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 18
Episode 18 of The Mayor's Mixtape, Mayor Graham hosts Helen Dupree, Traffic Engineering Analyst for the City of Pueblo and Eva Cosyleon , Metropolitan Planning Organization Manager. Helen discusses the upcoming Transportation Summit on July 9 from 3:30-6:30pm and the Comprehensive Safety Action Plan. Eva discusses the Long Range Transportation Plan and how it fits with the development of our road network for the next 25 years.
Mayor Graham gives a breakdown of the Pueblo City Council meeting from Monday, June 23rd. She discusses the future of the Stormwater Department and the Housing and Citizen Services Department. Additionally, Mayor Graham explains the future of the Sales and Use Tax Capital Improvement Projects Fund or half cent sales tax.
Email your questions and topic suggestions to mayor@pueblo.us. Like, subscribe and share the podcast.
All right, welcome to the 18th episode of Mayor's Mixtape. We have two guests this week to talk about transportation. Behind the mic I'm Haley Sue Robinson, director of Public Affairs City of Pueblo, mayor Heather Graham, and I'll introduce our guests in just a moment. We're available on YouTube, apple, spotify, buzzsprout, and we also have this podcast available on local channel 17. So there's lots of opportunity to listen to this podcast. Also, don't forget, if you have questions or want to suggest a topic for Mayor Graham to cover, you can email us at mayor at pueblous. So now it's time to welcome to the show Helen Dupree, traffic Engineering Analyst for the City of Pueblo, working in the Transportation Division. Helen is here to talk to us about the upcoming Pueblo Transportation Summit, which takes place Wednesday, july 9th, with an open house event from 3.30 to 30 pm. Helen tell us a little bit about the transportation summit and what we can expect from this event.
Helen Dupree:Yeah, the transportation summit is where we are looking for community feedback for our comprehensive safety action plan, because it can't really be a comprehensive plan unless we're hearing from the public. We really want to know what people think are more problem areas within the city that we need to have some safety input on and where we can point our projects and point our funding towards to make things safer Cool.
Haley Sue Robinson:So what all does that include as far as the open house format or like, how can folks participate to give that feedback?
Helen Dupree:It's going to be, like you said, an open house format. We're going to have presentations at, I believe, 3.30, 4.30, and 5.30, going over our comprehensive safety action plan, and there will also be segments on the long-range transportation plan, which we will talk about later. There will be a survey for everyone to fill out. Where we can, we will be asking about where, you see, the problem areas in the city are when are people running stop signs, where are people speeding, where are things that you think need help, so that we can know and we can factor those into what projects we're going after funding for and which projects we do to make the city safer.
Mayor Heather Graham:Is it true, Helen, that Pueblo has one of the highest fatal crash rates in Colorado? Yes, and why is that?
Helen Dupree:It's a very multifaceted problem. That's really what we're trying to get to the heart of with the comprehensive safety action plan. But from 2018 to 2023, we did have 200 fatalities and 682 serious injuries, which is the highest rate per capita in the state.
Mayor Heather Graham:And when those are rated, is it within the city of Pueblo or is it also like on the? Two major highways that run through Pueblo. Does that account for those deaths as well? I-25 and 50?
Helen Dupree:Yes, so all our CDOT roads are factored into our statistics, which is a large reason why we have such a high rate, because this is one of the most dangerous segments of I-25, and it runs right through the heart of the city. It really splits the city in half. We have people wanting to move from one side to the other it's not great. The other reason that we have a really high fatality rate is we have a lot of vehicle miles traveled. We're a fairly dispersed city. I believe our population rate is almost a thousand people less than Fort Collins, which is a city of the similar square miles. So we have to drive a lot further or commute a lot further to get to where we need to go, and the more time you spend in a car, the more likely you are to crash.
Mayor Heather Graham:So 15 minutes really is far from one side of town to the next. When we hear people complain about that, who knew?
Helen Dupree:Another factor is Pueblo's got a really unique history of being four towns consolidated into one, so we have some roads that were really built to be a main street for a town that are now taking so much more traffic than they were initially designed for. Like Northern, for example, was not built with our modern safety sensibilities in mind and when it was first paved in the early 1900s, one of the first streets in the city to be paved the city of Pueblo was only 45,000 people.
Helen Dupree:We're twice that now and the road has not grown to match our population.
Haley Sue Robinson:That's really interesting, the quadrant concept and just how our history has shaped why safety is such a big issue. I know that the City of Pueblo has prioritized and been pretty successful with the Safe Streets For All grants, that same program that funded this comprehensive safety action plan. Why are those grants so important for the city?
