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 14
Episode 14 of The Mayor's Mixtape, Mayor Graham hosts her first guest with Chief of Pueblo Police Department and Deputy Mayor Chris Noeller. Chief Noeller shares about Part 1 crime trends in 2025 and why the Pueblo Police Department uses comp stat to make data driven decisions for staffing and protocol. Mayor Graham also breaks down the City Council recap from Tuesday, May 27.
Send your questions and topic suggestions to mayor@pueblo.us. Like, subscribe and share with your friends.
Great, Okay, welcome to the 14th episode of the Mayor's Mixtape. We are on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Buzzsprout, and we are also available on local channel 17. And today I am Haley Sue Robinson, Director of Public Affairs, and I'm behind the mic. But we have our first guest today, along with
Mayor Heather Graham:City of Pueblo Mayor Heather Graham.
Chief of Police Noeller:Chris Noller, Chief of Police and Deputy Mayor for the City of Pueblo.
Haley Sue Robinson:Thanks for joining us, Chief. You're our first guest on the Mayor's Mixtape.
Chief of Police Noeller:I'm happy to be here, thank you.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, we're excited, don't forget. If you have questions or you want to suggest a topic for Mayor Graham to cover, you can email us, mayor, at pueblous, and we're pretty excited that this is our first episode with a special guest. So thank you so much, chief, for joining us. But part of the reason we wanted to ask you to be on the podcast today was there's a lot of exciting things going on with the pueblo police department and you shared some really important information with Mayor Graham last week regarding Part 1, crime, and the progress that the department has made despite our staffing shortages. First, before we dive in, can you explain what is Part 1 crime?
Chief of Police Noeller:Absolutely. Part 1 crime is a measure that the Federal Bureau of Investigations uses with departments across the country. It measures particular types of crime like aggravated assault, arson, auto theft, burglary, homicide, robbery, sexual assault, theft and larceny, and what it is is that they track all the different departments that report to them on those particular categories. There's a subset of crimes called Part 2 crimes, which we won't go into today, which cover other types of crimes that are also measured by the FBI, but the general data that's used by the public to look at crime in their community is the Part 1 crime measure.
Mayor Heather Graham:And how do we track it? Can you talk about CompStat?
Chief of Police Noeller:Yeah, absolutely so. In September of 2022, we started using CompStat, which is basically a data-driven approach to addressing crime in the community. So we pull together all the data on how many homicides, how many aggravated assaults, all these kind of measures, and we look week to week on where we're at. And then we also look year to date year to date. So it gives us an idea of how we're performing compared to last year. And we just started a process where we're starting to look at where we are currently compared to where we were in 2019. Also with CompStat and I'll explain why that's important in a minute but also with CompStat we look at where crimes are happening, the hours a day where they're happening, so that we can try to deploy resources when they're available to address crime problems in those areas. And the use of this data by our command staff, by our sergeants on the street and by our officers, I think has had a huge impact in our ability to address crime in our community.
Chief of Police Noeller:So the question is why do we care? What happened in 2019? Well, 2019 was the last year before COVID, before George Floyd, before a lot of the different legislation that's come out, that has decriminalized some stuff you know, the misdemeanor reform bill and some other bills that have's a. It's the last measure we really have where, um, there wasn't the impact in manpower, there wasn't as big of an impact in recruiting across the country, um retention and all those measures. So when we look at 2019, it's really the last good year we had as a department prior to, uh, the last four years years.
Mayor Heather Graham:And we had like over 200 cops.
Chief of Police Noeller:Yes, we had in 2019, I believe in July we had 225.
Mayor Heather Graham:And how many do we have today?
Chief of Police Noeller:We have 182 bodies. We have 143, that are working.
Chief of Police Noeller:Wow, yeah. So what does that mean? We have a large number I can't remember exactly, I think it's 17 in training. Uh, we have 20 that are injured, and then we have 50, 49 vacancies, uh, as of yesterday. Um, so you know, we are hiring people, but we're losing people at the same time. You know, the the people that came on with me are retiring out of the force. They've they've completed their 25-plus years of service, many of them considerably more than 25 years of service, but those individuals are retiring out. And then we have some people that are leaving the force prior to retirement for a variety of reasons.
