Burlington's City Council will vote tonight on a revised version (PDF) of their livable wage ordinance. The ordinance, originally implemented in 2001, applies to any city contractor or grantee getting at least $15,000 in city money. It requires them to pay at least $13.94 if they do provide health insurance and $15.83 if they do not. The ordinance also applies to the city itself.
The ordinance has become controversial recently as critics say it is poorly enforced. Currently, employers leasing space at the Burlington International Airport must follow the ordinance, but the drafted revision of the ordinance exempts those employers.
The revised ordinance would create a new position in the city for a monitor to field and investigate complaints about non-compliant employers. It would also require the city to pay livable wage to seasonal employees on their third year.
The city council plans to hear public comments on the drafted revision at 6 p.m. until their official meeting starts at 7 p.m.
Update 9:50 p.m. 9/23/2013: The council discussed the proposed amendments to the livable wage ordinance. Councilors Max Tracy, Sharon Bushor and Karen Paul each presented additional amendments. Only Paul's passed.
The council voted unanimously to send the updated revision back to the city's ordinance committee for further review. That committee will present a new version of the ordinance to the full council at a later date.
For details on the council's deliberations, as well as their votes and discussion on the city's redistricting plan, see the Tweets below.
[I used to be an embedded Storify. See Editor’s Note below.]
EDITOR’S NOTE: The original version of this post contained social media content embedded by the service Storify. Storify has ceased operation: the post has been updated to remove the Storify embed. The content that was embedded via Storify likely still exists on the original platform, e.g. Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, but it’s no longer curated and embedded in this post with Storify.
