Fourth-generation Puebloan announces run for Pueblo City Council District 3

Yahoo

5 days ago

Joseph Perko seeks to welcome progress while also preserving Pueblo's legacy if elected to Pueblo City Council's District 3 seat.
The fourth-generation Pueblo resident and union member is running for council in 2025 with goals to clean up the city and champion labor, public outreach and urban improvement. As a candidate for District 3, Perko's bid for a council seat will be determined by residents of Aberdeen, the Mesa Junction, Regency, Sunset Park and other communities in the southwest quadrant of the city.
Perko has a business degree and is an electrician by trade with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 12.
"As a blue-collar union member, I am all too aware of the challenges our workers and unions face as well as the benefits they stand to gain if empowered," Perko said in a written campaign announcement. "There is growth, development and industry all over Pueblo and yet our workers continue to see wages be outpaced by the cost of living, watching laborers in our sister cities around Colorado enjoy far greater gains."
Often an attendee of Pueblo City Council meetings, Perko told the Chieftain he's considered running for office for about six years. While he said he respects the current council's thoroughness in addressing and debating issues, he feels council members can be "needlessly contentious with one another."
Perko said he does not fully understand why some current council members have disregarded community-led efforts to preserve the City Park Bathhouse and that there is no need to tear it down. He also opposed city government's funding cuts to nonprofits like the Mariposa Center for Safety, Pueblo Zoo and Sangre de Cristo Arts Center, which the city made before passing its 2025 city.
"I strongly disagree with a lot of the ways that they are trying to get this new budget... just trying to cut everything that we view as essential," Perko said. "I think it takes away from a lot of the things that give people opportunities, which just furthers economic decline, reduces our tax base and makes it harder for people to want to stay here."
In his campaign announcement, Perko advocated for training programs to grow the local labor pool, tidying up the city's most distressed areas to make Pueblo more welcoming, and work programs to employ unhoused and probationary individuals.
"Give them a chance to work cutting overgrowth, picking up litter, simple things like that. In time, they could work their way up to full-time employment and obtain housing," Perko said in the announcement. "Investment could be made in networks of medical and mental health treatment so they can have the abilities to elevate themselves out of their situation with confidence, independence and compassion.
Perko will host a mixer and formal campaign launch event at his brother Anthony Perko's law office, Perko Law, LLC, at 113 Broadway Ave., from 4 to 6 p.m. on June 28.
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Pueblo Chieftain reporter James Bartolo can be reached at [e-mail]. Support local news, subscribe to The Pueblo Chieftain at subscribe.chieftain.com.
This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Fourth-generation Puebloan announces 2025 bid for city council