Chief of Police Noeller:Some of them are personal, some of them are you. You know the workload is crushing, you know. So you look at other departments that are relatively our size. Uh, the one example I use a lot is the greeley example, because there's their community is only a thousand people less than us. Their department has a hundred and I think it's 180 officers and they handled 76,000 calls for service in 2024. We have 110,000 people. We're supposed to have 230 officers. We have, like I said, 143 working cops and we handled 151,000 calls for service last year. So we've done a lot for our officers over the last four years. As a community, as a department, you've done a lot for the officers. But one thing we can't change is the workload. And when you come to work and you're handling three times the number of calls as your nearest competitor with less than you know about two-thirds of the officers that they have, that workload is unbelievable. So we end up losing a lot of people through attrition, because they're just burned out. They're just getting burned out.
Mayor Heather Graham:So that's really essentially almost down 100 officers when you're counting bodies that are working yeah, just this.
Chief of Police Noeller:90, 100 officers. When you're counting bodies that are working, yeah, just this 90, 90 officers.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so now that you've kind of set the stage for us, let's get into some of the good news and the progress that I would say that you shared with the mayor last week. For the listener those of you who are not watching on YouTube we're going to show on the screen here on YouTube the Part 1 crime chart. But if you're a listener, you can go to the mayor's Facebook page or you can go visit our YouTube page and see the chart that we're talking about. Kind of walk us through what this part one crime statistics are, or what the numbers are so far in 2025 in comparison to the previous years.
Chief of Police Noeller:Okay, yeah, so I'll go down the list here and just talk about each particular crime, but when we're looking at this year 2025 year to date compared to 2024 year to date we're down 15% in aggravated assault, which is a good number.
Chief of Police Noeller:We're up 17% in arson. One of the things to take note there is we're talking about a difference of 18 arsons in 2024 and 21 arsons in 2025. So when the numbers are that small, a slight increase is going to be a more dramatic percentage increase. Auto theft is down 25% and these numbers are that small, a slight increase is going to be a more dramatic percentage increase. Auto theft is down 25% and these numbers are as of the 21st of May. Burglary is down 11%. Our homicides are down 64%. Robbery is down 41%. Sex assault is down 21%. Theft and larceny is down 14%. Overall, part one crime 2025 year to date, compared to 2024 year to date is down 17%.
Chief of Police Noeller:Where it becomes even more interesting is when you compare where we are year to date, 2025 to where we were year to date 2019. And we are up 31% in aggravated assault 2019 compared to 2025. We are down 30% in arson. Again, those numbers are still small, so that's not as dramatic as it sounds. We are up 24% in auto theft. We are down 11%. In burglary, our homicides, we're at 0% increase or decrease. We had four homicides this year. We have four homicides and in 2019, we also had four homicides at the same point in time. We're down 19% in robbery, we're down 32%. In sex assault, we're down 21% in theft and larceny. In sex assault, we're down 21% in theft and larceny. And what was surprising to me is when you compare 2019 to 2025, we are down 10% overall in part one crime.
Haley Sue Robinson:So is this, is this really kind of the first time that we've actually seen that trend from 2019? You talk, you talk a lot about pre COVID numbers and you know year after year maybe being up or down, but you kind of use that 2019 as as that barometer for for crime. Is this the first time that we've seen these type of numbers this far into the year?
Chief of Police Noeller:It's the first time, honestly, that I've compared these numbers.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay.
Chief of Police Noeller:We started doing that about two weeks ago, because what we often get hit with when I say we're down is everybody says, well, we're not down. You're either fabricating the numbers, which we're not, or people aren't calling you. Well, what's interesting is in, I think, 2023, we had and I can't remember the exact number somewhere in the range of 146,000 to 147,000 calls for service. In 2024, like I just said, we had over 151,000 calls for service. So the take that people just aren't calling us anymore doesn't really ring true when you look at those numbers. Our calls haven't decreased. Our calls for service haven't decreased.
