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 24
Mayor Heather Graham is back for the 24th episode of the Mayor's Mixtape. Like, subscribe and share with your friends wherever you get your podcasts. This week's episode gives a breakdown of the Work Session from the City Council meeting on Monday, August 4, 2025 regarding the Colorado State Fair, Property Tax and Wastewater improvement proposal for the St. Charles Industrial Park.
Submit your questions or topic suggestions to mayor@pueblo.us. Thank you for listening!
Welcome to the 24th episode of the Mayor's Mixtape. I'm Haley Sue Robinson, Director of Public Affairs for the City of Pueblo.
Mayor, Heather Graham:City of Pueblo Mayor Heather Graham.
Haley Sue Robinson:And you can find us on YouTube, Buzzsprout, Spotify, Apple. You also can watch a replay on local channel 17. You also can watch a replay on local channel 17. Wherever you get your podcasts like, share, subscribe and if you want to suggest a topic or ask a question, you can email us, mayor@pueblo. us. Speaking of questions, we got a question from one of the listeners, Mayor, should Pueblo have a dump closer to the east side, Belmont and Blend? With more growth comes more trash, and there's no dump on that side of town.
Mayor, Heather Graham:I think that with the current landfill that we have off the Beulah Highway, we have additional capacity that the city is currently the owner of, and we've been working with the owner of the rest of the property maybe to sell, uh, our portion, okay, um, in order for them, if, if they get to that capacity point. But for right now the city dump is it's sufficient for our needs currently.
Haley Sue Robinson:um, I also know because a lot of folks worry about affordability and so we sell the large voucher tickets at Public Works. You can also get them online. But that's also part of the reason why you and Councilor Martinez started the Team Up to Clean Up the Twice Annual event. Yeah, just because a lot of folks are like so expensive, or even just you know, to take a trip, maybe I only have a mattress and so I don't really want to go to the dump or something and it's.
Mayor, Heather Graham:It's just a convenience factor yeah, and we'll be having our uh fall team up to clean up event in October. I don't know if we've set the date.
Haley Sue Robinson:We have not set the date, yeah, but but it's normally October and um two sites, the one at CSU Pueblo and the one at the Colorado State Fair, and I think that's a a big convenience for a lot of people. A lot of people love it. So cool, good question, all right. So, actually, speaking of the Colorado State Fair, last night we had the executive director from the State Fair at the work session and shared some new things that are available this year, like Sensory Day, the exceptional rodeo, and then like side improvements, such as air conditioning, improvement at the Palace of Agriculture which I always think is funny because locals we just call it the Ag Palace, right, but it is called the Palace of Agriculture, and I saw it on the screen and I just like laughed because I kind of forget that that's what it's called and then they also did an asphalt resurface of the kids carnival area. So those are some exciting things coming. Mayor, I know you're a big fan of the Colorado State Fair. What are you looking forward to most this year?
Mayor, Heather Graham:The food yeah yeah, I like to go out and have the carnival food and the Rodeo. That's always fun too that is really fun.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, and there's a. There's a couple opportunities for rodeo. Um, I think it's like the first five.
Mayor, Heather Graham:Yeah, I think so too.
Haley Sue Robinson:The rodeo series, yeah yeah, yeah, so it's a lot of fun, um, but you know I'm looking forward to to the state fair. Actually, uh, hopefully next week or in the coming weeks we're going to talk a little bit more about what the city does for the state fair and prep for that.
Mayor, Heather Graham:Um, well, I can tell you that we're bringing trash cans, dumpsters, around street sweepers, something that we've been doing for the last couple years and seems to help with the trash.
Haley Sue Robinson:I know the neighbors really appreciate the extra dumpsters. That's one thing that folks complain about year after year is people leave and then they just throw their trash in the street and say, well, I had fun at the fair, someone else can clean it up.
Haley Sue Robinson:So I think that's been a huge help yeah, for sure yeah um
Mayor, Heather Graham:I also like going to the fair on the last day of the fair. Last year too. Um, last year I went to help the city sales tax division okay collect the city sales tax on all the good.
