Will Kelly ask voters to accept the same type of tax proposal Coppinger did four years ago?

Aug 7 – The city of Chattanooga prepares to follow the steps of the private sector to find the workers it needs.

Mayor Tim Kelly said last Tuesday that the budget he will put before the city council this week will increase pay for skilled recycle, garbage and brush picker drivers by about $ 14,000, or 45%, to address a staff shortage.

In late July, the mayor stopped the city’s roadside recycling pick-up service due to the shortage. Last week he explained that he had moved recycling drivers to collect rubbish and brushes because their service is either required by law or for safety reasons.

Kelly says the city is short of 32 drivers for its various services, and he hopes the city’s new salaries and generous benefits package will fill the gap.

The Mayor is doing what a number of successful U.S. corporations have done over the past half decade to attract the workers they want to choose their jobs in amid the burgeoning pre-COVID economy. Now that vaccinations allow the economy to resume much of its heat, jobs are abundant again and workers can be selective.

Namely:

– Facebook raised its minimum wage for contract workers to $ 15 an hour in 2015, then to $ 20 an hour in 2019 in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and Washington, DC, and to $ 18 an hour Hour in Seattle.

– Healthcare company Aetna began paying its US hourly workers at least $ 16 an hour in 2015.

– In 2017, Target set a goal of raising the minimum wage from $ 11 to $ 15 over the next three years and to reach this mark in July 2020.

– Online retail giant Amazon increased its starting wage for all US employees to at least $ 15 an hour in 2018.

Charter Communications set a minimum wage of $ 15 in 2018 and announced that it will raise its initial minimum wage to $ 20 per hour in 2022, with annual increases of $ 1.50 per hour in 2020 and 2021.

Global health services company Cigna set a minimum wage for its U.S. employees of $ 16 an hour in 2018.

The story goes on

– Walt Disney World agreed with a group of unions in 2018 to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour by October 2021.

– Bank of America’s minimum hourly wage was $ 17 an hour in May 2019 and rose to $ 20 an hour in March 2020.

– Costco increased its starting wage in the US to $ 15 an hour in 2019 and to $ 16 an hour on February 25 this year.

– Google has been demanding $ 15 an hour from its US provider and its temporary workers since 2019.

– Wells Fargo announced in March 2020 that it would raise its minimum wage to at least $ 15 (and $ 20 for employees in high-cost areas) by the end of the year.

– Best Buy raised its minimum wage to $ 15 an hour in August 2020.

– Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said in a December 2020 letter to Congress that the company plans to set a minimum wage of $ 15 an hour over the next few years.

Although the state minimum wage is $ 7.25 an hour and has been in place for 12 years, the size and financial health of the above companies have enabled them to more than double that wage.

As the new wages start to affect their profits, they will raise the prices of their goods and services, but at a rate they believe will not drive away Americans who can pay for those goods and services.

It’s a little different with the government. If she wants to raise wages, she will either have to cut other household expenses to offset those wage increases or raise taxes.

The city of Chattanooga is in excellent financial shape by all rights and compared to other cities following the global pandemic. But not only workers with commercial driving licenses are needed, but also members of the police, the fire brigade and the civil engineering department.

Kelly said his initial budget will include a “complete overhaul” of the city’s pay structure and provide significant pay increases for employees in each of those departments.

To pay them, he said there would be some cuts from the previous budget, but didn’t rule out an increase in property tax.

This year, Kelly has the option to do what Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger did in 2017, the last year before that year the certified tax rates changed. When the properties were revalued four years ago, Coppinger suggested keeping the county’s millage rate where it was, essentially raising taxes to include school building, prison expansion at the Silverdale Detention Center, and a regional sewage treatment plant pay. The plan worked.

Now the Mayor of Chattanooga has that option and leaves the rate at the old level of $ 2.28 instead of the new rate of $ 1.85. That would be a de facto tax hike, but it would bring in millions of dollars on those wage increases, which would make up for the fact that the city is “far from the market in many, many job categories.”

We don’t know all the details of what Kelly is planning for the budget, but we do know that paying workers fair market rates is important in finding and retaining the best employees. But tax increases in the first year of office don’t make voters happy campers. On the other hand, voters may prefer to pay a little more to have their recyclables picked up, have enough police to respond to a crisis, or have the fire brigade pull their cat out of a tree.