Chief of Police Noeller:Now, certainly, I absolutely believe, and have always believed, that some people just don't call us when crime happens. I remember, you know, 20 years ago, living at the Konakai, my truck got broke into. I didn't call the police, and I'm not the only one who does that, just because I'm a police officer. So, yes, it is true, some people are not calling us, but that'm not the only one who does that, just because I'm a police officer. So, yes, it is true, some people are not calling us, but that's not the driver of why our crime is going down. I think what the driver is is our cops are out there busting their butts every day, trying to address the issues as best that we can, and it's had a huge impact. There's been some changes in legislation as far as like auto theft making auto theft a felony again, which has been helpful, and I think that has played a huge role in reducing our auto theft in Pueblo.
Mayor Heather Graham:Because now you go to jail.
Chief of Police Noeller:Yes, absolutely.
Haley Sue Robinson:Regardless of the cost of the vehicle or the value of the vehicle.
Chief of Police Noeller:Right. So this is the first time we've really looked at those numbers. When I look at those numbers, what I take away from it is numbers. When I look at those numbers, what I take away from it is and we haven't compared 19 to 20 to 21 to 22 to 23 to 24, but when you look at our aggravated assault, it's no secret that we have had an increase in drive-by shootings. We've had an increase in shootings and over the last four years anyway, a major increase in the number of homicides in our community that is where that is going to be indicated is under the aggravated assaults and obviously the homicides, Because if you're shot and you're not killed, it's an aggravated assault. Attempted murder falls into that category, so drive-by shootings would fall into that category. So that's why that number is so much higher, which trends with what we're seeing.
Chief of Police Noeller:What I did find interesting is that our thefts have come up a little bit, but not dramatically so, and if you look at the numbers compared to 2019, we're actually down 21% in theft and larceny. Now that's probably the one category where we're not getting as many calls as we used to. You know, stores aren't calling because a lot of stores have policies where they don't even try to stop the people from stealing, they just let them walk out the door. That's a policy choice. I don't think it's because the victims don't want to call. I think it's just they're told not to. They just let the people go, and there's probably some other factors that play into that. The other thing that I think has helped play into when you look at 2024, 2025 compared to 2019, is the creation of the Dice Team, which has had a huge role in retail theft, and you know, we hear from a lot of stores about what the dramatic decreases in theft are in their in their stores and um, so um. I think that kind of explains some of that.
Haley Sue Robinson:And also when we look at some of the numbers. One thing that you share weekly with the mayor also is, um, your self-initiated calls. Can you talk to us about what that means or what does that entail?
Chief of Police Noeller:Yeah, absolutely, self-initiated calls is what we call proactive police work. That's where we are going out and actively looking out people that are up to no good, whether that's people that are acting suspicious, whether that's a traffic stop, whatever the issue might be. One of the things that I have been preaching for the last four years is the need for officers to be proactive. If we pull somebody over, go beyond the stop, don't just look to write the speeding ticket. Are there drugs in the car? Are there indicators that they're up to some kind of crime? Is there, you know, a person taped up in the back seat, you know? I mean let's pay attention to what's going on and try to try to address crime before it happens. And they have been significantly more proactive. And we call those self-initiated because we're not. We're self-initiating the contact, we're not dispatched to go handle the call. Okay.
Haley Sue Robinson:So, chief, I want to play devil's advocate for a minute. Chief, I want to play devil's advocate for a minute. So the police department is facing significant staffing shortages, but you are explaining to us that you've made some really good progress with combating crime, with self-initiated policing or proactive policing. To some folks they might say well then, why do we need more police officers, especially when we start to look at the budget shortfall? And, essentially, why should we continue to invest in the Pueblo Police Department and why do we still need to prioritize recruitment of more officers?
