'The state of our city is strong': Gradisar optimistic about Pueblo's present and future

Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar delivered an optimistic message about the city’s wellbeing during his 2024 State of the City address Friday morning.

During the nearly 40-minute public address, some of Gradisar’s biggest supporters and critics listened to him discuss the city’s economic health, assessments of public safety and future development.

“The reality is that the state of our city is strong,” Gradisar said.

Gradisar is currently up for re-election. He faces a challenge in the upcoming runoff election from city council President Heather Graham, who totaled nearly 500 more votes than Gradisar in November 2023. City charter requires a runoff election if one candidate does not receive more than 50% of votes.

Economic growth

The mayor said that the city is adding hundreds of new jobs over the next few years, including at the wind turbine manufacturer, CS Wind.

After sizable jumps in sales tax collections in 2021 and 2022, the growth from 2022 to 2023 was just 1%. Gradisar said that sales tax growth has “stabilized” and that the city has more reserve funding than when his term as mayor started in 2019.

There was a 50% decline in the number of multi- and single-family residential permits in 2023, which Gradisar attributed to higher interest rates, but he said “the demand for housing in our community remains strong.”

“We've had a record number of inquiries and development applications in our planning department and we're working hard to accommodate that growth,” Gradisar said.

Public safety: Police officer retention still challenging

Gradisar started going into detail about public safety approximately 12 minutes into his speech. He said that Pueblo has issues with crime, “like every other city in America.”

“The residents of Pueblo deserve to not only feel safe in their neighborhoods, but they deserve to be safe,” Gradisar said.

Pueblo Police Chief Chris Noeller told local media after the speech that there are 54 unfilled officer positions in the department for myriad reasons, such as the removal of qualified immunity in Colorado. He said that it’s difficult to be a police officer today, but that the department is putting more resources into recruiting new officers.

Gradisar said that despite initiatives such as raising starting pay for police officers and offering $10,000 retention bonuses — an initiative that Graham, his opponent in the runoff, championed — “officers are continuing to leave.”

The mayor also said at his State of the City speech last year that retaining and hiring police officers has been difficult.

The challenge of retaining police officers notwithstanding, Gradisar said the department is able to work “smarter, not harder” with the implementation of a technology-driven “Real Time Crime Center” and a program that brings mental health and medical professionals to respond to certain calls.

Helping Pueblo's homeless

Aiding unhoused people in Pueblo was not a prominent part of Gradisar’s address. He pledged that fewer people will be living on the streets in 2024 without going into detail on how exactly this could be accomplished.

The mayor did mention his work to get the Pueblo Rescue Mission open as a shelter in 2023, as well as purchasing a building for the mission to operate a permanent warming shelter.

“The issue of homelessness and the unhoused remain a problem. The solutions to these problems are not easy. If they were, they would have been done by now,” Gradisar said.

Graham, along with two other councilors, opposed the ordinance giving the Rescue Mission $400,000 to purchase a building for the warming shelter. Gradisar targeted Graham for voting against the shelter during a recent debate, but Graham said she had concerns about the organization’s management and finances.

Infrastructure developments

The mayor was proud to list the roads that the city had newly paved when giving the State of the City address last January and did not hesitate to do the same this year.

Gradisar said that it is an “exciting time” for the potential of bringing Front Range Passenger Rail that could connect Pueblo with other cities along the Interstate 25 corridor.

He did not directly say whether he supports nuclear energy to replace the jobs and tax base when the coal-powered Comanche 3 power plant shuts down in 2030, but said that “the community will decide” later on if the still-in-development technology is right.

“Our goal as a community should be to replace the jobs and the property tax at Comanche long before nuclear technology has developed, so that the decision to place a nuclear power plant in the city of Pueblo can be a choice for the city of Pueblo and not a desperate decision for economic survival,” Gradisar said.

An advisory committee announced last week that advanced nuclear is the only form of power generation that would generate the same level of property taxes as the coal-powered plants.

Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics for the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com. Please support local news at subscribe.chieftain.com.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Mayor Gradisar talks economy, homelessness, crime in State of the City