The Boulder City Council has passed a groundbreaking ordinance to raise the city’s minimum wage starting in 2025 from the current $14.42 an hour in the state.

If Boulder formally adopts the ordinance, it will join communities like Denver and Edgewater as one of the first communities in Colorado to set a local minimum wage independent of the state minimum wage. Since the passage of a state law in 2019, local governments have been allowed to set their own local minimum wages.

Meanwhile, the cost of living in Boulder has skyrocketed and wages haven’t kept up. The Colorado Center on Law and Policy estimated that a single adult without children would have had to earn at least $19.44 an hour in 2022 to afford living in Boulder County.

Council members voted unanimously Thursday night to approve a minimum wage increase that would result in annual increases of 8% in 2025, 2026 and 2027. The minimum wage applies to all employees, including minors.

The vote came after dozens of community members testified at a public hearing. Speakers included minimum wage workers, community nonprofit representatives, union representatives and small business owners.

Workers who spoke out said they had to work multiple jobs just to afford basic needs like housing.

Sandra Manso Palma, who spoke Spanish with the help of an interpreter, said that she earns the minimum wage but that it is not enough to support her family (she has a two-year-old child).

“We all have to be happy … to have everything we need to live in peace and make a living,” she said through the interpreter.

Caleb Robinson, a University of Colorado Boulder student who makes minimum wage at his job, said he needs the tools to work while attending school.

“I want to give you a choice, the choice I make. I can choose whether I want to use all of my money for my tuition or for housing costs. But it’s important to say that I can’t do both,” he said.

Community leaders also made an impassioned plea for the city to increase its minimum wage in line with what other communities are doing. Unincorporated Boulder County increased its minimum wage by 15% in 2024 and will increase it to $25 an hour by 2030.

Ashley Rumble, development director for the Emergency Family Assistance Association, said an 8% increase in 2025 is “not enough” to meet the community’s needs.

“The safety net is frankly struggling to keep up with demand. EFAA and our donors alone cannot replace fair wages. We need your action. I think it’s a question of principle. No one should have to work full time and still live in abject poverty,” she said.

But several restaurant owners also chimed in, saying their employees already receive fair wages but raising the minimum wage would ruin their business. Some also said they were concerned about unintended consequences.

“We treat our employees with respect. We pay them above-average wages and reward exceptional performance,” said Pete Crouse, owner of Infinitus Pie. “While the goal of the minimum wage is to ensure that people have a living wage, it has a real consequence: it fuels inflation, encourages automation, and discourages would-be entrepreneurs from taking the risk of starting a business.”

Proponents of an 8% annual minimum wage increase such as Council members Matthew Benjamin and Mark Wallach presented that option as a “compromise” between workers who say they are struggling to pay their bills and small businesses, particularly restaurants, who say they can Paying bills, prospect I can’t afford a significant raise.

“The purpose of this application was primarily to strike a balance. We clearly need to meet some of these basic needs of workers earning minimum wage in our community. There’s no question about that, and the need is undoubtedly increasing,” Benjamin said Thursday. “…What we also have to weigh up is that…a wage increase that is too high will have an immediate impact on some of our small business owners.”

At Thursday’s public hearing on the minimum wage, the council remained deeply divided over that approach. Although council members unanimously agreed in late August to increase the city’s minimum wage in 2025, they were broadly divided between two possible courses of action.

The approach of increasing wages by 8% each year in 2025, 2026 and 2027 was supported by five of the nine council members. The other four council members supported a different approach, originally proposed by Council member Lauren Folkerts, that would have resulted in a 15% increase in the minimum wage in 2025 followed by 8.5% increases in 2026 and 2027.

Folkerts said nonprofits have “helped close the gaps between wages and cost of living” and numerous groups have called for a wage increase of at least 15% by 2025. The organizations said they were “overwhelmed” by the growing demand. their safety net services.

“Annual increases of 8% over three years are not a compromise. “That’s an insult,” said Folkerts. “The goal is to muddy the waters so that one can claim to support an increase in the minimum wage without taking the meaningful action that the community is clearly demanding.”

The so-called “Folkerts amendment” failed on Thursday evening when almost half of the council again supported it. Folkerts, Mayor Aaron Brockettt, Mayor Pro Tem Nicole Speer and Councilman Ryan Schuchard voted for this option.

The minimum wage regulation will be presented to the Council for second reading at a later date.

Originally published: October 10, 2024 at 10:26 p.m