In State of City Address, Pueblo Mayor discusses population growth and firefighter response times

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) -- Friday, Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar hosted the annual State of the City Address. During his address, the mayor addressed the city's growing population and failing infrastructure.

Each year the Mayor of the City of Pueblo is responsible for producing a report that details the state of the city, the progress against previous goals, and plans for the upcoming year.

This year's address, which happened at the Pueblo Convention Center, had over 250 citizens.

"I'm proud to be the mayor of the city of Pueblo. I think this change in government that we had has been very good for the city of Pueblo. We haven't got our share of growth that the rest of Colorado's gotten. And I think it's it's our turn now. We're trying to do it rationally, responsibly," said Mayor Nick Gradisar.

One of the accomplishments he touched on was passing an ordinance in 2022 that would replace two fire stations and add a fire station on the northeast side of town where the city is seeing a lot of growth.

The mayor hopes the new fire stations will help with response times.

"The fire department's done studies about response times. We do that periodically and we have identified and we've got the property secured for every fire station that we're going to build. We're going to build three new ones right away," said Gradisar.

Andrew Hayes, the Director of the Public Works Department, said another reason is due to growing concerns raised by firefighters about possible exposure to carcinogens due to old AC and heating systems. 

According to the city, the fire station on the east side of Pueblo hasn't been remolded in roughly 60 years.

Hayes said they plan on putting in modern heating and air systems to improve this in city buildings that need it. 

Officials with the City of Pueblo told KRDO that they're still early in the planning stages. But, they hope to have the new stations up and running sometime in 2024.