Chief of Police Noeller:That's a great question and it's one that I think needs to be answered for sure. And it's one that I think needs to be answered for sure. The reality of it is we cannot sustain this forever. Like I said, the workload of those 143, even if I had 182 cops right now, we could do more than we are now, but the workload is absolutely crushing and you cannot go to work every day and sustain that workload for 20 years. It's just not going to be sustainable.
Chief of Police Noeller:You know, I was thinking about different analogies that I could use to explain. It's like if you owned a car dealership and you were receiving 300 cars a day and you had to process those cars and you had seven people to do it. You cannot keep up. Eventually, you just are not going to be able to keep up. Um, and it's kind of the issue that we have our officers handle over 350 calls a day. Um, that's like eight to nine calls per hour and, generally speaking, we have anywhere in the neighborhood of eight to sixteen officers working, depending on the hour of the day. Um, and you just can't keep up.
Chief of Police Noeller:Last night at the council meeting I was showing some of the council people and the mayor. We had 56 calls holding at 8 o'clock at night. Those are 56 calls for service that officers are not available to respond to. And if we want to get ahead of the issues here in Pueblo which I believe we do, we want to set up our community of the issues here in pueblo, which I believe we do, we want to set up our community to be safe. Um, that's my goal.
Chief of Police Noeller:Every day I come to work, um, it's all I think about. Um, we need more help. Um, and we've got it. We've got to increase that. The uh. Every day of the week I have.
Chief of Police Noeller:I have a board in my office that has every officer's name, where they're at, what their status is, whether they're on injury leave, light duty, administrative leave for a variety of different reasons, fmla, all these different things and I look at it every day and try to decide where I can move people to be more effective.
Chief of Police Noeller:We are at the point now where I've robbed Peter so often that Paul's a broke and we can't continue to do that. Good news is we are making strides in recruiting. We have eight officers that just went into the PTO program, just graduated from the academy. We have eight officers that started an academy in April, and we're looking to be somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to 11 officers for an academy that's going to start in April, and we're looking to be somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to 11 officers for an academy that's going to start in July. The issue is we need to get ahead of the trickle out, and so far we're barely staying ahead of that. So we're going to lose three to four more officers to retirements between now and probably the end of September, and there's a couple officers that are looking to go to other departments where, again, the workload just isn't what it is here.
Haley Sue Robinson:Sure. So you know there's been quite a bit of movement, I would say, since you came into office, Mayor Graham, and your support for the police force into office, mayor Graham, and your support for the police force. Can you talk a little bit? I know we talked about this a lot last year but what you worked with civil service and how that has made an impact with recruiting for the police department.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, sure, so they're able to take lateral transfers quicker than they were before. We changed the civil service rules so we can hire from more than one list at a time, but unfortunately we're not hiring police with just my support. We need city council support, city government support, we need the community support. We need people to sign up and show up and we need a lot more people and we need a really quick turnover or we're going to see some significant increase in crime, I think, in the city.
Mayor Heather Graham:People are worn out.
Mayor Heather Graham:I can't imagine what the officers have to go through every single day. Imagine what the officers have to go through every single day. We see it all over social media, we see it on the news. We've called, cops aren't coming, and I think that what the general public doesn't understand, like the chief said, is we had 56 calls holding last night for service, and it's not just one call, it's not even just 10 calls. You have eight officers who need to handle 56 calls, and calls take time and we want to make sure that we're doing a good job in our reports. We want to help the victims, we want to solve the issues and we have to ask the people of Pueblo for patience when it comes to what we're doing right now in order to bump up the numbers in the police department.
Haley Sue Robinson:I think another area that we've seen some significant growth in and maybe you talked about it a little bit, chief where you've shifted some of your forces, one in particular is CSOs. So that's another area of recruiting. Maybe, if someone is not ready to be a police officer or they're just not interested, they have interest in being in law enforcement. What would it look like to maybe become a CSO?
Chief of Police Noeller:Yeah, that's a great question. A CSO is somebody that we train to do investigations. They are going to go out and take initial reports from individuals. They'll collect some items of evidence. They also do follow-up on cases, not only for the cases that they take, but officers and detectives take. They can go out and collect video evidence for those officers so they can spend their time doing other items or other functions for those officers so they can spend their time doing other items or other functions. They help out with traffic hazards, traffic control. They will have to testify in court.
