Pueblo City Council to decide again Monday whether to put anti-mayor question to voters

The majority of Pueblo city councilors have rebuked an effort to abolish the mayor’s office multiple times over the past year.

Councilor Lori Winner, however, is reviving an effort to ask voters to amend the structure of city government with an ordinance that will be on council's agenda for a first reading Monday.

Winner told the Chieftain that the ordinance would simply revert the city government to the pre-2019 city manager form of government. She is hoping to pick up votes from councilors who objected to changes to the city government structure that were included in a petition that failed earlier this year.

Most recent update: Pueblo City Council rejects special election for anti-mayor question

The timeline of the anti-mayor campaign

The anti-mayor effort in Pueblo, spearheaded by local resident Judalon Smyth and aided by Winner, has been ongoing since last summer.

Pueblo voters approved an amendment to the city charter in fall 2017 that abolished the city manager’s office and replaced it with a “strong mayor” system. Denver and Colorado Springs are the only other Colorado municipalities with that governmental structure, in which the mayor runs the city's executive office and city council mostly has legislative power.

Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar was a proponent of switching to the strong mayor government and later won a runoff election in early 2019, making him Pueblo’s first mayor in recent memory.

Gradisar’s first term ends in January 2024. He’s running for re-election, and several other candidates have launched campaigns, including two city councilors: Heather Graham and Dennis Flores.

Smyth had been communicating with the city clerk’s office for a few months before she spoke during a work session in August 2022, asking for city council to directly place a measure on the ballot to get rid of the mayor's office. Discussing the topic was not on the work session agenda, but council discussed a ballot question about the city’s structure of government after Winner brought it up.

Smyth left the room after the majority of councilors indicated they would not seek to put the question on the ballot, with some saying the city has not had enough time to know how the mayoral system works.

Controversy arises after the city misinformed petitioners

Petitions for signatures started circulating early this year. Organizers did not collect enough signatures to meet a deadline for a May election, which would have been held simultaneously with a special election in Pueblo West, which could’ve saved the city money.

Petitioners were told how many signatures were required to put the question on a ballot, but that information was inaccurate and they collected only half the number they actually needed — a fact they didn’t find out until after all collection deadlines had passed.

Questions can end up on the ballot if citizens collect enough signatures or by referral from an elected body.

Winner attempted to sponsor another ordinance that would’ve put the petitioners’ charter amendment on a special election ballot. Winner and Councilor Regina Maestri were the only two of seven councilors to support that ordinance, while Graham voted yes on an amendment to move the question to November. That failed without a majority.

Winner helped explore a legal challenge but decided not to follow through because it was too expensive: It would’ve cost $40,000 to $50,000 in attorney fees to bring the case before a judge, she said.

Could Winner’s new ordinance pass?

Winner said she hopes this new iteration will pass because some of her fellow councilors — she mentioned Dennis Flores and Larry Atencio — were initially concerned that the original petition language included several changes that would have given city council more powers than it had before the charter amendment passed, such as the power to appoint the city clerk.

But Winner said her new ordinance reverts the city charter to the same as it was before voters approved the swap to the mayoral government in 2017.

"I'm fixing that problem, hoping to get their vote," she said, referring to Flores and Atencio.

Winner said petitioners aren’t trying to collect signatures again this summer because they feel the city would find another reason to invalidate the campaign even if organizers followed all the rules.

She added that the city should investigate what happened and why Dan Kogovsek, the former city attorney, was asked to by the mayor to retire.

Atencio himself signed the petition, but he later told the Chieftain he wouldn’t have signed it if he knew about the differences between the charter amendment circulated by petitioners and the original charter language before the swap to the mayoral government.

Flores said he still wouldn’t support this new ordinance because voters approved the change to the mayoral system only a few years ago.

"There might be somewhere down the road where there might be a justification for going back (to a city manager form of government)," Flores said. "It's too early right now; we need to give the voters a chance for it to work."

Flores added that as a candidate for mayor, it wouldn't make sense for him to support an effort to get rid of the office he's trying to win.

Atencio was unavailable for comment Friday because he was on a trip to Chihuahua, Mexico, along with Gradisar, related to Pueblo’s sister-city relationship with that city.

Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics for the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com or on Twitter, @annalynnfrey.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo City Council will vote again on mayor governance ballot issue