Fort Collins City Council Public Comment 051623 Part 2

5:29PM May 21, 2023

Speakers:

Keywords:

minimum wage

fort collins

wages

workers

heard

people

minimum wage increase

community

increase

business

living

city

backbone

pay

raise

small businesses

support

years

impacts

concerns

Good evening mayor and council. My name is Jeff Knopf singer. I'm the former owner of LA County Kitchen and Bar on harmony road and current restaurant tour in Loveland. I'm here on behalf of the northern Colorado hospitality sector partnership. Our partnership represents business owners from the hotel, retail and restaurant industry. And this by county organization between Larimer and weld has represented representation from another 198 businesses, and 108 government officials that have been involved in our consortium in the past year and a half. While our partnership is relatively new and informal and structured, collectively, we would like to share some of our group's concerns with you. And as part of your consideration, we strongly feel that there should be some regionalism in this discussion, that there are regional impacts you've heard from, it's kind of twofold. You've heard from local businesses, and here in Fort Collins that are concerned about the lack of losing that competitive edge. But they also feel that there's that trickle effect, or this is going to trickle into other communities, and increase the wages for those communities and having a negative impact on small businesses there as well. Also, we feel that the employees that live in Fort Collins that work elsewhere will have less incentive to work outside of the community. Because of the higher increase. student workers are a big pool. Most of the businesses within the hospitality sector depend on student workers to fill our shifts. Many of these students are working in their first job learning essential soft skills. A lot of these students are part time workers needing a living wage that is much less than someone living on their own. The proposed minimum wages are high expectations to pay for on the job training without government incentives. I remember when I was working in college for 25. And I thought I was a king living off those wages, market rate market wage rate, as you've heard testimony from others, most of us in the industry are already paying a much higher wage than minimum. And what will happen is, you'll see those that are already in the workforce. With some experience, they're going to demand a higher wage than those with entry level workers. Tip wages, you've heard come in about that as well. There's already a huge disparity within our industry with front of house and back of house servers are making 3040 Sometimes 5060 $70 an hour. But we also feel that it's a broken tip and system that you can't resolve but increasing the minimum wage helps out the tip server more than tip wager than it does for the non tipped. Lastly, just we feel overall that this is doing to discourage entrepreneurship. Based on these above concerns, small business owners will be less motivated to invest in our local communities as they will be unable to compete with the larger corporations that can more easily absorb the additional cost. Thank you.

Thank you very much Sabrina.

My name is Sabrina and I support raising the minimum wage.

I work a job that was deemed essential during the pandemic. Every time management adds to my workload. I hear you're the backbone of the company. We couldn't do it without you. Somehow that doesn't change that my department is the lowest paid department at the company. And I sometimes find myself wondering if I'm the company backbone. Why are you trying to break me? But that's pretty standard. In today's world, business owners often conveniently forget that their profits depend on their staff, and it falls to the government to limit exploitation of the working class. A quick Google search shows that the goal of the US is first ever minimum wage was to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well being of employees. So setting a minimum wage is your duty. Let's talk about how Fort Collins supports its economic backbone. Wages might be a business's biggest expense, but mine is rent. My rent is going up 20% This year, and some people have told me their rent is going up 35% year this year. No one is stopping landlords from doing this. We also can't guarantee people the basic doesn't have dignity of housing because that takes time. As of when I called back in March neighbor to neighbor wasn't even processing applications for housing assistance due to backlog and lack of funding. Land use code changes that could increase housing options fold to the NIMBY crowd talks about abolishing u plus two have changed nothing. And while all this is going on to this topic, minimum wage already got pushed by months once before. This town is failing to support businesses backbones aka the working class. Plain and simple, the bare minimum you can do right now is raise the minimum wage. If you don't Fort Collins is backbone won't break, it'll leave taking its labor to an area that supports a reasonable minimum standard of living. And if that happens, business owners are going to have a lot harder time than if they have to pay their backbones a little better. Thank you, Beth.

I thank you for allowing me to talk. And best. I'm in district two here in Fort Collins. And I think it was two years ago that I came here and talk to you about asking you to bring minimum wage as one of your priorities. And back then I talked about how when I was a young parent, and earlier, my family was here with me. When they were very tiny, all I could get was just above minimum wage. And that's what my husband can get as well. And I two years ago, I talked about how hard that was for us as parents. And so I'm just here to say yes, I still want you to pass this. And yes, 59% of minimum wage earners are women. Many of them are parents. So just Yep. Still here still saying yes. So thank you.

Thank you very much, Jennifer.

