmarked them for the next eight months. We already had the $200,000 that we were able to use from January through April, so that money will be the additional eight months now for the 12-month cycle.
Haley Sue Robinson:This funds just through the rest of the fiscal year, Yep exactly.
Mayor Graham:Okay, and so next step is we will today actually review the RFPs that were submitted. Oh, that quickly.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, yeah, we're moving very quickly, yeah.
Mayor Graham:I know government is slow, but we're fast up here in the mayor's office, so okay.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, great, okay. So that's good news. Hopefully we'll have a update about that soon. Yeah, that's exciting, great. So, mayor, one thing that you posted last week on your Facebook page was sales tax numbers from January and February. Obviously, we're facing a budget deficit, and so I think what you're trying to show is, month by month, what it looks like, so that folks can maybe anticipate as we move forward. January showed it was up 1%. February wasn't so good Down 11%. It was down 11%, yes. So you received a lot of questions, a lot of feedback on that post, and we were asked to kind of break down what sales tax is, and we were asked to kind of break down what sales tax is. Can you explain the difference between sales and use tax?
Mayor Graham:Yeah, so sales tax is the tax that you pay when a good is purchased, and use tax is more of a tax that's paid on equipment rentals if something is put into use.
Mayor Graham:Whether that be so, for example, what I like to use is when I bought one of my restaurants there was equipment that was existing in the restaurant and I had to come to the city of Pueblo and pay a 3% use tax on the equipment that I purchased from the previous owner. So you're paying the tax to use um the equipment. So does that make?
Mayor Graham:sense.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, so I mean that would probably be the same sort of thing in, like the construction industry, whatever they're, they're using to build a house. Yep, yep, okay, got it. Okay, um. Can you also explain what is a vendor fee?
Mayor Graham:So the vendor fee is a 3.3% fee that comes out of the gross net sales tax that is used. It goes to Pura to pay bonds. Specifically, what the vendor fee is being used for now is the operations for the convention center and for Memorial Hall and any kind of renovation that has taken place. So we take 3.3% over the gross tax and pay those bonds.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, interesting, all right. Another question we received was who compiles all of this data. So you know everything that was posted on your page. Where does that come from?
Mayor Graham:So that comes from our sales tax manager, sales tax division. They put all the information together every month, they send it to the director of finance, he reviews it and then it comes to me. So a little bit after the 20th when all the sales tax is due, they spend the next 10 days compiling all the data, making sure it's all accurate. Director of Finance signs off on it, then I get it and then it usually goes to city council. Okay, interesting, and it's taken by.
Mayor Graham:Some people pay checks, some people come in and pay cash or on a card, or you can get online and you can pay on our sales tax portal every month. Just depends on how you'd like to pay your return and going off of that. A reason why you see sales tax fluctuate as much as it does, from like 1% to 11%, is because sometimes we have businesses who, uh, don't pay on time, don't pay the 20th of every month, um, and then you'll see maybe a large sales tax increase, a bump or a spike, and so it's really hard to look at the numbers month to month. I like to look at them more over a quarter, um, so you kind of see a fuller picture. Uh, and in our sales tax report it is. It lists off like if it's retail, if it's a manufacturer, um if it's a utility.
Haley Sue Robinson:all the different categories yeah.
Mayor Graham:So it lists off the categories and whether that category is up or down. The hotels. Um, so maybe we have a hotel that hasn't paid tax in five months, so you're going to see a large increase in the lodger's tax and that happens all the time. That happens with car lots, hotels, restaurants, retailers. Some people just pay it in a lump sum instead of monthly, so you don't see a continuous little up and down. Sometimes you see these big 1% to 11%.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so that wasn't super surprising. The 1% to 11% that can happen.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, and then so we go and we look and see like what's really the big contributing factor. So I could tell you, from January to February automobile sales were way down. Okay, I can tell you, utilities were down.
Mayor Graham:So maybe one of our utilities didn't make the payment back to the city yet in the time that they ran the sales tax report, so that's down. So it's good to have a couple months at a time when you're looking at a sales tax report to really decide the way that the sales tax is moving. This year we did our budget based off of a flat rate. So we're not saying at the, we're saying at the end of the year sales tax is going to stay flat, that the ebbs and flows are going to even out and hopefully we can just maintain a plateau instead of large increases or large decreases.
