The Mayor's Mixtape

The Mayor's Mixtape-Episode 13

• City of Pueblo • Episode 13

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Episode 13 of The Mayor's Mixtape covers the veto of HB25-1147, a look at a potential special session at the state legislature, first quarter sales tax numbers and upcoming events in the City of Pueblo. Don't miss Team Up to Clean Up, free dump day for city residents on Saturday, May 31 at CSU Pueblo and Colorado State Fairgrounds from 8am-3pm and green, yard waste at Pueblo RecycleWorks.

Email your topic suggestions or questions to mayor@pueblo.us. Like, subscribe and share the podcast!

Haley Sue Robinson:

Welcome to the 13th episode of the Mayor's Mixtape. I am Haley Sue Robinson, Director of Public Affairs for the City of Pueblo.

Mayor Heather Graham:

City of Pueblo. Mayor Heather Graham.

Haley Sue Robinson:

The man behind the mic.

Brain McCain:

Brian McCain, Chief of Staff.

Haley Sue Robinson:

There we go. You can find this podcast on YouTube, apple, Spotify, Buzzsprout. You can also watch it on local channel 17 and we had a lot of downloads last week. So just want to say thank you to all of our listeners for everybody liking, subscribing, sharing. It's great to see so much support and that so many people are listening. We even had somebody last week we were at an event came up and said hey, I listen to your podcasts every week, so that was pretty cool.

Mayor Heather Graham:

That was cool.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Don't forget, if you have questions, you want to suggest a topic, you can email us, mayor@pueblo. us. So with that we'll get into episode 13. Last night we did not have a council work session, so we don't have a breakdown of that stuff, but we did get some really exciting uh news on Friday uh, Governor Jared Polis um, this is something that we talked about all legislative session house bill 25 uh, 1147. I know, Chief of Staff McCain, our city attorney, our chief of police, yourself, you all went,

Mayor Heather Graham:

District attorney

Haley Sue Robinson:

district attorney, you guys all went to Denver and testified against this bill and Governor Polis vetoed the bill on Friday, which was exciting maybe surprising for quite a few people and then you put out a statement um on your Facebook yesterday about it, Mayor, so just thought maybe we should talk about that, since it took up so much of our time over the last, you know, five months

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, it's a big topic um city council read a letter in opposition.

Haley Sue Robinson:

All of City Council, all seven agreed.

Mayor Heather Graham:

I wrote several letters of opposition. I touched base with the governor several times over the last six weeks.

Haley Sue Robinson:

You wrote him a letter

Mayor Heather Graham:

And I texted him and asked him to veto the bill, several times, really talking about public safety and what it would do to our community, and he listened and so, although I don't always agree with Governor Polis, this is something that we can both agree on when it comes to public safety and the public community, on what had to be done.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Right and I think one thing that was you know a big deal also was that it wasn't just Pueblo, but there were municipalities across the Front Range, other home rule authorities that gave evidence of what this would do to our municipal court, what it would do to our communities, the impacts, um one thing in particular that the governor talked about in his veto letter was, um how it affects, uh, domestic violence in Denver, and I know you talked a lot about how it affect something like illegal dumping here in Pueblo,

Mayor Heather Graham:

Merchant theft

Haley Sue Robinson:

yep, um, and so very unique but very particular cases um in other cities across Colorado.

Haley Sue Robinson:

So it seems like he actually really listened to the folks that said this is going to really harm us.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, definitely. I think when we went and testified there was 60 other people there to testify, so one of the larger testimony sign-up sheets that day.

Haley Sue Robinson:

I feel like the night that you went, you didn't get back to Pueblo until like 10 o'clock at night or something.

Mayor Heather Graham:

And you had district attorneys, city attorneys, council people, business owners, chiefs of police, sheriff, citizens,

Haley Sue Robinson:

Regular everyday people

Mayor Heather Graham:

showing up to testify against this bill. So it was impactful. The community was impactful and we're thankful for that.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Great, okay, so that's a win for us.

Haley Sue Robinson:

So now the legislative session is over. I know there's also been talk about a potential special session. Chief of Staff McCain, you want to talk about that at all?

