ST. PETERSBURG — Calling it "a step in the right direction," Mayor Rick Kriseman on Tuesday proposed raising the minimum wage for city workers to $12.50 an hour.

Flanked by Deputy Mayor Kanika Tomalin, City Council members and community organizers on the steps of City Hall, Kriseman also announced support for the "ban the box" initiative, which eliminates job candidates from automatically having to disclose previous arrests on city job applications beginning Jan. 1. (Background checks for public safety and other sensitive positions will remain in place, and all hires will continue to be checked for criminal convictions.)

City officials touted the proposal as a major piece of Kriseman's "city of opportunity" vision and further evidence of St. Petersburg's inclusiveness.

Wonderful things are happening in the city, Tomalin said, but one only needs to move beyond Beach Drive to see a lurking reality that's more grim — including 60,000 people who live in poverty.

"The sun should shine on all of us," Tomalin said.

Under Kriseman's plan, at least 65 full-time, non-union workers would get the bump in their paychecks next year.

At the bottom of the spectrum, the city's lowest-paid full-time laborers making a little more than $10 an hour would see a raise of more than $2 an hour. Others, including two workers in supply management, would get just a penny more an hour than they make now.

"This is gas money. It's a few extra dollars for groceries, to make life a little easier," Kriseman said. "This is money that will stay in the community."

Curtis Lassiter, 60, who maintains city curbs and roads and is one of the workers who will see his pay rise next year, welcomed to proposal. A former heavy-equipment operator who lost his job when the construction company he worked for closed, Lassiter said he makes less now than for similar road work he did 40 years ago.

"After I get through paying rent and groceries, I can barely buy a new pair of work pants," he said. "This is below poverty."

The wage increase and the ban the box proposal, which passed in recent years in Tampa and Jacksonville, aren't new issues, and the mayor's announcement comes amid ongoing labor negotiations.

For months, the union that bargains for 1,200 blue- and white-collar city workers has pushed for the administration to adopt a "living wage" for its employees. The union pegs that at $15 an hour, $2.50 more than what Kriseman proposed Tuesday.

If union members sign on to the administration's current offer of a three-year contract, another 70 full- and part-time workers also would see their pay lifted to $12.50 an hour. Other workers would either get a normal step raise or 2 percent more if they are at the top of their salary bracket.

On Tuesday, officials said the wage increases fall into the amount set aside for wages in the 2015 budget year, which began Oct. 1. The cost for all the wage increases, for union and non-union workers, would be $840,000.

Union officials stood to the side of City Hall as Kriseman and others spoke. They said they will continue pushing for a living wage, even if it has to happen over a couple of years.

Kriseman said he too will continue to study the issue.

"We want people who do great work for us to make a wage they can live on," he said.

Contact Kameel Stanley at kstanley@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8643. Follow @cornandpotatoes.