For Pueblo’s Steve Nawrocki, the ‘winter of discontent’ began January 20th, the day a new administration took office. It was just days later that President Trump kept his campaign promise of handing over the job of cutting governmental ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ to mega-billionaire, Elon Musk. Musk took the job and ran with it.
Armed with a metaphorical chainsaw, the South African-born Musk and his DOGE team, mostly younger staffers, many of whom worked in other Musk operations, began dismantling institutions, slashing jobs and defunding countless programs while seemingly giving little thought to any unintended consequences.
But once the euphoria of Musk’s slash and burn wore off and it was determined that it was workers who were essential in making the wheels of numerous agencies turn, thousands of suddenly unemployed federal workers were just as suddenly rehired at the CDC, IRS, HHS and other federal agencies. But the purge continues along with job uncertainty for thousands of federal workers still punching the clock each day.
Nawrocki, Executive Director of the city’s Senior Resource Development Agency, is not sure how the Trump-Musk scorched earth approach to cutting costs will ultimately impact his agency’s multi-faceted mission. But each day, things come into sharper focus.
Pueblo’s SRDA aids seniors across thirteen southern Colorado counties with housing, Meals on Wheels, nutrition and recreation programs and foster grandparent programs.
“The big one is AmeriCorps,” said Nawrocki. Its dismantling has resulted in a 90 percent reduction in workforce, almost certainly paralyzing its ability to meet its mission. This effort has also brought about a lawsuit by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser along with 24 states and the District of Columbia to stop its near dissolution. In 2024 alone, AmeriCorps, said Wieser, and its workers have assisted in countless ways in all 64 Colorado counties.
In Pueblo, Nawrocki said, AmeriCorps fuels the Foster Grandparent program. It’s a volunteer program that establishes a mentor-tutor relationship between seniors and school-aged boys and girls. In Pueblo, Nawrocki said, “seniors work 20 hours a week in schools…one-on-one” on reading, math and other subjects that may be challenging. Senior volunteers, he said, are not salaried but do receive a stipend for their time.
DOGE cuts also worry SRDA’s executive director in other areas vital to seniors. “Meals on Wheels,” a program that originated in the United Kingdom during WWII and came to this country in the 1950’s delivers meals to seniors and others who may not be able to afford the costs of nutritional meals or simply get to the store to buy it on their own. But it’s more than that, said Nawrocki.
“There are so many seniors who live in isolation,” he said. Volunteers bringing meals are often the only interaction with another person someone elderly may have. The interaction with someone who shows up not only with a warm meal but with genuine care, he said, is priceless.
“We were doing seven days a week” delivering two meals a day,” he said. “We’re down to two days a week,” and the list of people waiting to get approved for the program continues to grow. “Families,” he said, “were appreciative that someone was checking on them.”
But DOGE cuts, along with the administration’s desire to eliminate countless other programs thought unnecessary or superfluous, are also causing concern and uncertainty in municipal government.
While a number of federal grants “have been awarded and formalized,” said Haley Sue Robinson, the city’s Director of Public Affairs, that is not the case for some infrastructure improvements that had been on the drawing board.
As much as $41 million that had previously been approved by Congress in the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, including $13 million to replace the city’s Union Avenue bridge and another $11 million for charging and fueling infrastructure, is no longer as certain as it may once have been. But Pueblo is just one targeted area for DOGE. Other communities across southern Colorado are also feeling the same doubts.
Until word from Washington is official and there is an itemized list of what is cut and what remains, Robinson says, it is ‘wait and see.’ “To date, we haven’t felt too many ripples resulting from changes in federal funding for state programs yet. However, those effects could become more apparent in the months ahead as future program announcements are made.”
