There was plenty of gushing over the wonders and popularity of the gleaming new Leonardo da Vinci Museum on the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk at Monday night’s Pueblo City Council meeting — before tempers flared and accusations were hurled.
The two-hour discussion was the first public airing of the museum’s request for $885,000 in sales tax funding and came days after a Pueblo businesswoman publicly challenged the legality of the proposed ordinance that would allocate the money. The first reading of the ordinance was passed unanimously without discussion on a consent agenda on Aug. 10.
The council voted 5-2 on Monday to delay a vote until Sept. 14 and scheduled a work session Sept. 8 to more thoroughly discuss the museum’s finances and budget projections and the criteria for approving the economic development incentive.
The motion to delay brought a quick rebuke from Mayor Heather Graham, who has championed the project since its inception.
“We have had multiple executive sessions,” she angrily told the council. “You have sat in meetings with these people. You have all seen the application. This process has been going on since April.”
That’s when the museum made its initial request for $1.8 million, to include paying wages for 25 employees and capital improvements to the city-owned building it leases. The employment part of the request was later dropped.
“For the three of you tonight that said you are not prepared because you have not got your questions answered, that is because you have not asked your questions.”
When Councilmember Selena Ruiz-Gomez called for a point of order to stop Graham, the mayor said, “I am not done.”
Then she singled out Ruiz-Gomez.
“You have made a motion to table this … as you do with every ordinance that you don’t want to vote on,” Graham said. “That’s not acceptable. You have the information and you’ve had it since April. It’s unfair to bring them through the wringer tonight.”
Ruiz-Gomez responded that it’s council’s job to ask questions during the process, regardless of when they arise.
“With all due respect, mayor, we want to hear from Mr. Arrigo,” she said, referring to museum founder and board president Joe Arrigo. “He’s coming to us and asking for taxpayer dollars.”
Arrigo later confirmed that he was not at the two council work sessions, held behind closed doors, where the museum’s request was discussed. He spoke about the museum at Monday’s meeting, but the presentation about the ordinance allocating the money was made by City Attorney Carla Sikes.
About 20 people, many of them museum employees or volunteers, spoke in favor of the ordinance at Monday’s public hearing, which started three hours into a jam-packed agenda. Two people were opposed to giving the museum public money.
Museum rose from a convention center expansion
The idea for the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of North America was hatched a few years ago after a traveling exhibit of machines designed by da Vinci and built by the Artisans of Florence was displayed at the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo.
It gained traction about the time the Professional Bull Riders was moving its headquarters from Pueblo to Fort Worth, Texas. Its Sports Performance Center was part of a Colorado Regional Tourism Act-funded expansion at Pueblo Convention Center, and its lease was up for renewal in 2024.
PBR asserts in a Dec. 5, 2024, letter that it intended to continue operating the Sports Performance Center and negotiations had been extended. But the Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority, the owner of the building, evicted PBR in June 2024.
In August 2024, Graham was proposing a “positive new concept” for the sports center building to the Colorado Economic Development Commission — the da Vinci museum.
The EDC on Feb. 20, 2025, gave final approval of the deal between multiple state and local agencies and the museum board, and the nonprofit museum began raising money and converting the space from a world-class gym to a world-class museum.
The museum did not seek additional money from the state or local governments at that time. It opened its doors June 12 and as of mid-August had tallied more than 7,000 visitors from 39 states and seven countries, Arrigo said.
In the meantime, Pueblo voters in November 2025 approved extending a one-half-percent sales tax for economic development for five years. In February, the council adopted an ordinance setting criteria for applicants for the money.
Defining economic development
The new criteria, along with jobs creation, includes “place-making,” defined as “the process and act of creating high-quality public spaces and amenities that encourage people to want to live, work, play and learn in the city, community or region.”
Nicki Hart, founder and director of strategy and communications of Digital Hart Media and a former consultant to the museum project, said that change in criteria will take money away from job creation and could make it available to any business or entity that is deemed attractive.
“I’m a taxpayer standing up for what voters meant this fund to support and that is jobs,” she said during Monday’s hearing. She noted in a written statement that the museum was presented as a project that would rely on private fundraising and donations and not taxpayer dollars.
In an email Wednesday, Hart provided emails and letters she sent to council, the mayor and others in February, June and July with her concerns and objections to the new criteria and the application from the museum.
She also said approval of the project opens the city to a challenge under the tax-limiting TABOR Amendment. “Steering these revenues away from primary-job creation turns a dedicated, voter-approved fund into an open-ended slush fund, and that goes directly against both the code and promise made to Pueblo voters.”
Initially, the museum applied for $1.8 million from the half-cent sales tax fund, with part of it designated for the creation of 25 jobs and the rest for capital improvements — a café, gift shop and additional learning space — under the place-making criteria.
It later amended its application because it learned that the 14 employees hired to open the museum could not be counted toward the 25 jobs, Arrigo said. He said they couldn’t hire an additional 25 employees within two years as stipulated so they dropped that half of the request.
Council members Monday mostly agreed that place-making criteria they approved in February was a legitimate use of economic development dollars.
Council President Mark Aliff said the council made a bold move in February when it changed the criteria because it “wanted a paradigm shift in how we do economic development.”
“You can get all twisted up on how you want to interpret something, but the reality is it fits the definition and it’s a good project,” he said of the museum request. “What does it bring to the community? It brings a lot.
“This is exactly what we set out to do when we made that vote in February.”
He and council member Brett Boston opposed the motion to delay the vote, and both apologized to museum representatives for the delay and requests for information they said was already available.
Arrigo said in an interview that he was disappointed but would prepare whatever he could for the September work session.
“We created a model so that we can survive without taxpayer money,” he said. “That does not mean that we will not ask for money, though we are not trying to be in an operating budget for the city, county or state. This money was set aside for economic development.
“If we do not get the money we will continue on our path and things will happen more slowly. If we get the money, it will speed things up.”