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 9
Mayor Heather Graham gives a breakdown of the City Council Work Session from Monday, April 21. Mayor Graham breaks down the budget timeline, discusses what to expect moving forward with City Council and Work Session presentations before the budget is approved in November later this year. Chief of Staff Brian McCain gives a legislative update as the City of Pueblo awaits the status of HB11-47. Mayor Graham and Chief of Staff McCain are traveling to Grand Junction and to Castle Rock for an economic development conference and meeting with other municipalities for information about their incentives offered to developers and new business.
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Okay, welcome to episode nine of the Mayor's Mixtape. I'm Haley Sue Robinson, Director of Public Affairs City of Pueblo, Mayor Heather Graham.
Brian McCain:Brian McCain, Chief of Staff.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, awesome. And don't forget, you can find this podcast on Apple, spotify, youtube, buzzsprout and if you're not a podcast person, you can watch it on government channel 17 with comcast. But I did notice that we have two five-star reviews we do on our spotify, so I'm very excited about that, uh, and so I'd like to encourage folks to like, subscribe, rate and share it with your friends. And don't forget that you can suggest a topic or ask a question by emailing us, mayor, at pueblous. Okay so, mayor, let's get into the work session. From last night. There were a couple things discussed about the budget, a few suggestions and a couple of questions asked. I wanted to initially have us start with a breakdown for the listener about how the budget process works, like the timeline of the budget. So can you talk a little bit about that?
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, so this will be my second budget that I've presented to city council, so we're going to start that process here soon with the different departments. So what will happen is the directors will put together their budget that they're going to present to me. We'll go line by line and compare what's been spent last year, maybe the previous year on project-wise, and their budget requests. We'll look at capital projects. So each department submits capital projects that then I decide what capital projects to forward on through that year, what makes sense and a whole overview for the city for each respective department, and really it just depends how much funds we have to work with.
Mayor Heather Graham:So the capital uh projects, it's decreased significantly over the last three years so we went from 22 million to 12 million to just 3 million last year, um, just based off of our revenues. So we'll look at capital. We'll look at individual budgets. Uh, last year city council asked us to come and present a few of the departments from the larger departments to them while they were making their asks, and tell City Council essentially what their asks were going to be, what their capital outlook was going to be for 2025. And then, after we go through all the departments, we sit down in a smaller group so it's myself and finance and HR and go through the different asks and we kind of look to really see what the needs are of each department. They come back in we say yay or nay on what projects they want to do.
Mayor Heather Graham:Last year we had lots of staffing requests, lots of staffing requests. We didn't approve any new positions in the city other than the three or six new firemen for the new fire stations, because those are a necessity. We can't operate the station without them. So it's a long, drawn-out process. The same time we're doing the budget cycle, we're also doing the audit from 2024. So you're really comparing 2024's numbers with 2025's numbers and the outlook for the remainder of the year um. So I have to present to council the first meeting in october and then they have a month where we kind of go back and forth. I think last year I presented like seven times to city council in different areas of the budget.
Mayor Heather Graham:So you know, this year, president Aliff, you know, requested kind of an earlier start, earlier conversations on what city council wanted to see as far as the budget, if they want to make budget cuts, what that looks like.
Mayor Heather Graham:And so Councilor Gomez requested that we cut the budget 10% to 15%.
Mayor Heather Graham:That could be done potentially when it comes to operations of the city, we would cut down on projects or capital. But when we talk about city employees, that's a whole different story as it relates to the three unions that we have in the city, how the individuals are hired between full-time and part-time, what positions can be cut, what the quality of life, services that would no longer be a services that's provided to the community, because a lot of those positions are part-time employees and per our three CBAs, which are contracts with their unions, you have to cut all part-time staff and staff that's on probation before you could look at removing full-time positions within the city of Pueblo. So you know, a large number that sticks out to me is from the Parks Department. Their part-time staff is over 300 employees and so if we have to cut part-time employees, it would be our parks department would would take a large hit. Uh, the city would suffer with quality of life services like the swimming pools, the kitty rides streetscape uh, weeds grass mowing.
Mayor Heather Graham:golf courses, golf courses, yes, golf courses so things that are important the services, the service side, um, is really something that city council is going to have to look at, and I'm not even sure that they're aware of the impact or what department to use part-time employees. A lot of our part-time employees come from the police department when it comes to reporting, so we already have had several issues over the last year when it comes to making reports to the police department, so those individuals would essentially be non-existing. So, in order to make reports, evidence all of those things, they really need to be looked at and city council really needs to know what the effects of the quality of life are going to be when it comes to the community.
Mayor Heather Graham:If those are the decisions they want to make,
Haley Sue Robinson:okay so, because it was mentioned last night that there could be a potential cut. There was an ask for that. You mentioned that you were planning to come back to city council and give a presentation. When can we expect that that will be on?
