The Mayor's Mixtape-Episode 55

The Mayor's Mixtape episode 55 has a recap about Pueblo City Council Work Session from Monday, April 6 and some legislative updates. Mayor Graham also shares about the trip to Grand Junction for the Downtown Excellence Award from Downtown Colorado Inc. for the Channel Extension and Boathouse Project. 

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Transcript

Welcome And Where To Listen

Haley Sue Robinson 0:07

Welcome to the 55th episode of the Mayor's Mixtape. I am Haley Sue Robinson, Director of Public Affairs for the City of Pueblo.

Mayor, Heather Graham 0:14

Heather Graham, City of Pueblo Mayor.

Brian McCain 0:16

Brian McCain, Chief of Staff.

Haley Sue Robinson 0:18

Okay, and I'd like to remind you you can find our podcast on YouTube, BuzzSprout, Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, and you can email us your questions or topic suggestions, mayor @pueblo.us.

Council Work Session Highlights

Haley Sue Robinson 0:33

And we'll just jump right into it, Mayor. City Council recap. Last week we didn't have a city council meeting or a work session because the city councillors went to the emergency operations center. So we were back this week and we had a work session. There was kind of a variety of topics that were covered.

State Capitol Bills And Local Impact

Haley Sue Robinson 0:56

First, we heard from our lobbyist, and one thing we heard about was um, you know, there's kind of like a holding pattern right now up at at the state. I would

Mayor, Heather Graham 1:05

That's what you call it.

Haley Sue Robinson 1:06

That's what I would call it.

Mayor, Heather Graham 1:07

Oh I call it they're about to drop bombs.

Haley Sue Robinson 1:10

Okay. Okay.

Brian McCain 1:14

The calm before the storm.

Haley Sue Robinson 1:14

Yeah, that is what it feels like. Yeah, exactly.

Mayor, Heather Graham 1:18

Bad bills.

Haley Sue Robinson 1:19

Um we did hear some good news though. Um we were waiting to hear about quite a few, but one in particular was uh related to urban renewal authorities, and that one was killed in committee, and uh that was a bill that we opposed as the city and uh city council wrote um in opposition of that. Um Brian, do you have a couple updates for us?

Brian McCain 1:39

Yeah, the other one was the Prop 123 bill. I think it was House Bill 1313. Um that passed the House and will go to the Senate, which most likely will pass the Senate. The cool thing about that is Pueblo and a few other communities, the way the formula is set up for the Prop 123 funding, which was approved by voters to assist with um housing basically in our municipality. Um the formula was kind of weird and it didn't work for us. And Melissa Cook, one of our city staff, um she's a director of housing and citizen services, uh, she worked with the legislators up north on it to fix this bill basically, so we can still continue to receive this funding.

Haley Sue Robinson 2:21

And I think the other thing that was kind of neat about that is Melissa shared, um, she worked previously worked for the Department of Local Affairs and was kind of on the other side working um on Prop 123, and so she just shared that it was neat to work from the local level um and and work with folks up north and uh uh to make it work specifically for Pueblo.

Brian McCain 2:47

Yeah, and in the stakeholdering process you had every municipality um staff members, both counties, cities across the state. Uh she was leaned on as being kind of the expert on this. And um it it was just it showed how the process should work. There's an issue and a legislator, although not a Pueblo legislator, worked with the city to fix this problem.

Haley Sue Robinson 3:08

Yeah. Which is good. Sometimes we don't always get that outcome. Sometimes they listen to us and then it still doesn't go our way. So yeah, that was a good one.

Microtransit Pilot For Youth Safety

Haley Sue Robinson 3:20

Um okay, so we also heard about a microtransit uh presentation. This one was uh particularly interesting because there wasn't an ask. It was just a presentation um from uh County Commissioner Miles Lucero, um Becky with Boys and Girls Club, and we had a uh youth um participant as well. Um, and I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that, Mayor, and maybe get an idea of what you thought of the presentation.