Haley Sue Robinson:Oh, yeah, that we're still then.
Mayor, Heather Graham:It was interesting to see the process and how that plays out and. How hard the staff works to be able to to collect and get the amounts right for all the vendors and the fair. So it brings a large dollar amount sales tax wise into the city, and so we're super appreciative of that.
Haley Sue Robinson:Well, in the sales tax division they actually do a lot of prep work ahead of time. They work really hard that last day for collection but they go out and meet with each of the vendors. Make sure they're licensed Yep. I know they work hand in hand also with the food inspectors from the health department.
Mayor, Heather Graham:So there's a lot of prep buildings, so they go out and inspect all the electrical and all the generators for each of the vendors that are set up. So it's, it's quite the push for all, yeah, all government involved.
Haley Sue Robinson:Cool, very exciting. Well, um, the theme for this year is growing the tradition, so don't forget to get your tickets or plan to attend your favorite event. Um, there's some pretty good lineups. I know I'm gonna go see Fluffy, I'm excited for that, but state fairs in town um August 22nd through September 1st, so we're excited for that. Uh, mayor, another thing that we talked about last night for the work session was the wastewater improvement proposal at the St. Charles Industrial Park. We heard from Economic Development Partners, PEDCO and their request for wastewater infrastructure improvements. Can you kind of walk us through what this proposal looks like, or potential, sure?
Mayor, Heather Graham:So in the southern end of town. There is a need for infrastructure, wastewater improvements that are going to be a pretty hefty price.
Mayor, Heather Graham:We had the number 16 to 17 million last night for could be specific projects going in, could just be residential and commercial users down the line, a ne line, and so PEDCO came to City Council to ask to push forward an initiative to be able to use half-cent sales tax dollars to put this infrastructure in to help grow the St Charles Industrial Park for possibly prospects that we're working with right now or maybe down the line for residential development or commercial development. There were some good questions by city council.
Mayor, Heather Graham:I thought you know we haven't quite seen a master plan yet developed for the area when it comes to residential or commercial, and who those users would potentially be, what developers it would potentially benefit for this infrastructure to go in. And so I know that the city council is going to be inquiring about next steps moving forward. What additional costs would be? We're going to look at getting an engineering firm to help consult on some of these issues and bring it back to city council. We learned last night that this could be a year to a year and a half process in order to even start to get the lift station in, because there's so many moving parts involved, and so this would have to be something that started now if we want to see it come to fruition in the next couple of years. So City Council gave the direction last night to move forward the process so that they could have more of their questions answered. So do we think?
Mayor, Heather Graham:we'll probably see additional work session presentations for this or I think first you'll see a um, an ordinance, come through about um hiring a consulting firm or an engineer firm to come in and um lay out what the exact cost and needs are going to be but I'm not really sure how they do that when they don't know exactly what you're upsizing a lift station for.
Mayor, Heather Graham:We don't know how many houses, we don't know what kind of commercial real estate, if this is a prospect of PEDCO's, we don't know what their max user rate could be with all of their phases, and so I think that there's a lot of questions up in the air. So I assume that we'll have several work sessions moving forward on this topic, got it.
Haley Sue Robinson:I also know there were a lot of questions for our Director of Wastewater, Andra Ahrens, last night and one of the things she mentioned was when wastewater improvement takes place, then we have to consider things like permitting and then going potentially into a design phase to expand the plant. Um, can you explain maybe where those dollars would come from to expand the plant or what that looks?
Mayor, Heather Graham:like. So, um, right now our plant sits at about 60 percent. If we were to bring in a large user or several large users, we would hit that 80% threshold in which we would need to be in design phase to upgrade the size of our Wastewater plant, and upgrading of the plant could be upwards of $20 million for the clarifiers that would need to be put into place.
Mayor, Heather Graham:Those costs would be paid by the ratepayers. So if you remember, I think last year City Council there was a request, there was a study that was done that said that we needed to increase our wastewater fees and City Council voted that down. So at this time we're not collecting those additional rates in order to maximize our plant, if we needed to. So that would have to be another topic in conversation. That would have to be brought back to city council.
