09-25-17 Community Investment - Laserfiche WebLink

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figures. She stated,ALICE stands for Asset Limited Income Constrained Employees. In other words, the working poor. You'll notice that fifty-three percent(53%) of people in the City of South Bend are struggling to make ends-meet. Any opportunity we have to support residents of South Bend, I think we should take advantage of that opportunity. So in this case if we are going to save a business money, it stands clear we should expect those business to reciprocate that and offer their employees decent wages. Dr. Marty Wolfson, 809 Park Avenue, stated, On the other side of the handout it shows how much individuals need to make,per hour,to meet the basic needs. It is a called a Household Survival Budget. A single adult needs to make $9.07 an hour. Of course a family needs way more than that. I think we have a perception in our minds about who the minimum wage workers really are. We tend to think they are mostly teenagers. It turns out they are not mostly teenagers. More than eighty-eight percent (88%) of people who make between$7.25 and$10.10 an hour are at least twenty(20) years old. More than twenty-five percent(25%) are parents and also fifty- six percent(56%) are women and forty-four percent(44%)have at least some college education. There has been a lot of empirical research in recent years that has challenged the idea that if we raised the minimum wage the employment would go down. The vast majority of that research indicates that there is little effect on employment raising the wage. Committee Vice Chair Williams-Preston then opened the floor to questions and comments from Committee and Councilmembers. Committeemember Will Smith stated, The agenda I received last week didn't have an updated bill and I just now got a chance to look at the amendments. When I first received a copy of the bill it felt like a punch to the stomach and I would like to get some extra time to meet with the authors of this bill. Committeemember Paul Tipps asked, Were the only changes adding the language about the tip- workers? Ms. Williams-Preston replied, Those were the only changes, yes. Dr. Wolfson stated, There was another change that changed the starting date to the first of the year next ,year. Committeemember Tipps stated, These are fairly minimal changes. Has there been any discussion about what resources we have to control the audit and compliance of this? The auditing is necessary. But do we have the willingness to enforce this ordinance? Ms. Williams-Preston replied, I don't have a clear understanding of how that would work. James Mueller, Executive Director of Community Investment with offices on the 14th floor of the County-City Building, stated,As we shared last time, enforcement would be difficult in terms of the staffing and resources we currently have. We imagine there will be a self-reporting aspect to it where the business would list their wages. There could be a potential audit. We need more detail to it. 2