Brain McCain:

Yeah, so as Congress US Congress goes through spending cuts that you're seeing on the news the Republicans are talking in the administration about cutting certain federal funds that go to states. So they might convene a special session to deal with that once they figure out what the cuts are and that ties directly into, say, Medicaid and some federal funding that comes down to the state. So we'll probably see that. The other one was an AI bill and I'm not too familiar with it, but towards the end of the session they tried to put a delay on it for it to go into effect and move it back a year and they couldn't get it in. So I think the attorney general's office and the governor's office might call for a special session to deal with this AI legislation. I'll find out more about it but it's just kind of a rumor on that one right now but for sure the federal cuts if that goes through.

Haley Sue Robinson:

And then when? When would the special session be called?

Brain McCain:

As soon as Congress figures out what they're doing.

Brain McCain:

So it's kind of you know, it's a guess, Nobody really knows when it'll go through, if it'll go through, and from there they have to convene a special session. And one fear that you can read about online from a lot of the local political types is that they're afraid well, if they go in a special session they could sneak more bills in or veto bills. But that's not how it works. So when they call a special session it has to be directly to that legislation. They can't say, hey, we're gonna convene and talk about the budget and like, oh, here's another 1147 or here's another bill that does this.

Haley Sue Robinson:

We don't see something new introduced. No, no, okay, so it's just what we're dealing with currently, and then directly follow up from the spending.

Brain McCain:

Yeah, they have to specifically say what the special session is for. So with this, with the AI and the funding cuts, they couldn't do a special session for both. They would have to do a separate one for the funding and a separate one for AI. But again, they can't sneak something in with that if it's not related to it.

Haley Sue Robinson:

I mean, that's similar to what we have with City Council we publish the agenda and ordinances and resolutions. It's not like we can. You can make amendments, but yeah, everybody publicly has noticed what we're going to talk about and what will happen so same thing.

Brain McCain:

Can't sneak something in, you know Monday at 5: 45 and add something new to it. Same thing.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Okay, good, okay, thanks for clarifying. Um, Mayor Graham, you also posted yesterday on your Facebook page about sales tax, the update from March and that the March 2025 numbers are 2.2% over the 2024 numbers, so up $164,301. Is there anything in particular that we can attribute to that? Is there like a trend that we see, or maybe a reason?

Mayor Heather Graham:

With such a small number like that it's probably because of business owed back tax to the city. I don't know that for certain, but because you're not seeing a trend in every line item.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Right, it wasn't across the board at all.

Mayor Heather Graham:

No, it's probably because somebody, like we talked last month, paid their taxes quarterly. And so now we're seeing a reflection, but overall the budget is, the sales tax is still down.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah, it's down 2.7% overall from 2025 to 2024. So it's $544,235 that we're down from year to date, March to March. So do you have any particular sense? Is it too early in the year to tell, or is this like a good trend to maybe see where we are?

Mayor Heather Graham:

I think this is your first quarter reporting. I think it's a pretty good trend to see. In this quarter you're also going to see the reflection of people getting their tax returns back. We know that there's a lot of events over the summer and sometimes you see people spend a lot more money in quarter two and then definitely in quarter four. So I would say quarter one and quarter three are always going to be your slow, slowest sales tax generating times of the year, comparatively speaking to what's going on in the City of Pueblo at that time.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Okay.

Mayor Heather Graham:

So I think the halfway mark will tell us a little bit more about what we can forecast for the remainder of the year. I think interest rates went up yesterday. I think they increased interest rates, so that's not a good sign for our community. We need interest rates to drop and inflation to drop for people to be able to spend more money.

Mayor Heather Graham:

So I think, as we see this upward trend now at the federal side, it's going to be hard for the community to bridge that gap. When we talk about last year to this year, this year's budget was based off of a flat sales tax. So when you see it down 2.7%, we have to make that up at some point or you're going to have an unbalanced year end to what was projected.

Mayor Heather Graham:

We will have significant savings from the police department in salary savings because we're down so many officers right now. Hopefully that trend changes over the next two quarters. But there will be some salary savings in the budget when it comes to that, so that might balance out a little bit,

Haley Sue Robinson:

And that's something that we've seen over the last couple of years with salary savings for the police department, but I mean, that's not necessarily something you can guarantee, count on or something that you want to count on either.

Mayor Heather Graham:

I mean we can count on it come the middle of the year, right? Because, we know that it takes 48 weeks to be an officer.

Mayor Heather Graham:

So, right now we can kind of project how much salary savings that we could potentially have. So you think, really, every officer in the city, with French, I averaged out to $100,000. So when you're down 80 cops or 50 cops, $8 million, $5 million, that's kind of what you can intend to roll over into the next year. That's really how the city has been able to balance what they have is that, the numbers in the police department being so low, and we've rolled over that money every year for the last several years. We've been so understaffed, I think since 2019.

