The Mayor's Mixtape

The Mayor's Mixtape-Episode 23

• City of Pueblo • Episode 23

Share episode

Mayor Heather Graham gives a recap of the Pueblo City Council Work Session from July 28, 2025 regarding Stormwater planning for the Bessemer neighborhood and surrounding the Colorado State Fairgrounds. Additionally, she discusses the traffic speed camera proposal from the Pueblo Police Department. 

 Mayor Graham and Director of Public Affairs Haley Sue Robinson give a recap of the Steel City Arkansas River Festival and invite everyone to the Slab ribbon cutting on Thursday, July 31 at 1pm. 

 Don't forget to like and subscribe. Send your questions for the Mayor's Mixtape to mayor@pueblo.us.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Welcome to the 23rd episode of the Mayor's Mixtape. I'm Haley Sue Robinson, Director of Public Affairs.

Mayor Heather Graham:

And I'm City of Pueblo Mayor Heather Graham.

Haley Sue Robinson:

I thought you might have forgotten who you were for a minute.

Haley Sue Robinson:

No, no, no, I just had to make sure, okay okay, I'd like to remind you we are on YouTube, apple, buzzsprout, spotify. We're also on Channel 17. So wherever you get your podcasts like, subscribe, download, share with your friends, and if you have questions or topic suggestions, you can email us at mayor@pueblo. us. Okay, mayor, let's get into the City Council recap. I'd like to talk a little bit about the work session from last night. I know one thing in particular that's been especially kind of a critical topic or a hot topic for folks is our stormwater repair, and so we had our stormwater department come last night do a work session presentation, particularly about the State Fair in Bessemer neighborhoods, and we also had our engineering consultant that was in attendance as well. Can you talk a little bit about? You know what they shared and also what it looks like now that the stormwater department is separate from Public Works and that moving forward.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, so this is exciting for the Bessemer area to finally have this area studied and looked at, surveyed, to see what size we need to upsize the pipes. For Sure, this has been an ongoing issue in Bessemer for many, many years. The city has been every year kind of stockpiling an amount of money to put aside in order to this project.

Mayor Heather Graham:

It's a multimillion-dollar project to re-upsize these pipes in Bessemer and so we hired a consultant. They've come in and done phase one so that was the presentation that you saw last night where they have been studying when it rains, where the most significant flooding is, if they can disconnect or add additional pipes or re-upsize the pipes that are already in the ground to help with some of those flooding issues. So we'll hope to have Phase 2 and Phase 3 wrapped up by the end of the year so that we have a cost estimate and a plan moving forward in order to fix some of these issues that we've seen in Bessemer.

Haley Sue Robinson:

And it seems like you know we've had a few stormwater things that have come up recently. We had a repair on Elizabeth earlier this year. They're also doing that was a little bit further down on Elizabeth. They're also doing another one kind of near the slab and 24th Street, and that was emergency stormwater repair. So I know one thing that is good about this particular study is that we're trying to avoid that emergency repair work. But it seems like we've seen quite a bit of repairs happening Action from stormwater?

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah, and it's exciting.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah.

Haley Sue Robinson:

I know it's annoying for those of us who are you've got the detours and the driving around and all those things, but it's getting done pretty quickly and, if you think about it, two weeks, maybe three, um to avoid an area. But overall, if that's going to give me a quality of life for 30, 40, 50 years, I'll take the minor inconvenience for maybe two weeks. One thing in particular you actually just mentioned was there was kind of a misconception, or maybe a misunderstanding, that when we do this stormwater repair, that we're replacing the pipes with the exact same size.

Mayor Heather Graham:

That we're replacing the pipes with the exact same size, right?

Mayor Heather Graham:

So usually when you have a stormwater issue or road issue, like we did on Elizabeth, then you have to go back in and do major repairs to any of the infrastructure that's under the ground. They do study the flows, whether it's wastewater, stormwater. What needs to be done at that moment, since we are taking up an entire street, removing all the pipe, um, and replacing it with new pipe. So it is a misconception that we're just replacing it with the same pipe over and over. If it calls for the same pipe, sure but sure.

Mayor Heather Graham:

But if it calls to upside, 78 percent of the pipes now that are in Bessemer are. They don't work they don't work the way they're supposed to, so we would never go in and replace those pipes with existing sizing.

Haley Sue Robinson:

But that's also what this study is for so that we can evaluate and then make the right decision.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, we just want to make sure that, if we're going to be spending all this money, it's going to last for decades and it's going to outfall where it needs to, and make sure that we don't have houses flooding in Bessemer.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Great, okay, another work session presentation that we had last night was the speed enforcement cameras. So this is something that we've heard a couple of times, actually from the community. I think we even had a presentation about speed enforcement cameras when you were on council. What brought this topic back up again?

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah, so we had some legislation that changed in 2024 that allows us to use what's similar to red light cameras speed enforcement cameras that you can place within your community, right and so I thought that it would be a good idea, since we hear so many complaints about traffic violations. We see tons of speeding infractions within the community, and currently we only have five officers who are in the traffic division.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Years ago there was like 25. So we have a fifth of you know what we should have and so being able again to have technology kind of subsidize our efforts. I think that this is something that I hope the city council chooses to move forward with. We're going to propose it. It seems like it's going to pay for itself in the tickets that it generates and hopefully we start to see a change of behavior like Officer Sincerbox, sergeant Sincerbox said last night.

Haley Sue Robinson:

I thought that was another thing that was pretty interesting. Sergeant Sincerbox also spoke about the fact that we didn't necessarily need to have uniformed personnel that are operating this equipment, but that we could do the training in-house. And then, like you said, I think so many times when we hear these proposals it's very exciting, but then you know immediately, I think, how much is it going to cost? Where does the money come from? So I thought it was great to see it outlined that it essentially can pay for itself. There might be some upfront costs, but then we have the ability to absorb those costs through the revenue that's generated.