Haley Sue Robinson:So you know, when you talk about some of these folks who maybe don't pay on time, what does that look like for us? Because obviously they get a fine. Okay, yeah, so it's not just like I think it's totally fine that you didn't pay sales tax on time, they get a fine.
Mayor Graham:And, um, if your business license is up or about to be up and you have sales taxes to do public, you're not getting your business license. Got it, okay?
Haley Sue Robinson:Um until you're until you pay, yeah, until you filed your tax returns. Okay, because that would seem alarming to me if we were just kind of letting that slide.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, no, we don't let anything slide.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, got it. Another question you received on your post was in regard to online shopping. How do we fix things where the taxes collected off of online sales go to local government and they're not skimmed by the state?
Mayor Graham:yeah, so we. We addressed that about four years ago. It's called our sets program and okay so now Amazon, Etsy uh Temu all of the big online shoppers. They now file sales tax returns in the city of pueblo. That was another reason why you saw an increase in the years of 2020, 2021, 2022.
Mayor Graham:We started to collect these outside entities. I know that the previous administration would continuously talk about the high number of new businesses licensed. I remember I think in 2022 or 2023, there was like 850 new licenses. I'm like, well, where are these businesses? They're not brick and mortar, they're online, but they're remitting sales tax back to the city of Pueblo now. So that's another reason why we've seen sales tax increase over the last few years Interesting.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, and so prior to that, we didn't collect any sales tax on Amazon.
Mayor Graham:No, we would hope that they would file, but there was no way to track them down to track down their spending. So we have a state program, now called SUTS, in which we can log into that portal and we know how much they owe and they make those payments to us Very cool. Yeah, okay, so those types of payments will continue as long as people continue to shop online, sure?
Haley Sue Robinson:that's um. Is that different than say like I order my groceries online, or that because like? One of those big box stores you don't pay tax on groceries no, okay, that's true but unless you get dog food okay, that's, that's where I was going, so like if I were to order like a online order yep, they remit back to the city.
Mayor Graham:Okay, as long as your zip code is in city limits.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yep, yeah, okay, very cool no tax on groceries um anything else that you feel like we should explain to folks about sales tax?
Mayor Graham:the percentage. So the you know the overall percentage. So okay, uh, the gross sales tax percentage that comes into the city of pueblo is 3.7. So you have 0.5 that goes to half cent sales tax. Okay, so that generates about 12 million dollars a year. You have 0.2 that goes into the public safety sales tax so that was a ballot issue yep, yeah, that was passed.
Mayor Graham:It's been passed twice now. Um, that pays for 24 officers and their body worn cameras, right. And then you have the three percent, the overall general tax that goes into our general fund, right, um, and that's, and those three large lump sums are what makes up the sales tax, and nothing else.
Haley Sue Robinson:And nothing else. Okay, okay, interesting. And I mean, obviously we have previously spoken about what it would look like if we were to have a grocery tax and what that increase would be or how that breakdown would happen, but there's nothing else that the city does to generate that's our only tax revenue sources that come into the city.
Mayor Graham:Okay, okay, interesting. Yeah, I was speaking at an event on Saturday and I got the question about well, what about the street utility fee that we pay on our bills every month for the roads? It used to generate about $2.5 million a year to pay for roads, but in 2021, the city council put a stop to that, so that $3 that was on your water bill every month has been nonexistent since 2021.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, in four years and so the only money that the city collects to do any kind of infrastructure operations wages is 3.7% 0.5% to PEDCO, 0.2% to PD and 0.3% to the general fund Right.
Haley Sue Robinson:So I know previously it's been brought back to council to consider to bring back the street utility fee. Is there any appetite there?
Mayor Graham:They turned it down. They didn't like that, I think because of also the low amount of money it generated. So that's, really where this conversation started about. Well, what would an increase of 1% sales tax look like? What would taxing food look like? That's really where all these proposals came from. So we've heard, you know, two different kind of asks from council, like what does a 1% look like?
Mayor Graham:That would generate overall Yep.
Mayor Graham:Overall. So you would pay 1% on all goods and services that you brought that are taxable and that would generate about $24 million into the city every year. Okay, the grocery tax taxing food would generate about $13, $14 million a year.
Haley Sue Robinson:And I know, speaking of revenue sources, last night our Director of Planning, Scott Hobson, came and he also talked about like Airbnbs or rentals, short-term rentals. That was another thing that was a potential revenue generator. Seems like there's been a few pieces of, or a few ideas that have been thrown out as to like how we could potentially generate some revenue.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, absolutely. I think they said that that would generate about $65,000 a year.