Chief of Police Noeller:What's interesting is we have plenty of applications for those kind of jobs. Doesn't mean you shouldn't apply if you're interested in it. I mean there's a chance we could expand that program. So if you're interested in doing that kind of a job, it's a great way to get your foot in the door. If you're not sure, if you want to be a police officer and kind of get an idea of what it's like, or if you just want to help out in more of a non-sworn investigative role. But what's weird is those numbers aren't corresponding to sworn positions applications.
Chief of Police Noeller:So yeah, the CSO is a great program. It's been a huge help to our officers. It has helped us be able to do some of the other things that we're doing. That's helping us drive down that Part 1 crime. So they're a huge part of our team, a vital part of what we're doing. So they're a huge part of our team, vital part of what we're doing. But yeah, we just need people to challenge themselves and come do it's one of the most honorable professions in the world, I believe, being a police officer and we just need people in Pueblo in particular, but around southern Colorado, to step up and take the challenge. Your day will never be the same twice.
Haley Sue Robinson:Great. So thank you for walking us through part one crime, sharing some of the good information so that folks can kind of understand. Why do we use CompStat and how does this affect our policing in the community? Is there anything else that you want to add, chief?
Chief of Police Noeller:no, I, just I, you know. I want to give credit to the men and women of the public police department, not just the sworn, our records clerks, our dispatchers, our uh csos, the volunteers that we have, uh, the property and evidence people. It's a great, it's a great family, uh, uh, you know, we, we look after one another. I also want to give credit to both my department and the community. Over the last couple months, especially with four officers being shot to support externally, that we've received and I think you know the growth that we've had as an agency internally coming out of that has been really a blessing and glad that two of those officers are back to work.
Haley Sue Robinson:We are too. Thanks for joining us today, Chief. We really appreciate it.
Chief of Police Noeller:Thank you.
Haley Sue Robinson:All right. So, Mayor, let's talk about the City Council recap from last night. It actually wasn't too late of a night. I think we got out of here at 9.30. First let's talk about the work session. There was a considerable discussion regarding delays or maybe, as some folks would say, bureaucracy and red tape that's been getting in the way of progress. I know we have discussed this pretty in depth on the podcast, but can you talk a little bit more about the proposal you mentioned to city council that they're going to see something in the coming weeks of how you're looking to solve this problem, or maybe ease the process.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, this, this is really a cdot issue about access permitting onto state highways.
Mayor Heather Graham:So city of pueblo is pretty much surrounded by state highways, so we're hoping to um use this proposal in more than one way. When it comes to development in our community, we know right now on the boulevard we have seven pads, as one of the developers would say last night, that are ready to go. They pulled pre-application through the city but CDOT is requiring them to put some significant infrastructure into the ground in order to be able to get their COs, so their occupancy, in order to open their doors. So we first learned about this probably last fall, and we've been meeting, working with CDOT, working with the developers, working with PEDCO and PURA to kind of streamline a process for people to get the infrastructure in the ground when they're required to by CDOT this one. It's a pretty large cost for the Pueblo Boulevard development corridor and the needs. It's about $15 million that CDOT is requiring for any developer to come into that area First. One is going to be responsible for a significant amount of the costs and it really has to do with safety safety on the boulevard.
Mayor Heather Graham:So, you need signals, you need they have like slowing lanes, yeah, egress and medians, and so really what's happening is there's no tool for the developer to have to put it in, but only pay their fair share. There's no escrow, there's no facilitator, it's really whoever gets their co first is going to be responsible for the majority of the work.
Mayor Heather Graham:Um, there's four different developers who are really active in that area and so we're trying to put a plan together in order to help them get their businesses open. So my proposal to the city council was to change the criteria of the half cent sales tax to be able to use half cent sales tax dollars when it comes to job creation, not just primary job, but economic catalysts and sales tax increasing projects, which we know that the boulevard will be a huge sales tax grab for the city of Pueblo. So that criteria ordinance is coming to city council on June 9th. We've had several meetings with pedco. We meet every other wednesday and talk about, you know, how we could use the half cent sales tax dollars and other ways besides incentivizing businesses with cash for primary jobs.
