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 25
Mayor Graham gives a break down of the City Council meeting from Monday, August 11 regarding the metro district for CSU Pueblo, the 1/2 cent sales tax initiative, the 1% sales tax initiative and the decision to veto to the City Council-City Manager ballot initiative. What's up ahead for the November 4th General Municipal election?
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Welcome to the 25th 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 we have some exciting news we hit 1,000 downloads on Buzzsprout this week. So thank you to our listeners, thank you to everyone who is liked, subscribed, downloaded. That's actually just on Buzzsprout, so you can also find us on Spotify, Apple, Youtube, watch us on Channel 17. So thank you for listening and if you have questions or topic suggestions, you can email us, mayor@ pueblo. us. Okay, we're doing this a little later than normal, Mayor, because we had kind of a late night on.
Mayor Heather Graham:Monday, Tuesday yeah.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yes
Mayor Heather Graham:And a busy week
Haley Sue Robinson:a very busy week. Yeah, absolutely. So it started with a. The City Council meeting started with a potential service plan for the CSU Pueblo Metro District and that was approved 7 to 0. But can you please explain what does that mean? Moving forward?
Haley Sue Robinson:Because it sounds like there's still a potential vote for voter approval to move forward.
Mayor Heather Graham:So this is just the very first step of essentially putting the community on notice about the Metro District at CSU Pueblo. So it'll go to a vote of the people this November.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay.
Mayor Heather Graham:And there's lots of steps to still follow. This is a financing tool that the college has been working very hard to put together in order to do some development out of the college. So student housing, hotels, commercial development.
Mayor Heather Graham:So...
Haley Sue Robinson:shopping and amenities
Mayor Heather Graham:Shopping amenities, so it'll be a. I think it's a huge need for not only the college but that northern area of town, because there's not a lot of amenities up in that area, and so I'm very supportive of this. This is how communities grow. When you look at Denver or Colorado Springs, you see lots of metro districts within the City of Denver and Aurora, and so I think that this is a fantastic tool that the college has put together in order to bring new development, new students, new families, new people into our community, so super excited about it.
Haley Sue Robinson:It would potentially just change the face of that university. I mean, not that we've been out of college that long, but even in the time that we've been away from that campus, look how different CSU-Pueblo is. But this is taking it a step further, to the point that you made of the amenities and the necessities in that area, so how it could potentially transform that.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, it's exciting!
Haley Sue Robinson:Cool.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so that will be put before voters this fall, in November, and there's more to come on that. Yep, okay, great. Speaking of ballot measures, we had quite a few on the agenda. We'll start with the 1% sales tax. So do you want to talk a little bit about why that ballot measure was proposed and what that potentially looks like for the city budget?
Mayor Heather Graham:Sure. So city sales tax has not been raised in over 50 years. The city currently collects 3% of every dollar spent in the community, which is three pennies on every dollar, and then that money is put into our coffers and that is how we pay for quality of life services. It's how we pay our police department, fire department, parks department, wastewater department. Oh no, wastewater department is paid with a fee, stormwater department fee, but anything that you think outside of those two departments is paid for by that general fund percentage point. So I know it's a big ask for the community, but we've also seen our infrastructure dollars drop, our capital improvement dollars drop over the last two years, and they'll continue to drop if sales tax continues to decline. And so this is going to allow the voters of the community to decide if they want to pay for the services that they currently get or services that we might be able to increase moving forward.
Haley Sue Robinson:I think it's interesting. We've had a couple folks ask the question of why we would put this before the voters. But you know, civics class taught us that that would be taxation without representation. So that's why it's going to be on the ballot in the fall. But one thing that is interesting is and you mentioned it so we haven't raised sales tax in 50 years. But a couple of tax comparisons across the state. So Arvada has a tax rate of 7.96%, boulder has a sales tax rate of 9.045%. Centennial has a sales tax rate of 6.75% and our city sales tax rate is currently 3.7. This would bring it to 4.7%. So if we look at some of those other cities across Colorado, we're still pretty well below, pretty well in comparison,
Mayor Heather Graham:Pretty well below in comparison.
