This past week, Q-line asked: “Do you think City Hall should pursue a living wage for its employees despite its budget crunch? Why or why not?”
Here are your responses: ✆ “Anyone who believes that $11.50 an hour is a living wage has not taken out their abacus recently and equated the high cost of essential products, such as gasoline, compounded by higher housing and food prices. $11.50 per hour for four 40-hour weeks adds up to $1,840 per month, less, approximately $300 in taxes. That leaves a balance of $1,540 per month for a single person who is paying $1,350 for a one-bedroom apartment and $190 for all other expenses. Is this living?” ✆ “The Santa Monica City Council has no business attempting to tell employers what to pay their employees. Thank you very much.” ✆ “I think the City Council is way too overrated, and I think that $11.50 an hour is just fine. If there is a budget shortfall, I don’t think they should augment the salary of the city employees, who in many cases don’t do a very good job.” ✆ “No, I don’t think that City Hall should pursue a living wage. When they were backing the living wage they said it would only be for hotel workers. Now they’ve jumped on the bandwagon for themselves because the Council knows there are a lot of voters out there who haven’t made the effort to go to school and improve their skills... those are the people that are going to vote them in. It’s typical for the Santa Monica City Council to contribute to the inflationary problems by trying to get more for nothing. City workers are going to get a raise because the council needs votes next year, and that’s what I think. We have a tight budget.” ✆ “The city should pursue a living wage, despite a budget crunch. There is always more money to be gotten from hedge, sign parking and smoking violations. It’s the birthright of the pigs to make more for doing less at the expense of private persons. After all that’s why there are government jobs.” ✆ “Let’s face it, any employee of this city is well paid and benefited. We have a budget crunch because of the cavalier spending and mismanagement. We need a clean sweep of City Hall in November. The status quo is just not working.” ✆ “The living wage was voted down by the residents of Santa Monica. City Hall should not pursue it. It has no mandate to pursue it. If they want to pay their employees more, they should pay the top employees less.” ✆ “They had better think about cleaning up hobo town before they distract themselves with any more issues.” ✆ “Give them the money. Give them the $11.50 an hour for the additional $1 million a year. The reason is if they work 35-hour work weeks, which translates into 140 hours a month, that’s only $1,610 a month gross. By the time social security is taken with other taxes, there is very little left for a person to live on. If they are living on $1,610 a month gross, they are existing with smoke and mirrors.” ✆ “They could pay everybody who actually works for the city a good wage if they cut out all the money they waste on bums. Then people who actually do work can get paid. That does not include paying a salary to the people who go around measuring hedges.” ✆ “The community of Santa Monica is affluent. Most taxes on the well off are at historic lows. The budget crisis is primarily a creation of the affluent caused by the lowering of taxes and other obligations for the affluent. If this thoughtless or heartless breed doesn’t somehow yield to concern for the less well-off, as well as a sense of collective obligation for the well-being of the people as a whole, then our society will continue to deteriorate. Everybody is feeling the effects of inflation in everything from gas to milk. We all know that a raise to $11.50 per hour will barely make a wage livable anyway.” ✆ “I believe in a free market. I don’t believe in a minimum wage. If people are willing to work for low wages that will keep costs down, in turn, they will have less to spend in the marketplace, which will keep prices down in general so their costs will be less.” ✆ “The city should be providing living wages for its workers and contract workers. That needs to be a top priority, along with good quality public schools and services for residents.” ✆ “Where there is a will, there is way to find the funds. Secondly, the whole community wins when the dignity of every worker is preserved and beyond the community.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 5, 2004. Read the original PDF.