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, there are a huge amount of funding. It's, I believe $2.9 billion in federal funding has already been allocated to 1,600 jurisdictions and this year alone there's a billion dollars available and up to $25 million increments to each jurisdiction. If you can apply for it and receive that grant, which is $25 million, would have a massive impact on the safety. That we can do and we are going after it in a very targeted, data-driven way to be able to use that money as effectively as possible to make as many places much safer.
Haley Sue Robinson:So you talked about it a little bit earlier with the summit, and then you just mentioned it just now about the data driven approach. So the survey that you're asking folks to fill out, will that be part of what's used to apply for these types of grants?
Helen Dupree:Yeah, so that is part of our comprehensive safety action plan, which is our. This is our roadmap to get us to that grant funding. It's pretty much showing us here are our problem parts of the city. Here's a very cost effective way that we can spend money to fix those problems and we can present that along with our grant and say we have a plan. Help us fulfill this plan. And asking for the feedback is part of creating our list of priorities and having something we can say we've won out to our community. We found our worst areas and here's how we're fixing them.
Mayor Heather Graham:That's great. And if citizens or lay people want to participate in giving feedback for this transportation plan, how do they just show up at this meeting on Wednesday the 9th? How does that work?
Helen Dupree:Yeah, you can either attend the summit in person and you'll be able to give feedback there. I believe we'll have some iPads set up where you can fill out the survey and you'll be able to talk to us. We can get your feedback there. And if you can't make it to the summit, which I completely understand, we have the survey available on our website at www. pueblo. us. You can search transportation safety plan and you'll be able to get to the survey there. Is that live right?
Mayor Heather Graham:now. Yes, it is Okay.
Haley Sue Robinson:Great. Oh, then we'll include that when we publish the podcast Perfect and I guess, as a follow-up to the survey, will the results of the survey then also be available online, or then is that just something that will shape how we apply for grants?
Helen Dupree:Our comprehensive safety action plan will be available online for everyone to view and hold us accountable to being able to fulfill these projects and see where our problems are, and that data from the survey will be factored into our safety action plan. There will be a little column that says community rank and show what projects people think are important Cool.
Haley Sue Robinson:That sounds great. So, essentially, this affects everyone. As long as you live in Pueblo or travel through Pueblo, it doesn't matter if you're driving a car, riding a bike or walking, and this is really so that we can save lives. Mayor Graham mentioned earlier that Pueblo has one of the highest fatality rates, and so how do we shape the future and ensure that we're safer? Helen, is there anything else you want to add or anything else that we should know before we let you go?
Helen Dupree:No, just please come on out to the Transportation Summit. We really want to hear your feedback. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Haley Sue Robinson:Thank you, okay, now we're welcoming to the show Eva Cosyleon, the Metropolitan Planning Organization Manager, who is part of the Pueblo Area Council of Governments, or PACOG. We just spoke with Helen a little bit about the Safety Action Plan, but PACOG is also creating a 2050 Long Range Transportation Plan, or LRTP, which will outline the development of our community's road network over the next 25 years. So, eva, what does that look like?
Eva Cosyleon:Sure. So that document is a fairly lengthy document. But what it does is it actually looks at all of our different modes of transportation. So it first starts out with what's existing, what's going on, our economic trends, our socioeconomics and then it starts diving into what's currently in our project list. So we have our 10-year transportation improvement program, which we call TIP, and that's a four-year project list, and we also have our 10-year project list that consolidates both of those lists and outlines what's going on with our community and what we already have tasked. But we also look at our vision plan, which also encompasses looking at development patterns and how we might need to have future roadways built into those plans. And then we also do a survey as well to look at what the community needs are. And so our survey will say you know, what trade-offs do we have? Do we want new roads or do we need to have? Do we need to look at multimodal facilities or do we look at what we currently have and try to manage our assets?
Mayor Heather Graham:And how is this plan different than the comprehensive safety plan that Helen just spoke about, or do they intertwine?
Eva Cosyleon:They do intertwine. That's a great question, because part of the long-range transportation plan also looks at safety, and so one of the elements within that is our performance measures, that as a MPO, we need to make sure that we have certain standards that we look at every year, and so one of them is safety. So this comprehensive safety action plan will actually help us meet our performance targets for safety, and so it really intertwines a lot and this will actually help our community in the long run to meet those targets.
Mayor Heather Graham:How often do we do this type of planning?