Mayor Heather Graham:the agenda, probably in the next six weeks, so the information is fresh. So I've asked all the departments who currently have part-time employees to put together, uh, what it would look like if their part-time staffers were eliminated and what services would no longer be provided to the community. Okay, and you know, especially in parks department, um, you know, although their, their part-time wages are in the millions, um, they also generate about nine hundred thousand dollars uh back to the city's general fund with all the services they provide, uh, concessions, park rides, um, rental space and the pavilions and such and so city council is really going to have to look at those two factors and decide what the best move forward is. Okay that's.
Haley Sue Robinson:That's helpful. Um, the other thing that, uh, I wanted to mention is so last year in your budget letter to the city council, you noted that there was a designated reserve at 12 percent and that was something that was discussed last night too, in addition to maintaining the the tabor reserve. Can you kind of share what that looks like, moving forward with reserves, and maybe what your recommendation might be?
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, the city. So city council can set the reserves that they would like to see it fluctuated from 10 to 12% over the last several years, which could be a million to $2 million difference.
Mayor Heather Graham:So that is the money that has to stay designated in the reserves if something was to ever happen to the city. So after those reserves the city has about $19 million left in its larger reserve bucket and that's. You know, we've seen a huge decrease in that reserve over the last four years. Decrease in that reserve over the last four years we transfer about $10 million a year out of the reserves in order to balance the budget and continue with the capital improvement projects that were slated from debruising.
Haley Sue Robinson:Got it Okay. Thanks for outlining that. Also, one of the suggestions last night was about increasing revenue and what that might look like. I know we've discussed this previously with the suggestion of a potential grocery tax. We also discussed the revenue that short-term rentals might generate and then the work to bring new development to Pueblo Boulevard. But are there other revenue sources currently that are being discussed by city council or that have been brought to you?
Mayor Heather Graham:no city council's brought no new proposals on revenue generation other than the short-term rentals that counselor martinez brought, and we heard that it would only generate about 60 000 okay dollars. So over time that you know that would make an impact, but not a single year itself yeah, that's not going to make up our deficit.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, okay, great. Uh, let's move on to a legislation update. Uh, last week we were still awaiting house bill 1147. Um, is there an update for that, maybe from chief of staff mccain?
Brian McCain:Yeah, so 1147 has basically been held over since it passed and went back to the House for the Senate amendments. I'm actually looking up the calendar and agenda today and it's not on it Really.
Brian McCain:So again there was rumor of a conciliatory amendment on it. So I don't know what's going on, because this is kind of unusual when it comes to this sort of thing, really. So we're kind of in a holding pattern. The governor has expressed that he's feeling he should veto that. So again I think I said it last week they're kind of willing and dilling in the background to see what can be changed or adjusted for the governor to not veto it. But our other one, senate Bill 62, failure to appear was signed by the governor last Thursday and that was the other one we asked that he veto. But he did sign off on that. That's the update.
Haley Sue Robinson:Also last night we heard from our G il Romero. He mentioned that the state budget is headed to the governor's desk. He mentioned K-12 was fully funded and higher ed received notable funding to assist with affordable tuition. Is there anything else from a city perspective that we're concerned about or looking forward to regarding the the state budget?
Mayor Heather Graham:they cut our funding for the court, yeah I know
Brian McCain:that was one that that was the big one.
Brian McCain:Um, some of the funding that we use to pay for the defense council or whatever you call it, the people that need it it's funded by the state, and they did cut that out. Which kind of ties into 1147, because it makes that a requirement. Even though we did it already. That was something we were doing consistently. It did cut that revenue source out for the court, which means that if we continue to do that program, we're going to have to come up with the money.
Haley Sue Robinson:The funding would come from the city's budget. Yeah, okay.
Brian McCain:Yeah, it's kind of a with 1147, that's what they call an unfunded mandate. So they pass a law or a bill, sign into law and, even though it doesn't have a financial fiscal note on it, it indirectly causes a city, municipality or county to spend money on it. A lot of that goes into compliance too. So you'll see these bills passed that, say, adjust land use code, but it adds a level of compliance to it from the city's perspective, which means we have to spend more manpower, time or possibly hire somebody else, not to mention just the fees and subscriptions that we have to buy new software for.
Brian McCain:So it's something that the state, they, they do a fiscal note to find the impact, but they get a lot of criticism for the unfunded side of that so the more regulations you put on a community, the more the community is going to have to spend to comply to it, and they don't consider that with a lot of their legislation.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, there also was the mention about Senate Bill 77 that was vetoed by Governor Polis. I don't know if that was something that the city particularly took a stance on. This bill would have given municipalities more time to respond to CORA requests, with the exception of journalists, which would require us then to still respond in the appropriate designated time frame, but polis said he didn't like the the three different timelines. We didn't. Did we take a stance on this one?
