DAVIS-
A citizen volunteer group “Raise the Wage Davis” is advocating to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 by January 2016. However, some local business owners are not on board.
The group’s co-founders said they are trying to get 5,400 signatures by next month to get their proposal on a ballot in November. So far, they have more than 1,000 names on their petition. If they get enough names, they will submit the signatures to the City Clerk, and the proposal will officially make the ballot.
The Davis group hopes to raise the minimum wage in $2 increments. By January 1, 2015, they want to raise the minimum wage from $9 an hour to $10. By July 1, 2015 it will become $13 an hour. By January 1, 2016, they hope to hit their goal of $15 an hour.
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But California already has plans to increase the minimum wage. Last year, lawmakers voted to increase the wage to $10 an hour by January 1, 2016. The group’s leaders said that is not enough.
“For a high cost city like Davis, we don’t think that is enough,” Joaquin Chavez, co-founder of “Raise the Wage Davis” said.
“Everybody that works hard and plays by the rules deserves a fair wage,” Sean Raycraft, co-chair of “Raise the Wage Davis” said.
The upcoming statewide increase is not desirable to some small business owners. But Kimo Bernauer, owner of “A Grand Affair Party Rentals” said they would much rather have that than the new $15 an hour proposal.
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“It’s still quite high, but you’re talking about only a $2 increase in the next 2 years,” Bernauer said.” That’s a lot easier to handle from $8 to $15 dollars.”
Local business owners like Bernauer said they are worried about automatically losing to the competition elsewhere.
“The domino effect will be this- With Woodand, Dixon and West Sacramento not that far away, a lot of people will go outside of town to shop to buy whatever they need because it will be a little bit cheaper,” Bernauer said.
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The group however, cited a 2010 UC Berkeley study that showed wage hikes do not eliminate jobs. Instead, they were beneficial throughout the wage structure.
“The vast majority of people who make less than $15 an hour are suddenly going to have more money to spend,” Raycraft said. “And if you are a business owner and you have a good product to sell, with good service, then you will get their dollars. They will not have to go to the big box stores to find the cheapest possible items.”