Eva Cosyleon:So it's every. We update it every four years, four and a half years, but it's. You know it's five years, but we always start four and a half years to get it adopted.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, awesome. So, Eva, you talked a little bit about making new roadways or multimodal. Um Mayor, I know you've been a proponent or supporter of the front range passenger rail. I'm curious, Eva, how does transportation like that fit into this type of plan?
Eva Cosyleon:Sure. So part of the long range transportation plan, too, is we do what we call travel modeling, and so what the model looks at is they look at what's happening right now, and then they also do a lot of projections. So they look at the 2020 census data and then they say, okay, what is what's been the historical growth of Pueblo? So typically, we're about 1% growth every year.
Mayor Heather Graham:We do grow. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, you know, most people haven't grown for 40 years.
Eva Cosyleon:Yes, yeah. So it looks at that growth and then it starts projecting that growth and saying, okay, where are the developments happening? And we get a lot of what we call the bedroom communities, people going up to Fort Carson, also people commuting all the way up to Denver. So that front range passenger rail will really help, especially either people coming down here, um, even for recreation purposes too. So, um, it's, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done with the long range, the light rail plan, but, um, it's still going, so yeah.
Mayor Heather Graham:Great, that's exciting. I had a um a family member this weekend who's picking up another family member from a train that's coming from North Carolina and they have to go to Trinidad to pick up the family member. And it's the craziest thing, it's just a flat that you pull up to People get off, you pick them up. I'm like interesting that people are still considering traveling by train or rail over flying, and so I think I'm excited for Front Range Rail.
Eva Cosyleon:And.
Mayor Heather Graham:I think it will be great for our community.
Eva Cosyleon:Yeah Well, so the same thing with the Front Range Passenger Rail. There's also the Southwest Chief, which they're looking at right now. It doesn't go through Pueblo, it goes through La Junta to Raton and yeah, it's kind of I've actually taken that and it's kind of weird because it's like why can't Pueblo have it? So Southwest Chief is looking to add that extension to Pueblo, which would be a really cool asset also for communities in eastern Colorado, because we might have some assets that they don't have that they can benefit from and they can get on the train for that reason too.
Haley Sue Robinson:That's really cool, Eva. Another recent priority of PACOG has been roundabout safety and I know that that's going to be launching next month a big campaign for education. How does that fit into the LRTP and the plan for the next 25 years?
Eva Cosyleon:Sure. So, as I mentioned earlier, we're all about safety and meeting those performance measures and then educating the public. And you know, I have lived here in Pueblo for many years. I'm a native. I went away for a few years and I came back, and so it's it's cool to have this new infrastructure. And a lot of people question why we have roundabouts. But roundabouts are proven to provide more safe, a safe environment. You might not you might still into accidents, but they won't be as serious. And so we wanted to make sure that new drivers or more experienced drivers kind of know how to safely maneuver through the roundabouts. And so we have a few more coming up. There's smaller ones we have Lake and Ormond, but we also have a larger one coming up on Eagle Ridge and Dillon, which that'll be a little bit more tricky, but it's definitely needed because that intersection can get pretty cantankerous at times.
Mayor Heather Graham:Sundays, when people are going to Sam's Club. It's crazy in that corner.
Haley Sue Robinson:And then you add a Whataburger over there and it's going to be really crazy yeah.
Eva Cosyleon:So I mean that kind of feeds back into the safety and just making sure that people know how to safely maneuver. So we're just trying to do our part to educate the public on this new infrastructure.
Mayor Heather Graham:I see you're educating them right now at City Park. Yeah, yeah, I take my dog to the dog park and then I like all these flags, like you know, use this like you would be using a roundabout. I'm like, I'm not used to this. Yeah.
Eva Cosyleon:Yeah, it's something that's been around for years and we just didn't realize that we didn't have it marked correctly. But now that we have it marked correctly, hopefully people will use it safely.
Mayor Heather Graham:You're training us? Yes.
Eva Cosyleon:Yeah, yeah.
Haley Sue Robinson:Well, Eva, is there anything else that we need to know about the long range transportation plan or anything else for for PACOG purposes, maybe?
Eva Cosyleon:Yeah, so we are also having a survey. If you go to PACOG moves the region, um, that's our project website and we have a survey there and it's an interesting website where you can kind of play with, um, like I said, what your benefits are, what you think is beneficial to Pueblo, so that that way we can build that into our plan. And also because we look at all modes of transportation. This month has been bike month and so actually tomorrow is bike to work day and we're having let's see eight, or actually sorry, 12 vendors at SRDA giving free burritos and green chili and salsa. So bring your bike down, ride your bike down to SRDA from 630 to 830.