Mayor Heather Graham:I believe that infrastructure is more important than giving people cash to bring their businesses to Pueblo because they're going to have to pay for the infrastructure regardless. So this is an opportunity for the community and for city council to approve the change in this criteria ordinance. After that passes, my proposal will be for House and Sales Tax to pay for the infrastructure and then the developers to pay a portion back to. So it renews the account back to the account um and then pura. Because it's a tiff district they use their tiff that's generated for that district over the next eight years that's how many years they have left at a percentage of their surplus TIF to service the debt also to the half cent sales tax.
Mayor Heather Graham:So, this is a way, without bonding, to take the infrastructure, to do the infrastructure. This is a way that it can get done quickly. The city can work with CDOT to facilitate the expenses. I know that CDOT is working on the engineer portion of the street signals and what needs to be done as far as the median. So it's a work in progress. It's been a work in progress.
Mayor Heather Graham:I know the developers are frustrated, but this was this, isn't? This shouldn't be news to anybody that you have to put in infrastructure when you're a developer. I think the news part is the part that you're responsible for all of the infrastructure. So there has to be a better way, a better plan to facilitate the dollars that everybody has to pay, and that's what the city is here to do. So we talked about it to city council on several occasions. I know you and I have talked about it here. The ordinance is finally going to be here on June 9th, first reading. So we'll put a plan and a proposal together and then we hope to mimic this same process on all of the outskirts of Pueblo when new stores or new developments come in and CDOT is requiring millions of dollars for infrastructure because in the long term this is all public infrastructure right. It's not just going to benefit one business or one developer, one owner. It's going to benefit the community to have sidewalks and signals and well, and it's for safety too.
Haley Sue Robinson:I mean, it's it's not just development for the sidewalks, for the business, for me to go in and spend my money, it's also to make sure I'm safe on the boulevard yeah public improvements, and that's what Urban Renewal is for.
Mayor Heather Graham:That's what Half-Cent Sales Tax Dollar is just for, and so we're looking forward to get this behind us and get those businesses open.
Haley Sue Robinson:And it kind of seems like maybe you took some of this from the meetings that you've had with PEDCO, but also maybe what you've learned from a couple of the different communities we've been to?
Mayor Heather Graham:yeah, absolutely. That's a lot of what's in the criteria ordinances. We're seeing other communities flourish, um, and when we went and visited them and, um, you know, took their tips on how to, uh, we also incorporated that into the ordinance to be able to change the way that we've been doing things for so many years. I guess you could say there's a better way to do it, there's a more effective and efficient way to do it, and it's what the community, they tax themselves to bring economic development into the city, and that's what we're going to do.
Haley Sue Robinson:Well, and if you think about it, this is what so many folks have been asking for for years. Why is pueblo boulevard empty? Why don't we see, you know, more big business coming? I know a lot of folks are really excited. We're going to have another starbucks. We just opened a water burger. Some of these larger businesses or corporations we ask why are they in springs? Why are they in Denver? Why did they go to Castle Rock and they skipped Pueblo? And now we have an opportunity to incentivize them so they will stay here or be here and invest in us. Yeah, be a good partner. Yeah, okay, also, just switching gears from the work session to the city council meeting itself. There was also a lot of discussion regarding the public association of government employees or the page union and what that looks like moving forward with paying our employees. Did you want to talk about kind of what that process has been or what negotiations with our unions are like.
Mayor Heather Graham:So we saw all three unions last night PD, fire and PAGE. Pd and FIRE are on three-year contracts and so their contracts were extended. You know the way that works is the city meets with union representation. We look at the comparables for our other cities that are dictated by charter. We have cities specifically in our charter that we have to follow and have comparable wages to um. We do an average of those wages. This isn't something that I go in and say you know, we should pay 10, we should pay six percent or 7%. This is dictated.