Haley Sue Robinson:we did not okay but, um, I did find it interesting that he vetoed it because I think that potentially gives us the opportunity to remain hopeful for 1147 and that veto.
Brian McCain:Yeah, we are hopeful.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, great, so this kind of dovetails from last night's work session, but I wanted to talk about economic development. You've talked, mayor, about economic development being a priority for you, particularly discussing the incentives for Pueblo Boulevard, utilizing PEDCO incentives. Is there any progress update that you can share with us or what that potentially looks like on the horizon?
Mayor Heather Graham:I mean as far as the PEDCO. The city has been meeting with PEDCO which is our contractual agreement board that we use to bring economic development into the city. We've shared our concerns with them about the ballot language as it relates to primary job and really how difficult it has been over the last few years and how we haven't seen very many new businesses come into the community. We've actually seen more businesses leave than we've seen come, and so it's frustrating.
Mayor Heather Graham:It's frustrating for PEDCO, it's frustrating for the city, it's frustrating for the citizens who pay the money, and so we're looking at alternatives to be able to use that funding for infrastructure from development that's going to create economic catalysts, drive sales tax numbers up, and not necessarily just attached to a primary job to Castle Rock to meet with their Economic Development Council and see how they use their funds, the different programs that they have implemented to expand businesses, attract businesses and retain businesses. Tomorrow, chief of Staff McCain and I are headed to Grand Junction for their Economic Western conference development forum. Um, so that's that'll be exciting to to go make some connections um with grand junction. They're a very similar community to to pueblo, and so similar size.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, I want to see what they're doing, what works for them, um, and what isn't working for pueblo, because everyone's frustrated.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so then I guess, are your expectations to find what's working in other communities and potentially bring that back, or what are your expectations?
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, absolutely. See what changes they've made, see what they're doing, you know, see how they're attracting prospects to come to the community and see how public can mimic that. Um, I think that that's something that we need to focus on. We need to work together. We have two arms of the city the urban renewal authority and pedco, who's supposed to be helping with economic development. So I think that this is a chance, uh, maybe to bring some new perspectives in and some new ideas when it comes to economic development in the city. Great, okay.
Haley Sue Robinson:Can't wait to hear more and follow up after. So this week you're going to Grand Junction and then next week you're headed to Castle Rock. Yep, great, okay, cool, I also know you just mentioned it. You want to work more closely with PIRA. We worked with them on the Da Vinci Museum and the future of the hotel and the Riverwalk. Are there other Pura projects that are on the horizon or anything that we should know about? Potentially there?
Mayor Heather Graham:So they're also working on the Dillon URA. Oh sure, off Dillon Drive, right by the mall where you've seen all that dirt being moved around. Yeah, they've raised that all up, yeah, out of the flood plains. So we have some developers who are looking to bring in seven businesses okay to that location, another car wash being one. Okay, but some retail and restaurant efforts.
Mayor Heather Graham:I've heard Panera Bread maybe, so that'll be exciting get a bread bowl with some soup, get a bread bowl and some soup, okay, and so that district is currently at all of the entities the different entities that receive the property tax trying to get the sign off for that one. So that's an exciting development. Great, that's also coming forward. So I think Pura has 14 active TIF districts. You know, what I would like to see happen is, when PEDCO is bringing prospects in to the community, that they work with Pura to drive those prospects into one of the districts to generate property tax, to provide more public improvements and infrastructure, and I think that that's what needs to happen. I think that that's why those two entities exist in order to help the city create economic development. So the city's really been the facilitator with some of the newer projects that have come into the community the hotel potentially on the Riverwalk, the DaVinci project. So we're out there banging for business and we just need to make sure we're open for business.
Haley Sue Robinson:essentially right, we're open for business.
Mayor Heather Graham:We want you to come here. We have incentives to offer. We have two great tools PEDCO and PIRA incentivizing tools that they have. The city really doesn't have any incentivizing tools other than waiving TAP fees, which we do for housing developments. You're going to see one on the agenda on the 28th for housing development that's coming out on the east side.
Mayor Heather Graham:The city is looking to waive $250,000 in tap fees. This will be a five-complex apartment complex off of Oakshire one, two and three-bedroom apartments. It will be affordable housing. They're going to have a pool. It's a really great thing for the east side. That's fantastic Brand-new living space in an area where there isn't any, and so we're happy to partner and do what we can. As far as incentives, so those are the kinds of incentives that the city could provide Waiving tap fees, really Potentially looking at waiving sales tax or use tax for developers.
