BANGOR, Maine — City Councilor Ben Sprague, who is expected to cast the deciding vote on whether Bangor should implement its own minimum wage, said Tuesday he has questions and concerns about the proposed ordinance.
Sprague said he remains undecided on the issue as the City Council prepares to make a decision Monday with four councilors already expected to support the order and four expected to oppose it.
Sprague said supporters and opponents have been contacting him as the vote looms.
“The positions of those reaching out to me has been pretty mixed,” he said. “Most believe in a minimum-wage increase, or at least they say the do, but want it to be done at the federal or state level.”
In a Facebook post Tuesday, Sprague said he was surprised he is apparently the only undecided vote on the issue. Sprague’s commentary comes after his absence from a public hearing July 15 regarding the issue and a committee meeting Monday because of the recent birth of his second child.
While he continues expressing concerns, Sprague is not expected to take a formal position on the matter until Monday’s meeting. In statements and online, he raised several questions and concerns Tuesday about the proposed wage hike, saying he hopes to address them during the upcoming meeting.
“I may have been checked out a little bit over the last week, but I’m checked in enough to know that the proposed ordinance is a long way from complete,” he wrote online.
Sprague raised questions about how the city would handle tipped workers, workers under the age of 18, certain small businesses and city workers who currently earn less than the proposed local minimum wage.
He raised concern about whether Bangor has reached out to neighboring communities in regard to the issue. That concern comes after Sprague proposed in February an amendment that would have prevented any local minimum wage ordinance from taking effect unless every contiguous community also voted in a minimum-wage increase.
In a statement to the Bangor Daily News on Tuesday, Sprague raised doubt about whether he will support the local ordinance as the Maine People’s Alliance gathers signatures to force a citizen-initiated referendum on the November 2016 ballot that, if approved, would increase the statewide minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2020.
“With a state referendum next year on the minimum wage that I think will probably pass, I don’t know how much sense it makes to have all our Bangor businesses put in new payscales only to change them again next year,” he said.
“I do believe a minimum wage increase is overdue, but it should happen at the state (or) federal level. And for those who say it can’t happen at (the) state because of this governor and legislators, there is still a process where it can happen, which is the referendum process and is exactly what is happening,” he said later.
During a public hearing Wednesday, July 15, Mike Tipping, communications director for the Maine People’s Alliance, said they were pursuing the referendum only because it was their last option to get the minimum wage increased.
He encouraged the council to pass its ordinance — with certain amendments — to “make a real statement for raising the minimum wage.”
“You have the opportunity to help thousands of people who are working hard, who are all falling just short [and] just need need a little bit of help,” Tipping told the council.
Additionally, City Councilor Gibran Graham, a supporter of the ordinance, argued that implementing a local minimum wage increase in advance of the statewide referendum would make the transition easier for businesses by allowing for more gradual payroll increases.
If approved, the ordinance would incrementally increase the local minimum wage from the statewide minimum of $7.50 per hour to $8.25 per hour in 2016, $9 per hour in 2017 and $9.75 per hour in 2018. After that, the minimum wage would fluctuate with the Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation.
“I don’t see the point in making people wait any longer for what should have been done years ago,” Graham said during a committee meeting Monday.
Councilor Joe Baldacci, who proposed the minimum-wage ordinance, said Tuesday he respects and appreciates Sprague’s concerns and hopes to speak with him about the upcoming vote.
Baldacci said he has spoken informally with councilors from Brewer, but he expressed concern that waiting for neighboring cities to pass their own minimum wage ordinances could unnecessarily delay the action.
“Somebody needs to make the decision and go first, and Bangor should make the decision and go first,” he said.
With the vote looming, multiple amendments have already been proposed for the ordinance. The council will not consider any amendments until Monday’s meeting.
Supporters have proposed amendments that would eliminate the exemption for workers under the age of 18 as well as the exemptions for tipped workers and businesses with four or fewer employees.
To account for tipped employees, Baldacci proposed an amendment that would have employers pay a base rate of half the new minimum wage, about $4.13 an hour. For tipped workers whose base wage and tips do not average the proposed $8.25 per hour minimum at the end of the pay period, the employer would have to make up the difference.
That’s the same way the state law works for tipped employees. Only the minimum amounts are different with a minimum base rate of $3.75 and a minimum average hourly rate of $7.50 under state law.
Meanwhile, opponents have proposed delaying consideration for more research and delaying implementation until July 1 to coincide with the city’s fiscal year.
Bangor’s upcoming vote on minimum wage comes in the wake of a council vote in Portland that would increase the minimum wage there to $10.68 by 2017.
That council has since scheduled a referendum for Nov. 3 that would let voters decide whether to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour in 2019. It also is taking a second look at its July 6 minimum-wage ordinance, which unintentionally voted to increase the base pay for tipped workers to $6.35 per hour.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the roughly 378,000 Maine workers who earn an hourly rate, about 3,000 earned the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour in 2012 and another 8,000 earned less than that.
According to Todd Gabe, an economics professor at the University of Maine, a general minimum wage increase to $8.25 per hour would affect 7 percent of the 67,720 workers in the Bangor metropolitan statistical area, which includes surrounding towns and cities such as Brewer, Hampden, Orono, Old Town and Winterport.
That includes between 115 and 135 part-time temporary and seasonal city employees who earn less than $8.25, representing an additional cost to the city of $50,000 to $60,000, according to Assistant City Manager Robert Farrar.
At $9 per hour, 12 percent would be affected, and at $9.75 per hour, 18 percent would be affected, Gabe said. According to city officials, Bangor has about 35,000 workers, about 6 percent of the state’s total workforce.
The proposal has been praised by some as a means to provide a living wage for the city’s lowest-paid workers and criticized by others as a burden to local businesses.
Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.