Haley Sue Robinson:HR has done a lot of comparison analysis and brought it forward for years.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yep. So what happens is we take the number to city council, we cost it out to tell city council how much it's going to cost. City council ultimately gives the decision. They give the ceiling of what the wages, what the raises could be. They say yes, yay or nay on the proposals and then we take that back to the negotiating table and hopefully, you know, come to agreement with the unions. So you know, last night it was surprising to hear that the city council was upset with me about not being involved in negotiations, but they were very involved. They're the ones that set the dollar amount, the wage amount.
Chief of Police Noeller:We keep them very updated and how the negotiations are going.
Mayor Heather Graham:How does that work? So we hosted one-on-one meetings here in my office.
Mayor Heather Graham:Some of them were two-on-two meetings and walked through what each union would be, what the cost amount would be. And then we take it to executive session in which they give direction to the city and to the staff on the ceiling in which we negotiate to or the proposals in which we negotiate for. So it's all dictated by city council and then we take it to final reading at a city council meeting. So they're very involved. I can't unilaterally make those decisions on how much we're going to final reading at a city council meeting, so they're very involved. I can't unilaterally make those decisions on how much we're going to pay employees. That's all up to the city council.
Haley Sue Robinson:I mean you can't unilaterally make decisions on how any of the money is spent Correct on anything.
Mayor Heather Graham:Okay, it's not unique to union negotiations.
Mayor Heather Graham:Everything is a proposal to city council and city council is the final say Okay. So that topic has been coming up quite a bit, so it's in the strong mirror form of government. City council is the policy makers, the legislative branch, and I execute their policy that they put forward and vote on. I execute their expenditures that they put forward and vote on. And that's how the two forms of government work in the city of Pueblo. So nothing is done as a shock or a surprise to them. They're very well informed on the decisions and the negotiations that come forward when they're voted on at city council.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so what was outlined last night with the page union. Was that Okay? So what was outlined last night with the page union was that we're potentially going to go to arbitration and if we don't agree or come to the bargaining table with an agreement, what does that look like for the city?
Mayor Heather Graham:So it will go to the vote of the people and then the vote of the people will decide on what the wage increase will be in November. It'd be on the ballot. It'd be on the ballot. Yeah, Okay. That's the way that their union contract works. That's the way that the charter is set up.
Mayor Heather Graham:Um the other two unions. We go to arbitration and Duke it out, essentially, but this one is left to the vote of the people. So they were at 8%, cities at 2.5%. So, um, it's a a pretty big, pretty large gap in between, and so we're going to go to a preliminary arbitration in July to get some advisement and then it will go to the people in November if we can't come to terms.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so I'm sure we'll hear more as that continues through July, and what those negotiation processes look like and maybe what the conversation ends up as, hopefully before November, right, okay, great. Well, I think that's probably all we'll cover for City Council, but we do have the Team Up to Clean Up event this weekend, on Saturday. Three locations total, so CSU, pueblo, colorado State state fairgrounds that's for household, uh trash, large furniture, mattresses. And then we added a third location recycle works and you can bring tree branches. Uh, yard waste has to be unbagged.
Haley Sue Robinson:but all three locations from eight to three bagged um, but all three locations, from eight to three, and it's all free, yeah, for city residents.
Haley Sue Robinson:Bring your trash and yeah, we'll be there, we'll be there and, and we actually um we have quite a few volunteers who have signed up, so that's been great, too, and if you're interested in volunteering, um or learning more about the event, you can follow us on facebook, instagram, next door all of our social media channels, but we hope to see you on saturday because that'll be a fun event. Anything else you want to add, mayor? I?
Haley Sue Robinson:think that's it okay, great, don't forget you can email us, mayor, at pubus, if you would like to suggest a topic or you have a question to ask, and follow us on YouTube, apple, spotify, buzzsprout, wherever you get your podcasts Also, thank you. Last week we received 50 downloads for the podcast, so thank you for sharing this. Share it with more people and we'll see you next week.