Haley Sue Robinson:That's exciting. I know you're a big proponent of bikes and folks getting out on different modes of transportation, so thanks for sharing that with us. Yeah, thank you for having me. We look forward to hearing more about the Transportation Summit in July and we'll be sure to share that information on our social media so that folks know more about it and that they can take both of those surveys as well. So thanks for joining us this morning, Eva.
Eva Cosyleon:Yeah, thank you.
Haley Sue Robinson:Thank you,
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, Mayor. We're going to switch gears a little bit, since I'm not a transportation expert, but thankfully we asked those folks to come on. It was great to have Eva and Helen on the show this morning. We're going to get to the City Council recap. We were here pretty late and, Mayor mayor, there were a couple ordinances that passed last night in relation to what some folks would consider new director positions one for the Stormwater Utility Department and one for Housing and Citizen Services. Can you explain to some folks who might be concerned that, with the budget deficit that the city is facing, that this is a waste of money or potential misuse of funds?
Mayor Heather Graham:Sure. So these, both of these positions were previous positions that were in the previous administration. The previous administration chose to combine departments and put divisions under certain departments, the housing under the planning and stormwater under public works, and so for the last several years that's how the city has been operating since I've been in office. I think that it makes more sense to divide the departments, especially because they have several different funding sources. So public works and planning are general fund dollars and housing is all funded by HUD, federal government, all grant funded, all five and a half positions and stormwater is solely funded by stormwater utility fee.
Helen Dupree:Because it's an enterprise.
Mayor Heather Graham:It's an enterprise. So when we talk about merging departments, merging staff, merging duties, I don't think that that's necessarily the smartest way to do it. I also think that when you have directors overseeing multiple departments, that there's a lot going on in the city and I think that things could be missed, and so to have people who are specialized in their respective field be overseeing all staff underneath them, I think that's a really important issue too when it comes to management and operations between these departments. So very happy that city council agreed and passed both of those positions. So funding will stay the same. We're going to abolish a couple positions. We'll have a housing director instead of a housing administrator, so that one's just a title change, really. So we'll be posting those positions today and, you know, seeing if we get some great candidates to apply and hopefully carry the departments forward.
Haley Sue Robinson:And I know one thing that you spoke about last night too was some gaps that we had with stormwater.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah.
Haley Sue Robinson:and when I say gaps, I mean personnel gaps. Can you talk a little bit more about what that looks like?
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, so currently I don't have a director of stormwater, a stormwater engineering manager, a stormwater coordinator. There's been some turnover of people moving on to different positions within the city or moving out of the city or retiring resigning and so we don't really have top leadership in the stormwater department right now.
Mayor Heather Graham:Our public works director has been overseeing and kind of the day-to-day and the approvals, and so I think that this is really going to help being able to fill those positions. Stormwater is very important. It's very important to several members of city council, so I think if we can get these positions filled, we'll be on the right track to hopefully get some of our studies done, some of our surveys done and start replacing some of the very much needed stormwater pipe within the city.
Haley Sue Robinson:Well, and you even look at a recent example of the work that's had to be done on Elizabeth, and that was a stormwater issue directly. So it seems like your vision for the department, or why you're taking it out of public works, is just to essentially streamline the process.
Mayor Heather Graham:Streamline and public works department touches everything.
Haley Sue Robinson:Sure.
Mayor Heather Graham:You know they don't need an entire department to oversee as well. So I think that this is going to be helpful for public works and helpful for stormwater. It's very similar to what we do at wastewater. They're their own entity. They have their own director, their own staff, paid for by their own fees, but they collaborate and work with public works every day. So that's what I envision it to be.
Mayor Heather Graham:That's what it was for many, many years, and so hopefully we can get back to that.
Haley Sue Robinson:Great okay, um, last night at city council they voted four to three um for the ordinance to change the criteria for the sales and use tax capital improvement projects fund and that was a failed four to three vote, and that's also known as the half cent sales tax. Mayor, this was a criteria ordinance that you brought forward and gave a presentation to city council. We talked about it last week, so now that it's failed,
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, I was surprised by the vote.
Mayor Heather Graham:City Council seemed very supportive after the work session last week, so I was surprised by what had taken place last night. I think that we're still going to continue to work forward. Development is stagnant. It is very apparent that we have no new jobs coming to the community since 2021. PEDCO has brought 42 jobs In my book. 42 jobs isn't good enough. Maybe 4,200 jobs, but 42 jobs is.