Hello, there. I'm Jennifer Johnson. Thank you for having me tonight. I am a business owner here in Fort Collins. And more than anything, I'd say I'm probably an employer of 28 wonderful people. I wanted to impress upon you all, how much most of the business owners if actually all of them that I know, cared deeply about their employees. There has been a great deal of change the last few years, as we all know, and many of that those things have affected the way we do business. Many of those things are regulatory oriented and have affected the way that we go about our business. But it also has, the market has driven a huge increase in wages, which is is wonderful, I think in many ways. But it's hard to keep up with. So I think the timing of creating an imbalance, what I would consider an imbalance to the the system that we operate in, in order to keep employees and work with a wonderful people we do I think would be too quick. We've already had many, many changes in you know, there's pricing changes externally in our business that we can't control, we're not able to raise raise prices, and I really think less about pricing than I do the effect that all these things would have on other choices I would have to make about health plans and 401k programs and things that we really want to offer and create a comprehensive program for our employees that really gives them a well rounded, offering with time off and that sort of thing. Whereas I think, as generous as we possibly can be and, and most of the time I care many more times about the employees and keeping them than, than my own, you know, thing. You know, I just think about the sleepless nights that we went through. And just in the last couple of years, it's too soon to think about but you know, the PPP loans and just trying to keep everybody in, in, in employment has has been huge. And that's what we want to keep. And I just would, I would say that I'm not anti wage growth, I'm really anti mandate, and I'm pro staying in business because I think we all care a lot about our community. And that's what matters to me. So just keep a reminder that when you go to vote that there's a lot more to the the the the single handedly raising minimum wage, I think could create a lot of unintended consequences. Thank you.

Thank you. And that's everyone who signed up to speak during public comment. Before six we have anyone in the audience or online who still wants to speak during public comment or do you want to wait for the item? As it comes up on the there's a distinction, okay. So you can only speak on the same topic once. So if we show hands again 1234 We'll take five, five here. And is there anyone remotely two? Okay, we'll take two, five and two, then we're done. That'll be that until the specific item comment. So just line yourselves up and go ahead and we've got three minutes so your name please and tell us what you'd like us to hear.

Hi, thank you, mayor and city council. So my name is Gary Walker. I'm here representing save the pooter. We have about 1000 members in Fort Collins in Larimer County. We greatly appreciate your service. I'm here to speak on the 1041 agenda item A little later on the agenda. I won't be speaking that. So I'll speak down. First, thank you for hanging in there for over two years. It's been a long ride, but a ride that's worth it. I want to thank you for moving forward on first reading two weeks ago, we appreciated your support, advocating for 1041 regulations. We are also advocating today, as we were two weeks ago for stronger regulations that cover the impacts to the city, especially to our natural areas along the puter river from projects that are constructed outside the city, we encourage you to consider that issue again. We did clearly here two weeks ago, about your interest in having a work session to discuss that issue to make the regulation stronger. We support newer having that work session in the near future. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next up.

Hi, thanks, Council. Thank you, Mayor for your time this evening. My name is Larson Ross. I'm in district two. And I'm here to support the adoption of the higher local minimum wage. Here in the city of Fort Collins. I'm a union organizer with the Service Employees International Union Local 105. And I help working people fighting for dignified lives for themselves, their family and their community every single day. And over the past five years living in Fort Collins before becoming a union organizer, I was a pizza delivery driver, a cook, a warehouse worker, a Safeway, Baker, and a barista. All of these were at minimum wage or incredibly near it and I had to juggle trying to do all of those things at different times, oftentimes working two sometimes three jobs just in order to get by living here in Fort Collins. And I'm a single man with no children, right? Like imagine trying to like live on those wages, as you've heard from many people here like as parents, as members of families with like one income, lots of folks that you have to take care of the MIT or or Yeah, MIT considers the like actual livable wage per single adult working full time in Fort Collins to be at 92. And a full like living wage for a full time dual income family with a child should be 21 to 85 per adult. We're nowhere near that this minimum wage like ordinance and increases also nowhere near that I just want to note that like what you're considering today is like not even quite there and it's not going to be in place until 2027. Now unionized workers are able to fight directly for their like own wages, health care and other benefits. But the current state of US labor law allows companies and almost free hands to retaliate, punish and intimidate workers who strive to better their own wages, as you've heard from several people here who are afraid of retaliation just for speaking up on a minimum wage ordinance. And that's why it's so important for you all to take this moment to stand up for those workers who cannot advocate for themselves in their own workplaces, who have families to support who are desperately trying to stay here in Fort Collins in the community that they work. And when they see places with higher minimum wages like Denver, places that will allow them to have cheaper rents, like right across in Loveland or Windsor, but who wants to stay here raising their families and the communities that they love. You've also heard from a lot of business owners who say that actually they're the ones who are going to have to pack up and leave if the minimum wage increases rather than the workers who are currently struggling to not get evicted. But study after study city after city, country after country has shown that that's not actually the case, that when you pay workers what they're worth, when minimum wages go up, your economy is actually stimulated. People have more spending power, people have more money in their pocket, it actually increases the economic growth of an area. And workers aren't asking for a handout right now. What they're asking for, is that the value of their work, the value that they actually create for their employers to speak just a little bit to the minimum wage. Thank you very next step.