Mayor, Heather Graham 3:48

Yeah, super exciting uh pilot program. I know that this has been in the works for uh quite some time and a previous city council member, Councilor Martinez, um, has been working on it with her other job, the health department, um making sure that youth have safe transportation um and what that could potentially look like. And you know, they got a a pretty sizable grant um

Haley Sue Robinson 4:16

Yeah

Mayor, Heather Graham 4:17

to be able to do this pilot program. So super exciting. Um we heard from you know different city counselors why this was important to them, why it's important to the community. Um so super excited to to see this come full circle.

Haley Sue Robinson 4:34

Yeah, absolutely. And I I know I talked to our uh director of transit, Ben Valdez, and he's supportive of it also. Um, you know, a portion of that is because there is a need that um public transit service uh stops at 6 p.m. and so then there's uh that gap in transportation, um not just for youth, but but for the community, um, but specifically helping youth get home safely from activities, you know, movies, bowling, going to a friend's house, whatever they're doing.

Mayor, Heather Graham 5:07

Sports games,

Haley Sue Robinson 5:08

um, yeah, hanging out downtown, uh, different events that are happening, and uh a big portion of that is is safety and making sure that they get home in a good, safe manner. Um I think, you know, we were teenagers once and sometimes finding transportation, yeah, our friends could drive us, uh, or our friends couldn't drive us because they weren't quite old enough. Or you know, parents were like, Oh, I don't want to drive all the way over there. Like

Mayor, Heather Graham 5:40

I don't want to take you to Tinseltown.

Haley Sue Robinson 5:43

Yeah, I got that

Mayor, Heather Graham 5:44

pick you up at 10 30 for the movie.

Haley Sue Robinson 5:46

Yeah, I got that one a lot.

Mayor, Heather Graham 5:47

Yeah.

Haley Sue Robinson 5:47

Can you go to an earlier movie? And it's like, Mom, it's not cool to go to the 7 o'clock.

Mayor, Heather Graham 5:52

Yeah.

Haley Sue Robinson 5:52

It's cool to go to the nine o'clock movie.

Mayor, Heather Graham 5:55

Yeah.

Haley Sue Robinson 5:56

Now I'm like, can we go to a movie before 5 30? Yeah. Exactly. But you know, when I'm 14 years old, it's a lot cooler to go at nine o'clock at night. So um Yeah, this is uh this is an interesting program. I think the other thing that's great is when we have presentations. Yeah. We have presentations that come and they don't ask us for money. We like those kinds of presentations, right? Their biggest ask was, hey, can you help us spread the news, be supportive of it? Um and like you said, there were quite a few city counselors who were um enthusiastic about it and supportive, and I think there's a lot of opportunity for it. It'll be great.

Mayor, Heather Graham 6:39

Yep.

Haley Sue Robinson 6:39

Cool.

Fire Staffing Shift Explained Clearly

Haley Sue Robinson 6:40

Um okay, so another presentation that we heard was from uh Fire Chief Barb Huber about the EMO position um and the the switch to engineer. Um and when I say switch, um it's it's not that EMOs would become engineers, it would be that we have less EMOs and more engineers. Uh and so I thought maybe you could talk to us a little bit about this because it sounds like, you know, last time there's some confusion about what does this mean? Are we demoting people? Um so maybe you can help us understand.

Mayor, Heather Graham 7:17

Uh you know, the biggest miscommunication is yeah, that we are asking people, three people to demote to a different position. Uh that's not what we're asking. We're asking uh three EMO positions to be changed to three engineer positions. But those EMOs who are still EMOs um will just be able to go to different fire stations um within the city. And Barb our fire chief brought some really interesting facts um as it relates to Fire Station 10, which is out at the airport, um, which is probably the the station that's going to have the reduction um in EMOs, and those EMOs will have to bid into um inside City Limit stations if passed. And the reason for that is we opened the new fire station um on East Fourth, far East Fourth, right? Which can

Haley Sue Robinson 8:16

Fire Station 6

Mayor, Heather Graham 8:16

get out to the airport

Haley Sue Robinson 8:18

Oh, it's way closer

Mayor, Heather Graham 8:20

under the time that we're required to to be there to provide uh services and life-saving measures. And so we feel that the EMOs, emergency medical officers that are at the airport, um, there's a greater need for them inside city limits. And I think Barb gave some good numbers when she talked about actual ALS calls. Um

Haley Sue Robinson 8:43

call volumes.