Haley Sue Robinson:So it's small, but it's something.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, it could make a difference over several years.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, over several years, okay. I also found it interesting just that Pueblo doesn't already have that lodging tax for those short-term rentals.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, I know that's something that the planning department has been putting together for a long time with all the stakeholders involved to try to make sure it's the right fit for everybody involved, right.
Haley Sue Robinson:Well, you think about it. We have. I think a lot of people think you know what are you coming to Pueblo for? For an Airbnb. But we have Colorado State Fair. We have a lot of folks that come visit the Reservoir, Traveling nurses. Yeah, exactly, there's a lot of opportunity for it. Or, you know, folks come back home. They have like a big family reunion type of thing. Not everybody can stay in your house. Those short-term rentals are really helpful. Yeah, so cool. Okay, that's very exciting. Anything else about sales tax you want to touch on? No, no, okay, thanks for breaking that down. I do want to point out that tomorrow we're going to welcome Denver Air Connection. We'll have the flight tour out at Pueblo Memorial Airport. We talked about it a little bit previously, but this will be the opportunity that folks can actually come tour the jet they can speak to, uh, denver air connection, find out more about our new air provider.
Haley Sue Robinson:It's going to be exciting,
Mayor Graham:yeah it's exciting to have a flight now.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, 12 weekly round-trip flights Pueblo to Denver, and that starts May 1st. I know a few people have already started purchasing some tickets. I talked to somebody yesterday. They were really excited that we have the connection to Denver, because they fly pretty frequently and are happy that they don't have to go to Springs or Denver to get out of town, which is good. So we'll be there tomorrow. Anything else that we need to cover? Mayor?
Mayor Graham:Town Hall tonight. Okay, black Hills Town Hall, got it. This one will be at Rawlings at 5:45. Okay, so just the same continued effort, just trying to educate people on the ballot language, the issues and kind of the plan forward. So if somebody hasn't heard us come out and talk, I think pretty much every night of the week I'm somewhere else speaking about um black hills and the off ramp and what that could potentially be. So if you don't have all the information yet, it's a great time to come and listen to myself and president Aliff um on the city's proposals. Um ballots should be coming out if people haven't already got them.
Mayor Graham:I haven't got mine yet, so so maybe tomorrow.
Haley Sue Robinson:The overseas ballots have been out, so we should get ours in the mail. I hope this week.
Mayor Graham:Yeah, so elections in about three weeks, so we'll see where we go from there.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, absolutely, speaking of town halls, there's also the Public Utilities Commission. It's not really a town hall, it's a public comment period for the just transitions on Thursday. Uh, that'll be at CSU Pueblo at whole call. So yeah, busy, busy week. Every every night of the week you're busy there. Yeah, okay, all right, great. Um, well, with that, do you have?
Haley Sue Robinson:something. Yeah, chief of Staff, Mc Cain has something.
Brian McCain:Two things, just an update on the failure to appear and fairness and transparency in municipal court. So Senate Bill 62 and House Bill 1147, the governor is talking about vetoing them. 1147 still has not passed out of the House with the Senate amendments. I'm watching it today, but I would encourage everybody to write the governor's office and ask him to veto both of those bills. Not only does it infringe on the home rule authority that we have as a municipality, but it would take away our ability to hold those accountable that are breaking our laws and what they call low-level crime or gateway crime. And then some good news all of our officers are home as of saturday.
Brian McCain:So if you want to say anything about that, I'm sure they would appreciate it yeah, we're.
Mayor Graham:We're happy to have all of them back. We had a great procession in downtown where all three officers were honored, so the last officer nearly spent a month that's been a long time the hospital. I think the shooting was March 18th, so almost right around that month. So we wish them all a speedy recovery, and their families, and hope they're on their way to feeling better.
Haley Sue Robinson:And there were a lot of people that showed up to welcome them home and just show their appreciation it was. It was really great to see so much of the community come together for that. Yeah, yeah, so we're really happy. Glad you mentioned that. Anything else I think that's it okay, don't forget, like, subscribe, tune in Apple, spotify, youtube, buzzsprout, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch us on Channel 17. And email your topics or your questions at mayor@ pueblo. us. We'll see you next time.
Mayor Graham:Have a good week.