Mayor Heather Graham:

So, 2019 was the closest that we were to being fully staffed. I think we had 205 were allocated.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Of our 224?

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yep, yeah. 231.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Oh 231.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah. So that's the closest we've been. I think right now we're at about 143 officers that are out on the street, about 17 that are on leave or

Haley Sue Robinson:

Light duty or something like that.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, so down about 50 officers still.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Okay. And so you said at the halfway mark, as we go into budget season is really when you can evaluate what potential salary savings we have for the following year to help us with the budget numbers.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, and we're going to start those budget conversations pretty soon. We've asked City Council what they last year they had asked me to come and present prior to the budget to have conversations with some of the larger departments. So PD, Fire, Public Works, Parks Department, those are the four largest monetary departments in the city and so still waiting to narrow down those dates with City Council on what they want to see. I know we had the work session that was about a month ago, yep, and President Aliff talked about what he wanted to see. You know council talked about maybe a 10 to to 15% decrease in operating. So I'll be presenting pretty soon on employees and what that would look like if we had to cut part-time employees, how much money it would save and what services would have to be cut in the community.

Mayor Heather Graham:

So we're right around the corner to budget. The city is doing its audit right now, okay, so we'll have that report to be giving back to City Council pretty soon, when all that concludes.

Haley Sue Robinson:

So then that gives us a better idea as you go into the budget conversations with each of the directors, or each of the departments. Yep, okay, yep, and then we'll start to see presentations to council.

Mayor Heather Graham:

We'll start to see presentations to council and initiatives moving forward to change the revenue landscape in the community. Because again, we know right now that just last year we were in an $8.6 million deficit. So right away you can add 2. 7% right on top of that right, so you're well over 9 million um going into 2026's budget. That's without any of the union contracts, extensions passing City Council. We have,

Haley Sue Robinson:

cost of living

Mayor Heather Graham:

yep cost of living. We have two of those on final reading on the 24th and then awaiting one more of the union negotiations, so the forecast does not look good.

Mayor Heather Graham:

That's something that they've been made aware of, something that we talk about.

Haley Sue Robinson:

It's not new.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Frequently it's not new and so hopefully we can come together and formulate a plan for the next few years.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah, kind of make some evaluations and some uh, hopefully have some creative ideas or solutions.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, these have to be pretty big solutions. Um, even a few cuts here and a few cuts there are not going to solve the budget issue.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah, absolutely.

Mayor Heather Graham:

It needs an overhaul.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Okay. So we're kind of getting to the really busy time of year. It's beautiful outside, lots of events happening, so I thought maybe we could share with the listener a few of the things that are upcoming. I know Thursday you have a meeting with the Pueblo Downtown Association. You'll be sharing an update with them, working with the business community I know that's something that's really important to you. Then we have Food Truck Fridays, which is every Friday at Mineral Palace Park. That's from 11 am to 5 pm. Those seem to be just jam-packed and awesome.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Especially with UC Health being right across the street all their employees.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah well, and if you think about it, there's not a lot of restaurants right there for them to enjoy. So I think that's kind of just something they've come to depend on yeah exactly.

Haley Sue Robinson:

And then this weekend's, Memorial Day weekend, we have the Paddle the Park event with Pueblo Water. Um, maybe folks haven't heard about that, but that's with the new water park down below city park, they'll have a free paddle boat race at 1 pm. It's free food, and Pueblo Parks and Recreation, the Conservancy District, the Pueblo Water, Greater Pueblo Chamber, Visit Pueblo, everyone's involved. It feels like just like a big community event. But you know, last year we were excited about all the construction and now this year we actually get to enjoy the wave, so that'll be really exciting. That's this weekend from 11 to 2. Also this weekend, Parks and Rec opening the Rides at City Park. Yep, it's also the initial opening of the pools, just City Park though, um, because they follow the the District 60 calendar and students aren't out of school until June 5th um, but Saturday and Sunday the pool will be open 12 to 2: 30, and then again 3 to 5: 30, and then they officially open June 6th weekend. So excited for that Um, bike month is coming up in June.

Haley Sue Robinson:

We have bingo cards here in the Mayor's Office, also at City Park admin, um, and we have prizes. There's a competitive side, there's a family recreation side. I know sometimes you ride your bike, when we had, like the big bike race down Union Avenue, you brought your bike out.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Nuh-uh

Haley Sue Robinson:

No?