Mayor, Heather Graham 8:44

Call volumes. BLS and ALS. So ALS need EMOs, advanced life support. Um and I thought that her stats were you know very shocking um when she told us that at most stations, the lowest station of the other ten stations calls for ALS is at 2,000.

Haley Sue Robinson 9:13

2000.

Mayor, Heather Graham 9:14

The station at the airports was 127, but only four were actually ALS calls.

Haley Sue Robinson 9:26

Yeah, four compared to two thousand.

Mayor, Heather Graham 9:28

Yeah. So you can see that the need for EMOs is much greater um in the city within city limits than it is out at the airport.

Haley Sue Robinson 9:38

I think I think that makes a lot of sense though, when we think about uh you know, most people realize that our um firefighters are going to calls like traffic accidents, medical emergencies, um driving. Uh a lot of times we see things downtown with with folks maybe like during the summer with heat exhaustion, like those are all ALS calls. Um and it would make sense the population is obviously much more dense um here within city limits. But yeah, I thought that was pretty staggering. 2000 to the four. Yeah.

Mayor, Heather Graham 10:14

Yeah. So the the need is is in the city. Um we hope city council will approve the reclassification of three of those positions. Um and the other part is there'll still be ALS out at the airport.

Haley Sue Robinson 10:29

Of course.

Mayor, Heather Graham 10:29

We just won't have 6.

Haley Sue Robinson 10:31

Sure. Um Yeah, the it's a reduced number, but they're still staffing in the way that we need it. Okay, great. Awesome.

Riverwalk Boathouse Award And Momentum

Haley Sue Robinson 10:42

Um well that's all I had as far as uh the city council work session, but I did want to share. Uh last week, Mayor, you um went on a trip to Grand Junction for the downtown Colorado Inc. Um they had their in the game awards presentation, and the City of Pueblo was an award winner um for the channel and channel extension and boathouse project with uh Riverwalk. And it was a pretty exciting event, so I thought maybe you could share with us what that was like last week.

Mayor, Heather Graham 11:18

Lot's of cool projects. We're up and um downtown, right? They have to be a part of a downtown and really something that activates the downtown. We can see the boathouse is going the riverwalk does that right.

Haley Sue Robinson 11:30

Right.

Mayor, Heather Graham 11:30

The boat house is gonna be an added amenity. Um so we we were up against uh some really cool big projects and um yeah, we were successful.

Haley Sue Robinson 11:40

Well and

Mayor, Heather Graham 11:41

Won the big award.

Haley Sue Robinson 11:42

We won the um the big city award. Another award that um was really interesting for a smaller municipality was uh the hotel in Montrose. And uh, you know, hearing about the um economic activation or the downtown activation, uh tourism activation, um, and how those projects relate to municipalities as like a a driver for downtown was pretty cool. It was neat to hear how other um municipalities are trying to revitalize or reuse older buildings um or build new structures like what we did. Um but I know you know four phases of the riverwalk, um it's it's pretty impressive in what twenty-six years of the riverwalk that we've expanded so much and we have seen so much growth um downtown.

Mayor, Heather Graham 12:43

Yeah, it's exciting. We have our elevator inspection today.

Haley Sue Robinson 12:47

Okay.

Mayor, Heather Graham 12:48

So maybe we'll be opening soon.

Haley Sue Robinson 12:50

Yeah, I know that was one thing that uh President Aliff shared on Monday. He's very excited for the day that he gets to say this is this is the date for the opening. Um of course the channel is open. Um you can walk around the entire river walk. Um, but we are very excited to get in the building and celebrate the actual boathouse. Um and I think some other things that are really neat about that project is that there's gonna be catering services available, um additional event space, and then I also just think about you know, we've been so excited about this boathouse, but then we added the Da Vinci Museum right there and how those those two just adjacent to each other. It's it's pretty exciting for downtown Pueblo and what we have to look forward to for the summer.