Mayor Heather Graham:You won't see that until we have to pass a ballot issue come this november, um, but really just trying to collaborate with the arms of the city, who should be, uh, working towards bringing more development into the community. So we're excited about that. This morning, I had a great meeting with SwissPod.
Haley Sue Robinson:Oh cool.
Mayor Heather Graham:So, we know our friends at SwissPod who have a Hyperloop test track out at the Pueblo Plex. They're looking at bringing their manufacturing plant to Pueblo. So we met with them and that was really exciting, great. They had been offered previously locations in colorado springs to bring manufacturing, but we heard from their ceo this morning that they love us, they love pueblo and pueblo is where their heart is so great.
Haley Sue Robinson:um, we've set up some meetings with PEDCO and pura, next steps moving forward, so that would be really great to to land a project um like swiss pod here in pueblo colorado good you know, and I I think, another thing you know you mentioned that there's not a lot that the city can do as far as economic development. But I would push back on that a little bit because we have three new fire stations going in, and so, while that might not seem like economic development the one on the west side I actually happen to be out there today, station 11. The reason we're putting it in there is because of the housing infrastructure and the need for it. And then you know same thing with Station 8. And now, mentioning the apartment complex on the east side, you know Station 6. That's what we can do is ensure safety, security, and you know, protection to folks yeah.
Haley Sue Robinson:And I know we've talked about it a few times, but one of the things that's incredible about our fire department is that, you know, our rating allows for lower insurance rates for folks, and I think that's something that when developers come or new homeowners come, they realize we're well protected, they feel safe in our community and that there's access right there, because imagine moving into one of those new complexes on the west side and not knowing where your nearest fire station is going to be.
Haley Sue Robinson:You're right, I take it back, okay, okay, all right. I know, I know I I don't like to disagree with you often, but I think there are, there are things that they don't look like economic development um, but it is and it and it's planning for the future.
Haley Sue Robinson:And you look at all of the, the investment that we did with the ARPA funds, the American Rescue Plan, act with wastewater and planning there. Even the infrastructure we put in prior to the boathouse and the channel extension. We did a lot of infrastructure improvements there and it's not glamorous. It's not exciting to say we put wastewater in, but it's a need to say yeah, we put wastewater in, yeah, um, but it's a need.
Haley Sue Robinson:It's a need and it's planning for a requirement, but the next group of folks to move into our community. So I would, I would argue we're doing our part, okay, okay okay, good, um, well, okay, so you, you covered the uh, the green junction in douglas county. So I think next week we'll plan to hear how Grand Junction was and then look forward to hearing about Castle Rock. Anything else?
Mayor Heather Graham:We have our last town hall, oh sure, on the 30th.
Haley Sue Robinson:That's next Wednesday.
Mayor Heather Graham:It's at 545, so it'll be our last town hall. I thought we were out speaking to the community about 2A. Okay, so it'll be our last town hall that we're out speaking to the community about 2a. Okay, I think I've spoke about 2a every day for the last three weeks.
Mayor Heather Graham:That different oh no, it's like between different groups and small groups, large groups, um, just people who want to hear the city side what the city is looking to do. Uh, you know, because because we can't campaign like Black Hills Energy, we have to do ours organically and grassroots style. We don't have $1.5 million to donate into a campaign.
Haley Sue Robinson:We don't.
Mayor Heather Graham:We don't. Okay, we do, but we can't use it for that, you know.
Haley Sue Robinson:Right.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, so yeah, okay, we're the underdog, we are.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, it's okay, though, okay, we're the underdog. We are. Yeah, it's okay, though that's all right, okay. So, uh, next week we'll plan to hear those updates, anything else that we need to know about I?
Mayor Heather Graham:think so. Nothing going on this weekend. That's spectacular here.
Haley Sue Robinson:No uh, but we do have. Uh, we have an open house next week with uh, the EPA grant. Um, I know we're going to be using some funds there, so that's next tuesday, april 29th. Uh, that's also at rawlings library.
Mayor Heather Graham:That's from 5 to 6 45, so that'll be exciting oh, and if anybody is looking for the feasibility study that the city conducted from gds. It's now posted. It's on the website on the website. On the website under Public Works Yep, under Public Works, getting lots of calls about where citizens can find it.
Haley Sue Robinson:You can also find it on the home page pueblous, and if you click on Black Hills 2A, there's an entire web page that has everything there's a, there's a video, there's some information and then the feasibility studies there as well. So that way you don't have to type in the search bar and it's not super awkward.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, it's easy. Okay, well, with that, then I guess we'll wrap up this episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, rate us. Share this with your friends Apple Spotify, youtube. Share this with your friends Apple Spotify, youtube, Buzzsprout, channel 17,. Mayor's Facebook page. We're everywhere. If you're not listening, we're everywhere you should be listening. Okay, we'll see you next week.