Mayor Heather Graham:

I walked.

Haley Sue Robinson:

You walked? Oh, okay, so you're not gonna. Okay, so maybe you'll run one of the stations for Bike to Work Day.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, I could do

Haley Sue Robinson:

Hand out breakfast burritos or a coffee or something. Okay, well, we'll get. We'll get you to do that. Okay, cool, um. And then the other thing that we look forward to every year. This is an initiative that you started when you're in City Council, Team Up to Clean Up. Um, that's happening Saturday, May 31st, from 8 am to 3 pm. Two main locations: CSU Pueblo and the Colorado State Fairgrounds. And then last year we started a third location with Recycle Works for green waste because the lines were crazy.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, and lots of people cleaning their yards. It takes a lot of time to get green waste out of the back of a truck.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah, like branches, leaves, all the stuff that you clean out of your backyard, your garden, beds, all that stuff. I think last year you and I were there in May and we watched a truck for like 40 minutes unload right and so then, worked with Public Works and said, hey, we got to do something different because these lines are too big. And we saw a huge difference in October.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, it was much quicker to get through.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Those lines were way shorter.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Get through multiple times, it was good.

Haley Sue Robinson:

It was, it's it was much more successful. So, yeah, so the two locations, CSU Pueblo, Colorado State Fairgrounds 8 to 3, bring a truckload. Please don't bring a large, oversized moving truck maybe, and it's for city residents, but it's completely free.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, and I know that I've seen some questions on who pays for this right. So in previous years when the city had ARPA funding to be spending, the city used ARPA dollars. Okay, this year we allocated a couple hundred thousand dollars, um, for all trash cleanup, uh, removal citywide, so not just for these projects. We've started a capital

Haley Sue Robinson:

Oh okay

Mayor Heather Graham:

project account now where we allocate funds for any of our cleanup projects. So, whether that be community service and municipal court cleaning, graffiti removal, the Team Up to Clean Up partnership, if they need dumpsters, that those are ARPA employees for that project and then any other kind of encampment cleanup, alley mattress removal yeah, so I've been sending people out to clean the alleyways in Bessemer, so anytime you see anybody from the City of Pueblo coming to clean up, that's this year's coming straight out of the general fund, so taxpayer dollars uh, going to throw away taxpayer waste.

Haley Sue Robinson:

okay, yeah, because I did see that question that you received on on Facebook, um, and I know for, it was over 300 000 for the

Mayor Heather Graham:

That was for a couple years.

Haley Sue Robinson:

for the American Rescue Plan Act that was for at least

Mayor Heather Graham:

Three years.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Okay.

Mayor Heather Graham:

It was '22, '23, and '24 cleanups, two cleanups every year, and then also our trash vouchers.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Oh yeah, the large item vouchers that you can buy at Public Works.

Mayor Heather Graham:

That we give out two on the cleanup days. So those are all paid.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah, so the allocation is from the general fund there was

Mayor Heather Graham:

For this year, because we knew that

Haley Sue Robinson:

that money was out. Yep, okay, great. Thanks for answering that question. Okay, I also know that we're looking for volunteers. You and I normally volunteer every year and either flag people for traffic or help people unload their trucks or cars or whatever that looks like. So if you're interested in volunteering,

Mayor Heather Graham:

It's a good cause

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah. And you can go to the city website. We have a volunteer form at pueblo. us and there's a little link that says Team Up to Clean Up and you can pick which site you want to volunteer at. But we've had quite a few people who have volunteered in the past and they say they have a great time and I like not seeing couches in my alleyway. So, that's why I do it

Mayor Heather Graham:

And it's, you've seen, over the years, even like the decrease and

Haley Sue Robinson:

Oh, totally.

Mayor Heather Graham:

and when we, since we first started doing that, because people are definitely utilizing, uh, being able to dump for free,

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah, I feel like those first two years we just saw

Mayor Heather Graham:

We had to turn people away at the end.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Exactly. It was like mass lines and pretty intense, and now people are keeping up with their trash, trash. Okay, great. Anything else to add for this week, Mayor?

Mayor Heather Graham:

Just wish everybody a happy Memorial Day weekend and stay safe.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah, everybody stay safe, absolutely. Okay well, that's all we have for this week's episode. Uh, don't forget, you can email us, mayor@ pueblo. us for questions, topic suggestions. Find us on Apple, Spotify, Buzzsprout, watch us on channel 17. I'm going to see you next week.