Mayor Heather Graham:Um, you know, when we talk about pueblo not growing over the last 50 years, well, um, part of the reason we're not growing is because we haven't been able to provide the infrastructure that you need to provide. to be able to grow, we need to pay for trucks, developers do sidewalks, you need to do wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, and if the city doesn't have the funding to pay for that, it kind of makes us unattractable when it comes to people wanting to bring their developments into the community.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah. So then we've seen some of the growth in partners or neighboring cities up north, like Colorado Springs or Monument or Castle Rock, and how their growth has kind of exponentially gone through the roof over maybe the last decade to 15 years. I know that the city made a priority with some of the ARPA dollars to put in some infrastructure. So we're starting to see those improvements, build that growth, like along Public Boulevard and on the west side, or even Wild Horse Extension. So that's essentially what this could potentially bring is more of that growth and development.
Mayor Heather Graham:Definitely. If we have the dollars to invest into capital and infrastructure, you're going to attract different types of people to the community and different businesses and different developers coming in to build housing or commercial development.
Haley Sue Robinson:Mm-hmm, I think another thing that you talk about pretty often is the capital improvement fund and how that's looked over the last couple of years and we had a lot of federal dollars that influxed but are now gone, that have been spent through ARPA and then when voters approved to de-bruce and what that did to invest in our roads, can you talk about what that looks like now?
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, so from 2021 on, the ballot measure for de-brucing passed, so the city was able to keep those extra dollars that could have potentially been returned to citizens because of TABOR and they had previous administration, that was, you know, a ballot measure that they had presented and if we were able to keep those de-bruce dollars, we were going to put them into roads.
Mayor Heather Graham:Revenue for roads. I think is what the ballot measure was called. And so over the last several years since 2021, we've been paving $10 million a year at least in roads in the community, and so those extra funds now have been spent, and it's not that they've been spent on growing government. I hear that a lot it's been spent on infrastructure, on roads. It was spent exactly the way that it was
Haley Sue Robinson:Rich. Dillon Drive. Hudson
Mayor Heather Graham:Said it was going to be spent.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, we can see where the roads have been improved. Yep Prairie Even. City Center Northern Prairie.
Mayor Heather Graham:Elizabeth, they're slated to get paved for next year. So we've done what we told the voters we were going to do with that extra money, so we don't have this giant reserve like we previously did, upwards of $40 million. That money was to be allocated to roads and infrastructure and that's what the city spent that money on.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so we previously were paving roads at 10 million each year. What does that budget look like now?
Mayor Heather Graham:2.5 million.
Mayor Heather Graham:And that money is not coming from general sales tax dollars. That money is coming from a highway user tax that we get from the state.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so that's significantly decreased because of our budgetary constraints
Mayor Heather Graham:80%
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. So if we're going to continue on the path that we've built the last few years, we need this additional sales tax revenue.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, and that's kind of the proposal that I gave City Council is for the 2026 budget, because we won't know if this ballot measure passes until after the budget has been pretty much completed and sent to City Council in November. I think that we could allocate all of the funding for the 1% for 2026's budget to a capital improvement project for roads and we have roads that we can pave if we know what those are, we know what those projects looks like.
Mayor Heather Graham:And so.
Mayor Heather Graham:I think that that would be a good trade-off um for the community. You would have $26 million of roads paved right away, if that's, if that's what City Council decided. I mean. I present the budget. City Council um is the one who passes it.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, okay. So, speaking of pass or failure, we also had the half-cent sales tax, the sales tax renewal and the expanded criteria ballot measure failed four to three.
Mayor Heather Graham:So, good catch, got it, we got it, got it, we're good.
Haley Sue Robinson:We're good, okay, okay, all right. So currently, the half cent sales tax and the use fund is renewed through 2026. But with this ballot measure failing, what are the next steps?
Mayor Heather Graham:So I know that Councilor Flores is going to bring a resolution forward on the 25th. Okay, to extend the half-cent sales tax. So it would go on the ballot for 2026 renewal. Yes, so it extended five more years.
