The Campbell City Council wants a bit more information about a regional plan that aims to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2019 in multiple Santa Clara County cities.

At its Nov. 1 meeting, the city council decided after a 4-1 vote, with Councilman Jeffrey Cristina dissenting, to continue discussion about raising the minimum wage within the city. The council wanted additional information about fiscal impacts on local businesses and employees before signing on to a plan crafted by the Cities Association of Santa Clara County.

“It’s asking member cities to adopt a minimum wage increase as a regional effort to avoid having different rules in each city, which could cause economic issues for employers and employees,” Al Bito, the city’s deputy city manager, told the council.

The association has proposed a regional effort to increase minimum wage to reach $15 per hour by 2019, which would come three years ahead of a plan signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Jerry Brown that will gradually raise the wage to $15 an hour by 2022. Beginning in January, the state’s minimum wage will increase from $10 per hour to $11, according to city staff.

Cupertino, Los Altos and Palo Alto have already signed on to the association’s plan.

Local business owners from the city’s downtown strip told the council that an accelerated increase of the minimum wage would hurt their businesses.

“I support an increase in minimum wage that has been approved by the state of California,” said Randy Musterer, owner of Sushi Confidential. “I do not support the accelerated increase as proposed by the city council. Labor is our No. 1 expense at Sushi Confidential. We have over 100 employees.”

Musterer added if the accelerated minimum wage increase was implemented, then costs would be passed on to customers.

A San Jose resident spoke about why raising the wage to align with the association’s proposal would help employees residing throughout the Santa Clara Valley.

“It’s a very appropriate thing to do when the cost of living in the area is much higher than the rest of the state,” Andrew Boone said. “This is a place where $15 an hour doesn’t cut it anymore.”

During council discussion, Cristina argued that the wage increase would harm young workers.

“Minimum wage isn’t to be lived on,” Cristina said. “As long as we keep pricing these positions for children out, they’re never going to get skills. And what we’re going to be doing is destroying our future workforce so people in 20 and 30 years aren’t going to have any skills to get jobs.”

Mayor Jason Baker took issue with Cristina’s characterization of minimum wage jobs and suggested the council look at the issue again on Dec. 6.

“Respectfully, you have maybe too narrow of an idea of what a minimum wage job is,” Baker said to Cristina. “If we continue this to Dec. 6, I think some of those folks will come out and talk to you and show you it’s not just kids.”