Tiffin aims for $9 minimum wage, scraps tiers

Tiffin is again changing course on a minimum wage ordinance. Instead of a tiered wage, the city will soon vote on a $9 an hour minimum for everyone.

The Tiffin City Council has spent weeks debating a tiered wage ordinance that would keep the minimum for workers under 18 years old at $7.25 while letting wages for adults rise in accordance with Johnson County's minimum wage ordinance. After receiving sustained criticism from the public on the issue, the council voted down that ordinance on Feb. 16 and was poised to take up a similar measure that would apply to workers under 16.

That idea was taken off the table at a special meeting Thursday, said council member Al Havens, who originally suggested the tiered wage.

"The community, the public was very much against it," he said. "They viewed it as discriminatory and myself I didn’t think that it was healthy for them to be that concerned about discrimination so ... I thought it would be best just to scrap the whole idea of a tiered minimum wage. It probably was more trouble than it was worth."

Tiffin scraps one tiered wage ordinance, suggests another

Council members now feel they have reached a compromise that everyone can live with.

"It gives a floor for businesses to move up a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to kill off the businesses at this point," Havens said. "It’s a compromise from what the county has mandated."

Havens gained the support of council member Mike Ryan, who opposed the tiered wage because he believed it would exploit teenage workers.

"As most people know, we’ve struggled with this and it’s caused a lot of emotional discussion," Ryan said. "And Al Havens on the council, I think to his credit, is trying to find some middle ground that we can agree on to get this behind us."

Until Tiffin passes its own ordinance, it remains subject to a Johnson County ordinance that went into effect in November and sets the minimum wage in the county at $8.20 an hour. That wage will jump to $9.15 on May 1 and to $10.10 on Jan. 1, 2017, before rising annually based on cost-of-living increases.

The $9 rate was chosen as a compromise between $8.75 — which has been proposed by the Iowa Senate for the last two years — and the county's upcoming increase to $9.15. The council will hold its first vote on the $9 ordinance at its meeting on March 8.

Council member Jim Bartels said the discussion is the result of the council trying to do what's best for the town. The choices were to compromise or opt out of the wage increase, which he said he disagrees with, so the council chose compromise.

"We thought we'd make it $9 and I think ... that might be the extent of it for us as a town, and that's what we have decided to vote on," Bartels said.

While the proposed ordinance has the support of four of the five council members, Jo Kahler said she would not back the measure.

"I am very opposed to it because in the first place I don’t feel — and I’ve told them all along — that a city council has any business telling businesses what they have to pay in wages. And I am not going to change my mind," Kahler said.

She voted in favor of the tiered ordinance as a compromise but said she won't back further measures. She thinks the city should opt out of the county ordinance.

"I'm not voting for any wage increase at all from now on," she said.

UI Housing and Dining to up wage above county minimum

The ordinance will require three readings to pass, beginning on March 8. City Administrator Doug Boldt said Tiffin would not hold a public hearing on the topic after holding hearings in November and January, but the city will allow public comment during the council's discussion of the ordinance.

Reach Stephen Gruber-Miller at 319-887-5407 or sgrubermil@press-citizen.com. Follow him at @sgrubermiller.