Haley Sue Robinson:It would go on the ballot this fall and then it would renew past the 2026 timeframe.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, so it's my understanding that he is going to be bringing a resolution forward on the 25th and he is also going to be bringing an adjustment to the criteria ordinance allowing 10% of all the funds to be capped out, kind of what I had proposed previously. My proposal was at 15% and Councilor Flores is bringing a 10% number to City Council for an ordinance on the 25th as well.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so those are two separate ones the resolution, so it goes on the ballot, and then the other is an ordinance for that cap that he's proposing at 10%.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yep,
Haley Sue Robinson:okay, great. So that's what we'll see
Mayor Heather Graham:On the 25th.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, moving forward, great. Another ballot measure that we spoke about on Tuesday morning was the City Council City Manager Form of Government Ballot Initiative. Obviously, this would strip away your current elected position as mayor, which would revert us back to the form of government that we had for over 50 years. Um, it was then approved by voters in 2017 and then in 2019, um, our previous mayor, Nick Gradisar, was elected, and so you're the second mayor in the city's recent history. Um, so what does that look like ?
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, so it passed 5-2. So the Mayor can veto any ordinance and send it back to City Council, no matter what it passes by, and ask City Council to reconsider. So I vetoed it on Wednesday morning.
Mayor Heather Graham:City council will be getting the veto notification today and it will be back Friday Yep today, Friday, and it will be back on the agenda for reconsideration on the 25th
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, so, um, that veto allows them to reconsider it and potentially revote, which then might change whether it's on the ballot in November or not.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, if somebody changes their vote, it wouldn't go to the ballot in November. So you know, there's some the language that they submitted to the vote of the people after carefully going line by line to see what was submitted. It essentially says that City Council would then take control on November 5th so a day after the election, before a budget is passed for 2026, and that they would have to hire a city employee, somebody that works at the city employee, that that would be the interim.
Haley Sue Robinson:They'd appoint a current city employee as the interim city manager.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah.
Mayor Heather Graham:I think that there's several things wrong with this idea. I don't think it's a very thought-out plan. For city council, who has not been involved in the budgetary discussions. I've held over 20 budget meetings already for 2026's budget and I've had one city councilor show up to one meeting, so they haven't been very involved in what 2026's budget looks like. They have not given direction. They do not do the day-to-day operations of the City of Pueblo like I do. So if this was to pass, I think that the government would essentially come to a stop. They would have no approved budget for 2026. They, you know, are not in every day-to-day personnel issues, project issues, budgetary expenditures, revenue. That's just not something that they do the day-to-day on.
Haley Sue Robinson:But if we reverted back to a city council, city manager, they could manage the day-to-day.
Mayor Heather Graham:No, they still wouldn't do the day-to-day. So instead of having an elected official who's accountable to the voters of the community, they would have a city manager who's accountable to four members of city council right,
Haley Sue Robinson:Four, because it's a majority.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yeah, if a city manager came forward and the city council directed them to do something or didn't like what they were doing, four members of city council could then fire the city manager. Um, so it's really not a voice of the constituency, it's a voice for city council members which could can be scary for the community.
Haley Sue Robinson:Yeah, I understand.
Mayor Heather Graham:You know, over the last week, I've been reading about what other cities are doing. Councilor Gomez has stated that other cities are reverting back to from strong mayor forms of government to city manager forms of government, and that's just not true. There's three strong mayors in Colorado: Denver, Colorado Springs and myself. It's really a need when you have a population like we have. It's a need when you want to go up to the legislation and you want to speak as a unified voice on behalf of the community.
Mayor Heather Graham:This year, I was up at the state several times. No city council member was there to speak with me in favor or against anything. We were able to stop a lot of bad legislation coming into the community, something I'm super proud of. The amount of grant dollars that the city has received since the previous administration and even since I've been here. The city was never receiving those types of grants before because, again, you have one voice, one direction, one person leading the operations of the city of Pueblo, and not seven city council people who have different directions and different needs, going all over the place and not being able to come to a common consensus.
Mayor Heather Graham:So, in my opinion and in Pueblo's opinion, right, because this was a ballot issue in 2017 that passed. They decided that they wanted to see a strong mayoral form of government. So now I have city council who what? I believe that they don't like my personality. Okay, they in their, you know. So when the mayor does a veto, right, she has to go, or he has to go and look at, well, what are the reasons why City Council wants to pass this legislation? What does that like? Does it make sense? So, as I re-watched over the work sessions for the last several months, um, about what City Council has said and the reason why they want to go back to a strong mayor form of government, uh, some examples of why they wanted to do that is because they stated that I was unprofessional, unsuccessful and vindictive, and those seem like adjectives to describe somebody and not reasons to revert back to a type of government.
