City Council discusses possibly raising low wages

low wage workers get paid more than ten dollars an hour? open abc-seven’s maria garcia is live with news developing now… the city already pays all city employees at least ten dollars an hour. but it still hires some companies that pay their workers less than that. these are companies for example that the city may hire for cleaning and janitorial services. and these companies usually pay workers between 7-25 and 7-75 an hour. the market value for janitorial services according to the city is 7-75. city rep. lily limon says the city should not be promoting low wages by hiring companies who pay their employees so little. she says the city should shell out more money for contracts with these companies so the workers can get paid at least ten dollars an hour. the city manager empathized with limon but also said the city had to look at costs. but city rep. michiel noe has a completely different position. he says that’s not the role of government. he says the city council’s role is to watch taxpayer dollars – and that means getting services for as little as possible: “we’re paying the least that we have to pay to get the services that we need. which is in business what you do and that is in my opinion what i agreed in my contract with my constituents to not pay extra for some things we don’t need.” my parents work manual labor jobs their entire jobs and my mom still cleans houses so she’s witness to some of that pay and you’re looking at their retirement. so it definitely doesn’t fall on deaf ears. i’m very hopeful of what will come about but in solidarity with your parents i’m going to vote no. limon was referring to voting no on renewing a contract with a cleaning vendor. preliminary research shows it could cost the city about 1.9 million dollars a year to only deal with vendors who pay workers 10 dollars an hour. maria, before we let you go: yesterday you told us council was slated to discuss the controversial funding for street repairs. i waited more than six hours for them to get to that but city council deleted the item last minute because it got so late. i’ll let you know when they decide to discuss it again. also out of city council today… details finalized on el paso’s new