Haley Sue Robinson:Since 2021.
Mayor Heather Graham:Since 2021.
Mayor Heather Graham:That's not good.
Mayor Heather Graham:In 10 years I think that we've had 14 new uh businesses come. Some businesses are expansions or incentives of businesses that were preexisting, like TTCI to MXV rail, PEDCO and urban renewal incentivized uh, the steel mill. So 1200 employees who were already working at the steel mill. Um, we just did a package to make sure that those 1,200 employees were retained. So we really aren't bringing in new jobs and new people to our community, and I think that that needs to be the focus, and so this is something that we'll continue to push forward, whether it's changing it through ballot language, and if the city chooses to change it through ballot language, it's going to be more expanded than even the criteria ordinance was last night. So something that I have the staff working on to move forward. The change in the criteria ordinance was to give PEDCO and the city additional tools to bring economic development in, so I'm not really sure why any council person would vote that down. We're stagnant. We need sales tax dollars.
Mayor Heather Graham:We need people to spend money in our community. We need new business to come to our community. It's one of the top talking points that when you're out talking to community members you hear about. Half-cent Sales Tax Fund has $63 million of unencumbered funds in it.
Haley Sue Robinson:Currently
Mayor Heather Graham:Currently that should tell you something. Right there. We're not incentivizing, we're not bringing new jobs, new business to the community and this ordinance could have really changed that.
Haley Sue Robinson:Sure.
Mayor Heather Graham:So we will continue to push forward, probably put it right back on the agenda, because that's how important I think it is. We hear from developers in the last two months who have come to city council begging city council to help with development and unfortunately they killed that last night. So we're not going to let it stop us and we're going to put this right back on the agenda and hope that we talk it through a little bit more. Counselors who didn't understand it because it was clear as mud, I think one of the counselors said so if we need to have more time with counsel to make sure that they understand what we're trying to do, so everybody can get on the page, that's what we have to do.
Haley Sue Robinson:So I think another thing that was somewhat confusing is some folks were talking about ballot language and then some folks were talking about the ordinance. It's my understanding those are two separate things,
Mayor Heather Graham:Totally so the specific ballot language, the ordinance that's referenced in the ballot language is the criteria ordinance, which gives city council the ability to change the criteria ordinance. So when people vote for a half-cent sales tax, you are voting to let the city council change the criteria ordinance. It's very black and white.
Haley Sue Robinson:Decide how to spend the funds.
Mayor Heather Graham:Listed in the actual ballot language. It's been changed several times.
Haley Sue Robinson:That was outlined last night as well.
Mayor Heather Graham:They used it they pulled $5 million out of the half-cent sales tax in 2020 to give to small businesses in loan or grant form. They also changed it for the RTA project when the city took $14 million out of half-cent sales tax and loaned it to the Urban Renewal Authority to finish the convention center. And they've also changed it to where, when they are bringing in new prospects, that they can give them an additional $800 per employee for training. So those are three times that I know that it's been changed in the last five years. That city council changed without taking it to the vote of the people.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so essentially, this change in the criteria ordinance, it's not something new in the sense that it's never been done before. The criteria itself is new. It's expanded economic catalyst, economic leakage and placemaking, but the idea of changing the criteria is not new.
Mayor Heather Graham:No, it's not new, and those three specific topics that we intertwined in our already criteria ordinance were things that I took from other communities that I visited. Experts that we talked to I know Councilor Maestri talked a lot about having a survey done and about experts, you know, being able to provide information to the city council, and we got this from experts telling us how they're able to incentivize or bring businesses to their community Grand Junction and Castle Rock which are both blooming with economic development, and so I think that that's another part we need to work on is, you know, maybe both of their economic development teams, so that they would come to our city council and have conversations with them. So that might be, you know, something that we choose to do over the next couple weeks as well.
Haley Sue Robinson:And I think one thing to point out is the fact that you referenced two Colorado cities. So a lot of times when folks come in and say, hey, I found this from another community, it's like somewhere out of state.
Mayor Heather Graham:It's like Texas
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, Texas, Florida, Oregon, wherever. But what it seems like is maybe you took the approach that you learned both in Grand Junction and Douglas County and then how do we fit this for Pueblo? I know a couple of the examples you gave um were very specific to things that folks in Pueblo asked for.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, so like a super target or jellystone or
Mayor Heather Graham:We had jellystone uh the annexation at city council last night.