Mayor, Heather Graham 13:41

Busy summer.

Haley Sue Robinson 13:42

Yes.

Mayor, Heather Graham 13:42

Looking forward to it.

Haley Sue Robinson 13:43

Yeah, me too. I was talking with um uh actually it was my grandparents uh the other day, and they couldn't believe that you can see the big river walk sign from I-25 when you're driving, and I think that's another thing about the boathouse that is such an activation to get people off of I-25, you know, not people like you and I or uh the chief of staff, we're gonna get off I-25 and come downtown so we can come to work. But people who are driving through Pueblo, um, it's like a big billboard. And so and it's always there.

Mayor, Heather Graham 14:18

It's a big billboard.

Haley Sue Robinson 14:19

It is, yeah. Yeah, so I'm excited about that. Um anything else you want to share about your time in Grand Junction and and what was what that was like?

Mayor, Heather Graham 14:29

No, we got to meet with uh their economic development director.

Haley Sue Robinson 14:33

Mm-hmm.

Mayor, Heather Graham 14:34

GJEP.

Haley Sue Robinson 14:35

GJEP.

Mayor, Heather Graham 14:36

Um so that was cool to see, you know, what they're doing. So we visited them a year ago. Um and uh a lot a lot has changed uh in the city of Pueblo, and that's you know, that's kind of where it all started is uh because of my first trip to Grand Junction um a year ago and kind of seeing uh what the community could be, should be doing. So um to Grand Junction's great. Uh it's very similar to Pueblo, outdoor rec, downtown. Um so cool place to go visit.

Haley Sue Robinson 15:09

Yeah, I mean they have a lot of outdoor recreation. Their their mountains are right there. You're looking right at 'em. Um, but I would say as far as our like river trail and uh connectivity here in Pueblo.

Mayor, Heather Graham 15:24

We're better.

Haley Sue Robinson 15:24

We might have them beat.

Mayor, Heather Graham 15:26

Yeah, got it.

Haley Sue Robinson 15:28

Just saying. So it's cool.

Mayor, Heather Graham 15:32

Yeah.

Haley Sue Robinson 15:32

I just think we might be like a little cooler.

Mayor, Heather Graham 15:35

Yeah, I think so too. Okay.

Haley Sue Robinson 15:36

Okay. I'm a little biased, but hopefully they don't hate me for that. Uh

Public Meetings, Town Hall, Cleanup

Haley Sue Robinson 15:42

okay. Well, uh we have some upcoming events. Tonight we have the wastewater community meeting um at 5 30 at the YMCA, which is located at 3200 East Spaulding Avenue, and we'll be talking about the sewer system rehabilitation program on the west side of Pueblo. Uh that's open to the public. We hope that you'll join us. Uh also this Friday we have the District 1 Town Hall meeting with District 1 Counselor Diane Danti and at large city counselor Selena Ruiz -Gomez. Uh that will be at Barkman Library in the Minnequa Works Credit Union uh community room at noon. So we also hope folks will join us for that. Um anything else coming up that we need to know about?

Mayor, Heather Graham 16:27

Trash cleanup.

Haley Sue Robinson 16:28

Yeah.

Mayor, Heather Graham 16:29

May 2nd, mark your calendars.

Haley Sue Robinson 16:31

May 2nd. Yeah.

Mayor, Heather Graham 16:32

Clean your yards.

Haley Sue Robinson 16:34

I that's what I'm doing right now. Okay. Yeah.

Mayor, Heather Graham 16:36

Packing up.

Haley Sue Robinson 16:38

Yeah, I was cleaning cleaning my alley and uh Spring cleaning. Spring cleaning in the backyard. So yeah. I got some I'm gonna have some trash ready. Yeah, it'll be good. Uh okay. Well, anything else you want to add, Mayor?

Mayor, Heather Graham 16:53

I think that's it.

Haley Sue Robinson 16:54

Cool, short and sweet today. Uh want to remind the listener, you can find us on Apple, YouTube, Buzzsprout, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, and um you can also watch us on local channel 17. And don't forget you can email us, mayor @pueblo.us, and we will see you next week.