Pueblo Mayor-elect Heather Graham has less than a week to go before she is officially sworn in as mayor, which is expected to take place early Thursday afternoon after the election is certified.
Here’s what has been happening at City Hall since Graham found out she bested incumbent Nick Gradisar on Election Day — and what’s going to happen next.
Graham eager to get started
Graham told the Chieftain Thursday afternoon that her phone has been ringing nonstop and that she’s been in back-to-back meetings since she was elected Pueblo’s second mayor in decades.
She also met with Gov. Jared Polis when he visited Pueblo on Friday.
Graham said that she feels like she’s in “limbo” for now since the job doesn’t officially start until Feb. 1.
“I’m eager to be sworn in and start the job fully,” she said.
Graham has been working with the mayor’s administrators and spoke with all of the department heads in a meeting Thursday. The mayor has the authority to appoint leadership positions, subject to the approval of city council, but Graham said she does not have any specific changes in mind at this time.
“On city council, we don’t really get to see the behind the scenes, how they work, or the great jobs they’ve been doing. I feel confident in the staff, that they’ve been doing what needs to be done,” Graham said.
The city charter specifies that the mayor cannot hold any “other paid public or private employment” while leading Pueblo.
Graham said that she will retain ownership of her restaurants around town. Her restaurants — two of which are called “Graham’s Grill” — will keep their names, too.
But she won’t be doing any work at the restaurants or taking any paychecks, and the restaurant’s sales tax and liquor licenses will no longer be in her name. She said that she’s confident in her managers, who have already been doing much of the work over the past few months.
How will Graham be replaced on council?
Graham will not be able to serve out the rest of her four-year term on city council after she’s sworn in as mayor, so the rest of council will need to appoint a replacement.
As Graham represented an at-large seat, anybody who lives within city limits will be eligible.
The Chieftain previously reported that the appointee will need to be a U.S. citizen and have lived in Pueblo for at least one full year.
There isn’t a specific deadline to fill a vacancy. A minimum of four councilors need to be present to meet quorum. Councilors will need to tell city staff that they should take in applications for Graham’s replacement.
The most recent council appointment came in 2021, when council appointed Zolanye McCulley-Bachicha to replace District 4 Councilor Ray Aguilera, who passed away while in office. Five applicants were interviewed by city council over the course of multiple weeks during that process.
Gradisar is taking a short break from Pueblo
After a few days of cleaning out his office and signing some necessary documents, Gradisar departed for Las Vegas Thursday afternoon.
He told the Chieftain shortly after he arrived in Nevada that he would be relaxing for the weekend, then coming back to Pueblo on Monday. He will lead his last weekly meeting of departmental directors on Tuesday afternoon.
Gradisar was part of a group of people who promoted changing the city’s governmental structure to a “strong mayor” system, which failed initially but passed in 2017.
“The beauty of this system is that when I’m gone, I won’t get any severance package. I won’t get any vacation and sick leave. It won’t cost hundreds of thousands of dollars like it has cost to get rid of city managers in the past,” Gradisar said.
A group of people led a prolonged effort to get rid of the mayor’s office last winter, but the question did not make it to local ballots. Gradisar — as well as then-city council president Graham — publicly opposed sending a question to voters about changing the city government’s structure.
“I said, ‘Hey, if you don’t like the job I’m doing, vote for somebody else,’” Gradisar recalled saying at the time. “And obviously, that’s what they did. I’m not sure it’s because they didn’t like the job I was doing, maybe they just wanted to do something different.”
Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics at the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com. Please support local news at subscribe.chieftain.com.