Mayor Heather Graham:So we had the developers in the audience. You know why this conversation was happening and one of them came up to me after you know and stated you know, thanks for conversation was happening. And one of them came up to me after you know and stated you know, thanks for what you're trying to do for the community. We will need infrastructure improvements for jellystone,
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay.
Mayor Heather Graham:and the way that the criteria ordinance reads now, um, we cannot incentivize projects like jellystone to come into our community
Haley Sue Robinson:Because it doesn't fit the primary jobs category.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yep.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, I think another thing that is also confusing is, or maybe misconstrued, is, the ordinance. Had it passed last night, how soon would that 15% in funding that would be earmarked towards those three economic leakage, economic catalyst and placemaking how soon would those funds be available?
Mayor Heather Graham:It would be available immediately for the city or for PEDCO to try to use those dollars to incentivize. We have heard developers come and talk about the issues that they see on Pueblo Boulevard with access permitting and CDOT requirements. So first, you know, my plan was to be able to use these funds to help incentivize these businesses come in through infrastructure, and now we're not going to be able to do that.
Haley Sue Robinson:It kind of fits also perfectly with what we were talking about earlier with safety, because really the main reason that we have this issue specifically on the boulevard is for safety improvements. That CDOT requires either new signal lights or turn lanes or things that essentially, because of the increased congestion and traffic, will protect folks right.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yep. So we have you know, we have to make calls to developers this morning and tell them that we'll continue the fight on, and hopefully they can reach out to members of city council and tell their story about you know why this is important, why these dollars have to be used in other way, differently than incentivizing primary jobs, manufacturing jobs in the community. President Aliff, I think, said about best last night like a job is a job, we need more jobs. We need more people coming into our community. That's very apparent.
Mayor Heather Graham:And so to limit ourselves, I think, is stupid, and to not use the tools that are available is stupid, and so I think that maybe it just takes a little bit more education and we'll bring it back and hopefully we can get city council to bite.
Haley Sue Robinson:I think another thing that was interesting is last night Councilor Boston made a comment about you know, some folks might look at restaurants or retail and think these are just jobs that folks take and they're temporary. I actually know of a real world example here in Pueblo. We just had a gal that moved from Texas to take the general manager job at the Black Bear Diner that's about to open. So she moved from Texas to come here. I don't think a general manager job is a temporary job. It's a salaried position. It sounds like this woman's building a career and she decided to move from Texas to make her career in Pueblo. So there's an example right there of how it could essentially fit the idea of jobs, but maybe not in the way that folks are used to when we think of manufacturing or we think about the airport industrial complex.
Mayor Heather Graham:Um, I think another big misconception last night is uh, counselor Flores was talking about how he didn't want retail to be incentivized. While we were sitting there I pulled the latest sales tax report to look at our top five sales tax uh generating line items for different businesses and in the community, and all top five were all associated with retail.
Mayor Heather Graham:So you know it kind of debunks, what PEDCO came and said last night, what council members came. These are the facts.
Haley Sue Robinson:Sure.
Mayor Heather Graham:and the facts are that the retail is what is keeping sales tax alive, and so I think that we should be bringing in additional retail into our community, because that's where the money is.
Haley Sue Robinson:And I think one more thing just to kind of reiterate and we talked about it a little bit last week but know some folks are concerned that this essentially eliminates what PEDCO is doing currently it only earmarks 15 percent of the funds um,
Mayor Heather Graham:And 15 percent of those funds PEDCO could,
Mayor Heather Graham:They can also do forward okay so it's not stone.
Haley Sue Robinson:It's not like those funds are set aside only for city development or incentivization. PEDCO can also do that.
Mayor Heather Graham:Sure. Anybody. Anybody can come, you know our contract with PEDCO is not exclusive.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, interesting. Okay, anything else,
Mayor Heather Graham:That's it.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, that sounds great. I know you are headed to the Colorado Municipal League CML conference this week in Breckenridge, so we're looking forward to hearing about that. You'll be meeting with other municipalities and leaders from across the state and you have a couple of sessions that I'm interested in hearing about when you come back.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, we have like 12 different sessions that directly impact the City of Pueblo. So several counselors going, some staff members and myself. So we're happy to go and listen and see what other communities are doing and what works in other communities and try to bring that back to our community and mimic it.
Haley Sue Robinson:That sounds great. Well, that's a good place to end before next week, but don't forget that you can find us on Buzzsprout, Spotify, Apple, local channel 17. And you can also email us, mayor@pueblo. us, for topic suggestions or questions you may have, and we'll see you next week.