Hi, good evening, everyone. My name is Greg Zota. I am a CS Graduate Teaching instructor at CSU. This is my first city council meeting. I'm also here to speak in favor of the minimum wage being a living wage or as close to one as it could be, because I think that this policy is essential to the well being of the working class in this city. A study in the Journal of labor economics from last year evaluated 40 years of minimum wage increases that's over 172 instances of the minimum wage being raised. Before every single one of these increases. We heard similar things to the kind of fears that we've heard tonight. So what did those what happened after that? As increases, quote, we find an increase in wages of affected workers and no change in employment. Furthermore, minimum wage increases have no effects on the unemployment rate, labor force participation, or labor market transitions and quote, Another study published by Berkeley this week, which evaluates 35 years of evidence corroborates this and directly addresses the concerns from our neighbors, especially in the restaurant and hospitality industries. That's what the study was about, quote, it kills job vacancies, not jobs and quote, this is the only comprehensive study that has been done about the minimum wage in the context of those size small businesses, like restaurants, grocery and retail stores, again, quote, We do not detect any corresponding disemployment effects, unquote. So concerns about automation are also somewhat overblown and are not the consensus of economists, those on economic forms of automation can also be addressed in ways that don't require workers being captured an arbitrarily low wage. So this is a policy without a real risk of downside. And the data bears that out. We have to make these decisions based on the evidence and facts that we have rather than anecdotes. And that evidence suggests no mass layoffs, no on economic automation, no inflation heights, we've heard it's the wrong time. It's too fast. We have to postpone this but as we heard from Beth earlier, we were here two years ago. When is the right time, right? Hearing from home care workers, grocery workers, nonprofit workers, people working at food banks, cleaning our buildings, fixing our roofs, right people who work in unions, all of these folks are the very basis of our community. And if small businesses are what make what makes for Collins economy run, then workers are what makes those small businesses run. I'm not someone that would directly benefit from this wage increase. My friends would my loved ones would my neighbors would. A rising tide lifts all boats instead of indefinitely postponing this issue. I urge you to expediently vote for this minimum wage increase. Thank you very much. Hope y'all have a wonderful evening. Thank you. Next

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my minimum salary is $14.50. I work eight hours every day, five days a week, which amounts to $580 a week. I am responsible for two kids one is 15 and the other one is five. I cannot make ends meet basically my expenses go up to $2,320 and I do not have the privilege of ever getting sick

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I have no other option right now than to hold two jobs. I see the dream of my kids being able to see Disneyland farther and farther and farther away. And not only just that, the ability to actually spend time I'm with them on a weekend

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Knowing that you are in favor of youth and childhood, do you think that $14.50 An hour is a fair wage for somebody like me, as a trade off have not ever seen my kids?

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thank you, and good luck to you.

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Good evening, thank you for listening to everybody this evening. My name is George Grossman, I own happy Lucky's tea house here in Fort Collins. I also live in district one, we opened in 2009. And every year, we have always paid more than minimum wage. When you add tips, we currently pay more than the highest value that you're thinking about. And I'm going to make a bold statement when I say I hate discussing living wage, because I really feel we're missing the heart of the conversation, which is really talking about a living lifestyle. And when we talk about a living lifestyle, what that means to be is wages, which is what we're discussing, but also housing, health care, and child care. All of those are important and and I view those as kind of a pillar or each one of those a pillar or foundation for why people come to live in our great community. And to tackle only one pillar is missing the entire foundation of what needs to be done. The majority of my team are college students working part time they come they work for a year or two, they graduate and they move on. So I asked this question is this resolution to raise the minimum wage based upon trying to help inflation and fighting inflation? And if it is, I'd like to say that the state has a plan for that. I voted for increasing the minimum wage at that time. And I agree, and I believe that there are cost of living and inflation already built into that. So my question, is this idea of raising the minimum wage here in our community in response to inflation? Or because the state already has something like that? And will you be just duplicating what the state is already doing? How am I to respond, if you increase minimum wage, I'm already paying more than minimum wage. But it does press what everybody is doing. When I bring in new people versus my experience people, I have an option to raise prices, I can cut back hiring, I can cut shifts, I can tell you that none of those are desirable, and I don't want to do any of them.