Mayor Heather Graham:So if people don't like the person in the position, you can recall them, you can vote them out the next time the term comes. But I think to change the form of government because City Council does not like my personality. Um, I think that that's bonkers okay.
Haley Sue Robinson:So another thing that I think is a little bit of a misconception or I'd like to maybe further explain is your role is the administrative or the, Executive branch of the government and theirs is the legislative branch
Mayor Heather Graham:Policymakers
Haley Sue Robinson:Yep, correct, okay, so walk us through the process of when you bring forward a resolution or an ordinance and your role versus the city council role.
Mayor Heather Graham:Right. So lately I have found myself as, like the eighth city council person. Right, okay, like policy and legislation that is coming forward on the city council agenda. Issues like the $300 merchant theft three days mandatory jail that I just recently changed to the $100 limit, or the property damage that city council just passed on Monday night, which would revert in longer jail sentences and more jail time for people who do substantial amounts of property damage to businesses or homes. That is legislation. That is policy that I crafted and created and brought to the City Council for them to vote on. Right, okay.
Mayor Heather Graham:So City Council's role is to create policy and it is my role to execute the policy. It is my role to make sure that we have the police department enforcing the laws. It is my role to make sure that when the city receives grant dollars, that our finance department is doing the proper requirements and reporting. It is my role to manage all 800 city employees that work for the City of Pueblo. It is City Council's role to listen to staff reports, staff when they come before City Council saying that we need to do these projects for reasons X, Y and Z. That is, City Council's role is to be the check and balance to the administration.
Mayor Heather Graham:My role is to be the check and balance to the city council. If they were to revert to a city manager form of government, there would be no check and balance. It would be City Council four members of city council controlling the City of Pueblo, unchecked.
Haley Sue Robinson:So there is no executive and legislative, it's just all legislative and demanding the execution of the city manager.
Mayor Heather Graham:Yes.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay, okay, interesting. So they'll receive your information about your veto Today, today, on Friday, and then what will we see as we move forward?
Mayor Heather Graham:So over the next week we'll I think that they'll have, you know, some time to reconsider. My line is always open, you know, to talk about what the issue is or why they think that we need to go back to a city manager form of government. I've not heard any substantial reason, or any reason for that matter, that would make sense to go back with all the progress that we have been able to do over the last. Nick was in office for five years. I've been in office for a year and a half.
Mayor Heather Graham:So over the last six and a half years you have seen economic growth, you have seen sales tax numbers grow, you have seen people move to Pueblo. You have seen you look around the city. We have a new boathouse, we have 300 new apartments coming in to the boulevard, we have infrastructure, we have roads being paved, we have police officers, we have three new fire stations, we have a beautiful riverwalk. There is a lot of good stuff going on in the community going on in the community, and I would just hate to see that come to a screeching halt because we don't have a plan moving forward okay, all right.
Haley Sue Robinson:So it'll be interesting to see what happens on that August 25th city council meeting. Uh, a lot will be. It's a lot to digest yeah um, I felt. I felt like monday and tuesday was a lot you know, yeah, I've gone through two elections, right.
Mayor Heather Graham:so I've gone through a regular election, a runoff, in which I won both of those, and I've successfully beat a recall. So it sounds like the people at pueblo have spoken, sure, um, if I have to go through it again, I'll go through it again. But I believe in this role, I believe that we're doing good things in the community and I just hope that city council, city council, has been a part of the good things that we have been able to do in the community and move the community forward. And I hope that they realize that and that they see it. And I hope that they realize that and that they see it and that unless we have consensus, we're not going to be able to continue to move the city forward. So I hope that they'll reconsider the decision they made.
Haley Sue Robinson:Okay. Well, that's a great recap of city council this week. Thanks for that, Mayor. So we'd like to invite you to email us topics or questions, mayor@pueblo. us. You can also find us on Apple, Spotify, Buzzsprout, YouTube or on local channel 17. And I think we might take a brief hiatus next week, but we'll see you next time for episode 26.