Belmont adopts local minimum wage

Councilwoman Davina Hurt acknowledged the many conversations she and Mayor Charles Stone have had with residents and business owners about a local minimum wage since the City Council pegged it as a priority in February. She noted increasing the minimum wage is one way officials could address the challenges low-income workers across the region face in meeting basic needs.

“We’re experiencing a decline in the ability of people to survive on the Peninsula,” she said. “We don’t want to lose employees and good employees to other cities.”

Since California’s new minimum wage of $10.50 for companies with more than 26 employees went into effect Jan. 1, some city officials in the county have been pushing to phase in wage increases ahead of the state’s schedule in response to the Bay Area’s high cost of living. Belmont’s plan accelerates the state’s process for increasing the minimum wage for local workers to $15 an hour, which slated to rise incrementally until it reaches $15 an hour for all workers Jan. 1, 2023.

After wages across the state reach $11 an hour by Jan. 1, 2018, the Belmont minimum wage is set to reach $12.50 an hour July 1, 2018, and $13.50 by Jan. 1, 2019. By Jan. 1, 2020, the minimum wage in Belmont will reach $15 an hour and will be adjusted by the consumer price index in subsequent years.

Several residents and representatives of labor groups spoke in favor of increasing the minimum wage to help many who have been forced to seek services and resources at government agencies to be able to afford the rising cost of housing in the region. Michael Floyd spoke on behalf of a local chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which includes city employees in Belmont, to urge councilmembers to take a step he estimated would affect a quarter of all Belmont residents.

“The idea that residents of the city of Belmont, at least 25 percent of them, make less than $30,000 a year … is hurtful,” he said. “These are residents that they serve, that they see, people that they pass by and help every day.”

Lieberman emphasized the importance for employees to earn a livable wage, but said the lack of information city officials have on who the policy would affect and how much it would affect them made him hesitant to act, noting answers to questions about the number of heads of households earning minimum wage, how many Belmont employees live outside the city and the number of businesses paying workers minimum wage would help him understand the policy and its effects better.

“I feel a responsibility to some of the businesses that have communicated with us their concerns,” he said, adding that without data to counter their claims, he couldn’t in good conscience vote for the policy.

Lieberman said applying the minimum wage increases for large businesses and building in time to revisit the policy in the first few years of its implementation would afford the city with more data to craft a policy that doesn’t jeopardize small businesses.

Stone noted that some businesses had expressed concerns about accelerated wage increases, but that just as many had observed the increased difficulty workers making the minimum wage face making ends meet. He worried applying the policy only to larger companies could incentivize businesses to employ a number of employees just below the cutoff, making it difficult to draw a line distinguishing business size.

“What matters is we’re part of a larger county and a larger region where the cost of living is astronomical,” he said.

Stone acknowledged the unique challenge restaurant owners face in implementing the policy, and said he thinks Belmont restaurants can adapt to the changes with the support of residents willing to pay extra to dine there. Because servers at some restaurants may make minimum wage supplemented by tips, restaurant owners have expressed concerns about a local ordinance disproportionately affecting them. Combined with the fact that California state law does not currently make provisions for a tip credit allowing restaurant owners to pay those earning tips below minimum wage if their hourly wages combined with tips bring them over the minimum, the change has been viewed as a potential burden.

Councilmembers agreed checking in on the policy in July 2019 after two wage increases have been implemented made sense and that regular check-ins thereafter would give them enough time to collect the data needed to determine how small businesses are affected.

For Mary Morrissey Parden, president of the Belmont Chamber of Commerce, the city’s support of small businesses, especially restaurants, would be critical to the policy’s success. She said simple measures such as distributing guides at local hotels promoting Belmont restaurants and regularly checking in with restaurants, which she noted vary greatly in their hiring practices, could go a long way to easing the wage increases with restaurant owners.

“The Belmont Chamber of Commerce hopes that there’s a great deal of sincerity behind economic development for restaurants in particular,” she said. “And that we feel that it should start sooner than later.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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