After over 2 hours of public comment, and close to 5 hours of discussion Las Cruces City Council passed a minimum wage ordinance that will increase the minimum wage in Las Cruces to $10.10 an hour by 2019. While some are calling the final ordinance a compromise between workers and businesses, others feel the decision was an injustice.
Las Cruces City Council voted to approve the amendments Councilor Nathan Small made to the citizen’s ordinance passed in September that increases the minimum wage every other year instead of every year. The amendment was passed after hearing other amendments from Councilors Silva, Levatino, Smith, and arguments to leave the ordinance as is. Mayor Pro- Tem Smith says Small’s plan was the middle ground.
“We found a way to compromise on something,” Smith said. ‘That compromise is probably not satisfactory to anybody or everybody, but it was movement from two different directions. That has to be applauded.”
Mayor Miyagishima says that Small’s changes could have waited to the six-month review to see how the changes affected the community and to keep the public’s trust.
“This is something here that I think has violated the spirit of that ordinance,” Miyagishima said. “I’m not saying that his ideas weren’t good. I too think that there was probably a need to have some revision, but I don’t think this was the right place and the right time to do it.”
Marci Dickerson, owner of the Dickerson group that owns various restaurants and businesses in Las Cruces says that the extra year between increases gives her business time to handle the extra costs.
“It’s the exact same wage that is currently in place,” Dickerson said. “It just gives us a little more time as a business to absorb the cost and make sure that we don’t have detrimental consequences to the increase in minimum wage, such as having to lay off people or decreasing hours and those types of things.”
Councilor Nathan Small says that these amendments are a way to make sure all members of the community are represented.
“Offer an increase, offer a raise both at that tipped wage and also generally for minimum wage workers in our community,” Small said. “It perhaps does not do it soon enough, but it also only goes to 2019. So it’s a mix, and I think any time we consider compromise we consider the fact that it is going to be a mix.”
Sarah Nolan, Executive Director of CAFé, says that the changes go against the core of the citizen’s ordinance and doesn’t view it as a compromise.
“We think it is remarkable at what city council and big business were able to compromise on their own without the community,” Nolan said. “We also believe that our ordinance hadn’t even been in full effect yet. So, to say there was an impact is just outrageous. They should have allowed the citizen’s ordinance to go forward as it was passed and as it was written. And instead they decided to compromise their own values, and compromise their own leadership.”
Nolan says CAFé will be meeting to discuss which if any steps they plan to take in response to the ordinance passing with the new amendments.
