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Half-cent tax vote to fix Pueblo roads postponed as new proposal comes to light

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) -- In Monday's Pueblo City Council meeting, the half-cent tax ordinance that would raise money to repair roads was postponed. City Council members were divided on the issue and could not come to consensus approval of the proposed ordinance.

Currently, road repairs in Pueblo are funded by a tax on Puebloans' water bills. Each month, a $3 tax is added to each person's water bill.

Due to the disagreements about adding the half-cent tax increase to the ballot, voters in November will not be voting on the ordinance.

"In my experience and from what we learned from the municipal franchise election, you have no chance of success if the city council is divided on a ballot issue," Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar said.

Instead, they could be voting on a new proposal by Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar. The new proposal involves eliminating a revenue cap generated by TABOR, or the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

This elimination is commonly called "debrucing" and would allow the city to keep $576,609 worth of excess funds generated from inflation and population growth.

However, the Mayor has a goal of devoting $10 million dollars to repairing roads in 2022. He expects $5 million of that to come from sales tax revenue growth.

The other $5 million would come from the Street Utility Enterprise and HUTF (Highway Users Tax Fund) projects.

This plan does not increase consumers' sales tax. Instead, Gradisar is expecting Pueblo's sales tax revenue growth in 2021 to be around 10% higher than 2020. He estimates that this would generate the $5 million dollars needed to fund roads repairs.

The plan is unpredictable because over the last 20 years, the most sales tax revenue has increased year to year has been 7.4%, not the 10% goal the Mayor wishes to achieve.

"Well, its sort of a guessing game. We don't know exactly what the excess revenue will be for 2021. We won't know that until the end of the year when we have our sales tax numbers. Right now, our sales tax numbers are very strong," Mayor Gradisar said.

The Pueblo City Council is expected to vote on this new proposal in one of the next two city council meetings. Those are held on the second and fourth Monday of each month.

Article Topic Follows: Automotive

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Sean Rice

Sean is reporter with the 13 Investigates team. Learn more about him here.

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