Haley Sue Robinson:Because wastewater is an enterprise, so those fees that are collected we see it on our water bill and also, like lots of folks, get really confused of hey, my water bill is so high and so then they call us but that's with Pueblo Water. But then wastewater fees are collected with the water bill and so there's sometimes confusion of why are you guys charging me so much money? Yeah, because it's a couple different entities on there. Yeah, exactly.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, so I think that this is a much larger topic and it's going to take a lot of discussion moving forward it just seems like there needs to be, uh, further clarification of how the growth progresses, or or how we want to approach it and you know, when we're specifically talking about this, um, we're we're looking at a prospect that could be a large users right.
Mayor, Heather Graham:so when we are talking about growth I heard that a lot last night um, this could potentially be for one business. Oh wow, one business could use half of the capacity that we have left at the plant.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay.
Mayor, Heather Graham:So the growth would naturally come from the jobs that would be brought because of that one business. But I wouldn't necessarily say it would be because so many additional businesses would be in the industrial park. It could just be one business, it could just be one. So I think that that's also something that city council needs to have more information on whether this is one large user, what multiple users would entail, what multiple residential and what kind of the mix would be, and then when we would hit the capacity point, because there's just a lot at play right now.
Haley Sue Robinson:Which then would maybe help with the decision process, because there was discussion about if it was one large lift station or if it was multiple smaller lift stations. Multiple smaller lift stations seems to be something more geared towards residential development, because it it would be spread out over the users, whereas that large one, if it were to be one, then we would just have to invest in a big, large lift station all at once.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, okay, thanks for clarifying that um, it's as clear as I can, yeah well, I mean I, I will say I felt like Andra did a really good job of. Sometimes she gets a little over my head and I have to say, Andra, remember it's just me so I gotta I gotta explain it to others. She did a great job last night, yeah so I felt like it was uh enough, in layman's terms, for the rest of us.
Haley Sue Robinson:And I didn't actually mean to make a pun about clarifying but, then I realized like we were talking about clarifiers at the Wastewater Department. So yeah, I'll have to give that one to.
Haley Sue Robinson:Andra A new one she can use. We also heard from our county treasurer last night about property tax. We won't go into all of that just because that's with the county, but I would encourage any of our listeners if they didn't catch the work session last night, either check it out on our Facebook page or it's also uploaded to our YouTube page as well when that's finished. So a lot of good information there. But it was a good work session night and not too late. Yeah, so that was nice.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, yeah, anything else you want to add about the work session last night, mayor? No, we covered it. Yeah, I do want to remind folks that this Saturday El Centro de la Quinto Sol is doing their school supply drive, so they have a free giveaway for students, kindergarten through 12th grade. They're doing free haircuts and school supplies while they last, so that is from 9 to 11 am on Saturday morning. It's hard to believe it's August and school's coming back, but lots of great opportunities for kids to get what they need, so that should be a great opportunity. Another thing I do want to bring up to our listeners as well we took a great trip to the dog park.
Mayor, Heather Graham:We did yes.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yes, so if you haven't seen the video on the Mayor's Facebook page we put a little GoPro on Lucy. The first dog, yep, had some fun at City Park Dog Park, and it's also on our Instagram page. So if you haven't seen that, it's pretty entertaining.
Mayor, Heather Graham:And then stay tuned for the dogs.
Haley Sue Robinson:Oh yeah.
Mayor, Heather Graham:Being able to swim at City Park and that's going to be September. Pups in the pool, september 1st september 1st labor day. So, yeah, more weeks and pups in the pools, yeah, that's fun it is fun.
Haley Sue Robinson:The dogs love it and like it's just kind of mass chaos with all the fur and everything, but they have two sessions and it's a great time. Yeah, yeah, so cool. Well, it's a little bit of a light week, um, with the work session and everything else, but looking forward to more to come next week. Don't forget, you can find us on YouTube, apple, spotify, buzzsprout, watch us on channel 17,. Wherever you get your podcasts, don't forget to like, share, subscribe and you can email us for your topic or questions. Mayor@ pueblo. us and we'll see you next week.