If you're going to dictate small businesses and what they should do, I think you need to look at what also affects small business. And I think if you're going to tell us what to what we should pay, I think you should also be looking at what landlords charge, I think we should bring in rent control. Because when you if you're going to tell me what I have to pay to my employer, I think you should tell landlords, what they should charge us what their annual recent increases are, and what property taxes can do as they flow to our triple net, if you find that appalling. If you're also flying telling me what I should pay people and what small ship business should pay. Our employees are the backbone. But the legs of the back Warren stands on his small business, and what the heart is, is our community. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I believe we have two people joining remotely, please go ahead. All right, we'll

start with Kristin, go ahead and unmute yourself.

Hi, mayor and city council. My name is Kristen. I live in Ada 180521. And I wanted to speak tonight in favor of raising the minimum wage. From the current options that you've been discussing. I support option one, which would increase the minimum wage to 1850 by 2026. We heard other people talk about the gap between the current minimum wage and the estimated livable wage. And I think it goes without saying that by the time we reach 2026, the hourly livable wage estimate will be even higher. So I encourage you to raise the minimum wage by the maximum amount allowed by state law which is 175 or 15% each year until our wages catch up with the estimated living wage. I personally worked in the service industry. And I'm fortunate that I am able to supplement my income with a freelance business because I know I would not be able to support myself on an minimum wage salary here. Based on that and my tips alone. I don't think it's an exaggeration as we've heard to say that the service industry workers are the backbone of the city and keep all of its stores, shops, restaurants and breweries running. We obviously need the small businesses to employ us. But we're the day to day face to face businesses. And we're the ones who make it possible to run these businesses which make Fort Collins a nice place to live to play and a fun place for people to visit. I think it's time that the city increase the minimum wage to show that we value the work of service industry employees. I also wanted to make a few notes about the neighborhood livability and social health section of the city's strategic plan. And point out that none of these are possible if we're not paying our lowest wage earners a livable wage. Things like encouraging an inclusive community that embraces diversity and equity, vibrant neighborhoods with centers and corridors where most daily necessities can be accomplished by either walking or cycling within 15 minutes of home, addressing the impacts of increasing poverty, and creating a distinctive and attractive community that is appealing to workers, visitors and residents and reflects our values. We concern that if we don't raise the minimum wage quickly, we'll find to force out low wage service industry workers. And I hear the city talking about diversity and being a welcoming place for all. But I'm wondering what the city will look like if the only people who can afford to live here are middle upper and morning class. Hitting this is an opportunity for the city to make tangible and meaningful changes in the lives of our current community members. And I encourage you to listen to all those that you heard tonight. Those who will be most impacted by a minimum wage, increase the workers and implement higher wages as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you very much. Last. Last, we have Melanie potty Andy. Can you guys hear me? Yep, please go ahead.

Good evening. Mayor aren't members of council. Thanks for your time. I know you've been sitting here a long time already. My name is Melanie pike Nandi and I live in District Four. I too am here to advocate for our city to raise our minimum wage to better meet the needs of our community members. Having watched council meetings over the last few years one of the most consistent topics of concern has been the cost of living. The cost of living is simply too high and Fort Collins for so many of our residents. efforts to ensure more affordable housing are currently on hold. The cost of health care in our country is exorbitant and in the hands of leaders outside of our city. Prices for consumer goods impacted by inflation are at historic highs. And again, mostly out of our hands. Of the many avenues available to us to address our cost of living minimum wage may be the one over which we have the most direct control to create real change. It's a step we can take now in our city to take care of our residents while other systems level changes take route over time. I recognize that many business owners are nervous about impacts of a minimum wage increase on their establishments. I value our local businesses so much and here there trepidation. I also believe wage changes can be made thoughtfully and that they're critical. The bottom line is that data support minimum wage increase increases data that had been presented to this council. better wages have been shown to impact businesses and workers alike in a positive way. Raising the minimum wage is both the right thing to do and a move that has been shown to be effective, or Collins is a leader in this region. So we need to be a leader. Now. This is not a regional decision. This is a Fort Collins decision. We need to put our Fort Collins residents first and we need to do it now. Please take decisive action on this issue and raise the minimum wage to an equitable, livable and just level. And finally, because she's unable to speak tonight, I would like to urge you to read written comments provided to you earlier by a community member Dr. Emily galletto. It's a real passion for her to have a living wage in our city and I just want to make sure her thoughts are considered. Thank you all for being strong leaders in our city even when it's difficult, and I appreciate your city or your service to our community.

Thank you very much. Public comment has now ended does anyone on council have any follow up to public comment?

Thanks. Thank you so much to everyone who came out tonight. Thank you for the translation as well. It's a very valuable so we have a few things on the discussion items living wages that first we have 1041 Not living wage sorry. 1041 is first than minimum wage. And so I'll address more of the comments then. I did want to give the opportunity for staff to speak about item number was it seven about the IGA that we have I'm with the county. Yes, thank you for that. I'm Chad Krieger, who is our connection executive director is here