If the St. Paul City Council approves a $15 minimum wage, workers enrolled in special employment programs for the disabled would likely be exempt. There’s a good chance a gradual roll-out of minimum wage increases would not begin until the year 2020.

And instead of outright exemptions for restaurant workers, a $15 minimum might not apply to servers and other tipped workers until the year 2030, at least in restaurants that serve hard alcohol.

“Yes, there is some talk about a longer roll-out on $15 for ‘full-service’ restaurants,” said St. Paul City Council President Amy Brendmoen. “So no ‘tip credit,’ but maybe a more protracted roll-out.”

That’s the view from the city council. How much of that will pass muster with St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter — who made it a campaign priority last year to call for a $15 per hour minimum wage without exceptions — is another question entirely.

As the fight for a $15 minimum wage in St. Paul enters its final weeks, advocates and opponents are rallying to make cases for and against special exemptions and roll-out periods.

St. Paul City Council Member Chris Tolbert, who is working on legal language alongside the mayor’s office, is likely to present a draft ordinance to the seven city council members by Friday, if not sooner.

“My goal is to have the first draft have as much consensus as there can be, and I encourage my colleagues to prepare and bring amendments along the way,” Tolbert said.

That’s not to say that a path to $15 is set in stone — even after Tolbert and the mayor’s office make their cases, revisions and amendments are more than likely.

Council members say they may introduce the ordinance proposal into the official public record on Oct. 17, and host a public hearing on or about Nov. 7.

A final vote would come on Nov. 14, at the earliest, but amendments could delay the schedule. On Friday, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office declined to comment on any particulars.

ENFORCEMENT CONCERNS, FACT-FINDING IN SEATTLE

There’s plenty of details yet to be ironed out, not the least of which is enforcement.

Carter’s 2019 budget proposal includes $100,000 for outreach and enforcement of the $15 minimum wage — a sum that advocates and opponents alike have called minuscule.

In April 2015, the city of Seattle launched a new 23-worker office — the Office of Labor Standards — in part to help enforce the new minimum wage. The office currently includes 10 investigators and an enforcement manager, and oversaw this year a community education fund of $1.5 million and a business outreach fund of $800,000.

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St. Paul City Council approves $600,000 charge for downtown improvement district For perspective, St. Paul City Council Member Dai Thao and Tim Mahoney, a St. Paul resident and restaurant owner, flew to Seattle in late September for a better look at how minimum wage increases have played out there.

“I came back confident that we need to craft an ordinance that works for us … and that we don’t need to compare ourselves to other cities,” Thao said on Monday. “But we can learn from the mistakes of other cities like Seattle.”

Brendmoen, the council president, and City Council Member Rebecca Noecker will meet with restaurant workers, liquor store owners and other members of the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association on Monday to discuss how a $15 minimum wage with or without exceptions for tipped employees would impact their industries.

MLBA officials have said that a 14-week task force organized by the nonpartisan Citizens League to consider different schedules for implementing a $15 minimum wage lacked sufficient representation from St. Paul “full-service” restaurant owners, immigrants and low-wage workers.

In early October, the MLBA issued an eight-page memo to the city council and mayor’s office outlining their objections. They called out “disproportionate union representation” on the 21-member task force, including members with close ties to the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation and AFSCME. An organizer with SEIU co-chaired the effort.

They noted that a catering director from the Burrito Mercado restaurant and grocery on St. Paul’s West Side served on the Citizens League committee but dropped out due to her schedule, and her replacement was a staffer from the nonprofit East Side Area Business Association — not a restaurant owner or server. Mahoney also served on the task force, even though his restaurant, the Loon Cafe, is located in Minneapolis.

Last month, the Citizens League study outlined a four-to-seven year roll-out for a $15 minimum wage. But some city council members are discussing an even more gradual roll-out of as many as 10 years for tipped workers at restaurants that serve hard alcohol.

The first wage increases likely would not begin until the year 2020, allowing time for outreach.

“The licensed beverage association is lobbying as aggressively as they can for carve-outs and delays,” said Celeste Robinson, an organizer with the $15 Now campaign. “There’s no reason to believe that’s a well-supported policy. Excessive delays hurt workers, and that’s not what St. Paul wants. I don’t think we should be fooled. This is just a ‘tip penalty’ by another name, from the same corporate interests that have been pushing for a tip penalty from the beginning.”

RESTAURANTS, IMMIGRANTS UNDER-REPRESENTED?

Nevertheless, some of the licensed beverage association’s concerns have resonated with City Council Member Jane Prince, who represents low-income neighborhoods on the East Side, as well as some prominent immigrant and minority advocates, including state Sen. Foung Hawj, DFL-St. Paul.

Hawj said he supports a $15 minimum wage, but he worries that without more outreach and education, it could negatively impact some of the most vulnerable immigrant shops at locations such as Hmong Village Shopping Center on the East Side and Hmongtown Marketplace on Como Avenue, as well as small start-up restaurants.

“I don’t think they’re aware at all. I don’t think we’ve sent adequate information to them. Those are micro-businesses,” said Hawj, who represents a large section of St. Paul’s East Side. “It’s not easy to reach out to the micro-businesses. You have to build a grassroots relationship to them.”

Hawj said he’s spoken casually to Carter and some council members “when I cross paths,” but he wonders why representatives of the Minnesota Hmong Chamber of Commerce have not been more active in discussions and outreach.

Thomas Herr, the manager of Hmong Village Shopping Center on Johnson Parkway, said he had been willing to serve on the Citizens League task force but was never called. Herr’s shopping center hosts more than 300 vendors, virtually all of them micro-businesses with fewer than five employees. They are mostly oblivious to discussions around a $15 minimum wage, he said.

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St. Paul City Council approves $600,000 charge for downtown improvement district “I think very little — very little awareness from my vendors,” Herr said on Friday. “The East Side Area Business Association, ESABA, is going to help me set up (a discussion with) my vendors, and some of the council members from the city are willing to sit down.”

If a $15 minimum wage is approved, “it’s very important that transition time is allowed, so that micro-businesses can be prepared,” Herr added.