In July, the topic of hourly wages for city and contract employees was discussed. During the meeting, Rep Lily Limon tearfully pleaded with City Council to raise the minimum wage to $10 for contract workers. Rep Noe said Limon’s plan would be bad for taxpayers. “We’re voluntarily, that is artificially, raising the price of a contract and saying ‘okay I’m not going to pay for it. The taxpayers are going to pay for this.”
Well, the topic came up again yesterday. An emotional Lily Limon tried again to “raise the minimum wage for janitorial, security and grounds maintenance contract workers to $10 an hour.” City staff reported the increase would have an estimated $3 million annual budget impact – that’s an extra $3 million that needs to come from somewhere. They had to raise property taxes to accommodate the budget for this year WITHOUT the $3 million increase, so there is no way the current (or future) budget could account for this.
The City Council has tabled the vote until they get more information. “The City will seek input from UTEP, The Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness and its consultants in order to learn how other cities dealt with similar proposals.”
elptaxguardians 
You mean to tell me that all of this downtown “development” isn’t going to create more/better paying jobs, so we have to artificially raise wages? Next you’re going to tell me that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus. Unfortunately this town deserves Lily Limon. Shame on us.
LikeLike
I, for one, think that Limon might just have a point. Has anybody (including her) bothered to look at the recent news out of Seattle, where they did this two years ago? Meanwhile, check this out: http://www.epi.org/pay/
LikeLike