Asheville City Council

A local campaign to spur Asheville City Council to formally adopt a living-wage policy for city employees gained some ground at Council’s May 22 meeting, but specific proposals to mandate an annual wage increase or to favor conforming private contractors caused concern.

It’s a living: Living-wage proponents got some — but not all — of what they asked City Council for. photo by Jonathan Welch

The Asheville/Buncombe Living Wage Campaign first came before Council in March with a request that the city commit to paying its employees a living wage based on the Campaign’s calculations. Taking into account housing costs, the group set the bar at $9.50 per hour for workers with health benefits and $10.86 an hour for workers without.

Although the city already pays its full- and part-time workers at those levels, the group argued that adopting the policy would send a message to the private sector. The group also wanted to see the city commit both to a 2.2 percent annual cost-of-living increase and to favoring companies that pay their employees a living wage when it hires outside contractors.

Returning before Council for the second time, campaign organizer Tyrone Greenlee urged members to move on the issue.

“We believe the recommendations are a good use of city dollars,” he said.

A majority of those in attendance were supporters of the initiative, including representatives of social-service organizations and Asheville’s interfaith community.

“It is a vicious cycle for those in poverty to break out of,” said Linda Fisher Poss, vice president of Children First of Buncombe County. She pointed out that about 20 percent of children in Buncombe live at or below the poverty line. “This proposal is a fair one, and a modest one.”

“Wage justice is just as important as addressing issues of climate change,” said Richard Fireman of the North Carolina Council of Churches.

Council members seemed to agree that Asheville’s adoption of a living wage, however symbolic, has far-flung implications. But they differed in whether those implications are salutary or alarming.

“I do see this as a sort of starting point for a larger conversation,” said Council member Brownie Newman. “Are there other ways we can support businesses in our community who want to pay a living wage?”

Council member Jan Davis, who said he already pays his tire store employees a living wage, nonetheless said businesses could be hurt by the movement, especially if the Living Wage Campaign begins certifying businesses that comply.

“This goes beyond just the city,” he said, noting that wage levels impact how many people a business can hire. “I’m gonna be looked at as a bad guy on this, but if you start putting stickers on the windows of people who do and don’t, it puts those people out of business.”

Council member Carl Mumpower bristled at the mere thought of the wage policy, and refused to support any of the ideas.

“This is a foot in the door,” he said. “Cancer does the same thing. I see this as a cancer.”

City employees (those who work year-round, whether full- or part-time, as opposed to seasonal or temporary workers) already earn salaries called for by the campaign, explained Assistant City Manager Jeff Richardson. Consequently, making the designation of a living wage official would not affect the budget. Council had little problem passing that part of the request on a 6-1 vote, with Mumpower voting “no.” But the automatic 2.2 percent cost-of-living increase to offset inflation gave some Council members pause, and the measure failed by a slim margin.

According to the staff report, that increase would cost the city about $1.3 million a year. Richardson noted that the city already budgets a 1 percent cost-of-living pay increase and a 3 percent merit-pay increase, which is distributed to employees based on an annual review. (Employees can receive anywhere from 1 to 5 percent but average 3 percent across the board.)

Mayor Terry Bellamy argued that the budget varies too much from year to year to make a blanket policy for the future. “There is the potential to do more harm than good to the entire system,” she said.

Newman said the increase could apply just to those who would drop below the living-wage threshold. That would place less of a strain on the city’s wallet, he argued. But Richardson said that raises should go to the entire employee base to avoid pay-equity issues.

Council member Robin Cape made a motion to adopt the policy, saying that, unlike the federal minimum wage, which has not kept up with the rising cost of living, this policy would help the city’s lowest earners to stay ahead of inflation. But the measure failed on a 3-4 vote. Newman, Cape, and Vice Mayor Holly Jones voted for the annual increase, whereas Bellamy, Bryan Freeborn, Davis and Mumpower voted against it.

A proposal to favor private contractors that pay a living wage also caused concern, but Council voted narrowly to have staff take a closer look at how that preference would figure into the selection process.

Bellamy worried that smaller businesses trying to get off the ground would suffer. “We are placing barriers on people who have not been able to get a seat at the table,” she said.

Others were bothered by the lack of specifics, including Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce President Rick Lutovsky. “When we talk to businesses, they are unclear,” he said during the public comment period. “How does the city plan on weighting this?”

But Newman was ready to move on the issue, and Cape said it would be easy to insert that criterion into the contractor-selection process. There are existing state and city procedures on how to weigh compliance with minority-employee and drug-free-workplace guidelines.

“We have a system in place that shows us how to do this,” Cape said. “It sends a message that we do have strategic goals.”

A motion by Freeborn to have staff analyze the weighted system passed 4-3, with Freeborn, Newman, Jones and Cape voting for it.

Forward movement

Council unanimously kicked off a formal process to solicit interest in developing four more city-owned parcels downtown. The Request for Qualifications from developers is the next step. The four properties, which were on a December 2006 list of city-owned areas being considered for development, include a parcel at Eagle and Market streets and another on Haywood Street across from the Civic Center. The process already began for two other properties on the list in 2006. All were designated as likely places for Council to advance its development priorities (such as workforce housing and a performing-arts center) through public/private partnerships.

Under a schedule presented by Matt Taylor, vice president at Real Estate Research Consultants, RFQs will be accepted until July 10. In early September, the city will hold a public forum. Then it will take steps to designate actual projects for the sites.

During Taylor’s presentation, he displayed other projects his company has helped usher in, specifically several high-dollar hotels in Orlando. But those developments didn’t match what Cape had in mind. “I personally don’t want to get input from cities that I don’t want to look like in 20 years,” she said. “I don’t want to look like Orlando.”

But Taylor explained that this step merely identifies available developers so the city can determine who it wants to work with. “I don’t have a dog in this hunt,” he said. “It’s your city.”

Meanwhile, Bellamy pushed to keep the process for the Eagle/Market streets property, which adjoins privately owned land whose owner is ready to work with the city, rolling along. Experiencing false starts and legal wrangling, redevelopment in that area of downtown has lagged.

Assured that issuing the RFQ did not commit the city to any particular development plan, Council moved forward on all four parcels.

In other Council business:

• Council heard public comment on the possibility of switching to partisan ballots in municipal elections. The majority of the comments were against the move. Council will deliberate and vote on the issue on June 12.

• Council unanimously approved a measure to designate all city-owned outdoor-recreation areas—including parks—as non-smoking zones. The designation serves more as a suggestion than a command, since state law forbids outright prohibition. (Several on Council, however, seemed ready to jump if the law changes.)

• In a unanimous vote, Council showed interest in partnering with Warren Wilson College as the city moves to reduce its use of energy and obtain LEED certification for its buildings. The college, one of the nation’s premier environmental campuses, approached the city to see how it could help with the transition.