Haley Sue Robinson:

I think one thing in particular I saw on Facebook with some comments or even heard from some folks is you know when, when we talk about revenue generation, are we going to be targeting certain people? If you're speeding, right, yeah, and I think that's the overall thing that folks need to realize is, um, it targets folks who are speeding. So I know, like counselor latino brought up, fourth street is a major concern for him and it sounded like from sergeant sensor box we'll be able to move these um to kind of those hot spot areas where we know there's a lot of based on data and stats. Yeah, so similar kind of like how we use our safe streets for all data for safety crashes and upgrading. Um, if there, if there needs to be new traffic signal or a roundabout, it'll be the same sort of thing with the speed enforcement. Yep, okay, great, and you did mention that we would be seeing this come forward. Do you have a timeline as to what that would look like?

Mayor Heather Graham:

no, it would take some work because we have to also investigate and pass through council on what we want the corridors to be Okay. So that would probably take place first, before we would purchase the cameras. It might be a capital purchase for 2026's budget.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Okay, so maybe get some more information and feedback from council as to what they'd like to see and outline the corridors. Yep, great, okay, cool. Anything else from the work session or from council?

Mayor Heather Graham:

Yeah.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Okay Um, mayor, over the weekend we had a really exciting event uh, the Steel City, arkansas River Festival, scarf. Uh, we had nearly 1,500 people in attendance at Waterworks Park, pillar Park, um near the levee. Uh, we had 17 surfers compete. I know um one of our surfers that competed um here locally. He took second, but we had folks from boulder, from salida um I think I heard there was a individual from durango, so kind of all over the state. Um, we had the build your own boat race and nearly 100 participants for the bike and paddle parade. We also sold 125 ducks um Wow, so raised $600 for Parks and Recreation scholarships. Those are youth scholarships, that's what the duck race went to. So you were in attendance. What did you think of the event? Yeah, it was awesome.

Mayor Heather Graham:

Lucy loved it. That's good. There was a lot of people down there, people from all over. It's going to be exciting when it's a little bit more accessible. Sure, there are people from all over. Um, it's going to be exciting when it's a little bit more accessible, sure, for people to get in and yeah, and out, um, and bring their boards, and so that's something that I know we're working on, yeah, with the master plan the master plan, but it's really a great amenity and highlight uh for our community.

Mayor Heather Graham:

So super exciting. I'm sure this is going to be an annual event now yeah that'll be put on, and I I can only hope that next year will be even more people down there. So it was good.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Well, and I think you touched on it a little bit. As far as accessibility, I think one thing in particular that a lot of folks were really excited about was that transit was available for, like a shuttle service. We do that for the state fair, but great opportunity to drop off at pillar park or city park. Um, but I actually was speaking with steven meyer the other day. Someone had asked him how soon we should see another proposal for the, the master plan, and I think next month we'll see another iteration of that, and that's one thing you know. As this amenity becomes more and more popular, accessibility is going to be key. Absolutely.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Another thing, though that was also really good right before, right before the event on friday, was down there tons of people in life jackets, yes, so I I feel like, um, maybe your episode with chief huber and tim trujillo, maybe we had some folks that actually paid attention, because I saw adults, kids, everyone was very fast, yeah, you know, yes, especially when it's as high as it was over the weekend from all the rain and I saw some little ones you you know life vest get swept away and they were good swimmers so they were fine, but I could see how it could be very dangerous for anybody to be down there without a life vest.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Absolutely, but I was happy to see more people in life jackets I think I mean like everybody, nearly everyone yeah, yeah, so that was really good. Great jackets, I think I mean like everybody, nearly everyone yeah, yeah, so that was really good. Great, um, so we're we're looking forward to more opportunities for waterworks, park and and down at the levee. Other exciting things that are happening um in the city later this week we have the grand opening for the slab. Yes, we're very excited about that.

Mayor Heather Graham:

It's been packed over there, even with the heat when I drive by.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Yeah, uh, we had the, the 3v3 um, 3v3 say that three times fast. Yeah, uh, last weekend they, they had their annual tournament. We also had a league that went through the summer, but it's like, as soon as it gets just a little bit cooler and I mean only a little bit, because it's still like, yeah, 90, 95 heat of the day, it feels like in the evening it's packed, yeah, um, so it's been great to see a lot of people out there. But thursday we'll have the ribbon cutting and the grand reopening um, all of the artists are going to be there. We'll also have a ice cream truck for the first 300 people cool. So that's exciting, um, and games, prizes, skills drills, all those things thursday at one o'clock at the slab. So be, yeah, we're very excited for that. Anything else, mayor, that you wanted to touch on from last night or this week or any other exciting things we need to know?

Mayor Heather Graham:

about Last night was a long night for the city and for the community. Unfortunately, counselor Gomez's censorship was not um passed it tied, so it, you know, failed three, three, um. So my heart just goes out to the community members that were in attendance um last night and what they had to sit through, which was very unfortunate. And just know that we're here with you and city council doesn't represent the entire city. You also have a mayor who cares deeply about constituents and your rights and what you deserve as community members and what you deserve as community members, and so just know that and know that the city of Pueblo is here for you.

Haley Sue Robinson:

Okay, great, yeah, thanks, mayor, all right, well, I think it's a short one this week for the podcast, yeah, but if you have questions, topic suggestions, don't forget you can email us, mayor@ pueblo. us. You can find our podcast on Apple, spotify, buzzsprout, uh, or YouTube YouTube that's why we're filming and also on channel 17. So email us, like, subscribe, share with your friends and we'll see you next week.