Boulder leaders support 8% annual minimum-wage hikes through ‘27

BOULDER — Boulder City Council provided initial approval Thursday evening for a plan to raise the minimum wage by 8% each year for the next three years, a less aggressive approach than some officials preferred. 

The move — a unanimous approval on first reading, setting up a second and final reading in a future meeting — came after a multi-hour public hearing during which several competing interests jockeyed for officials’ favor: workers, labor organizers and community-advocacy groups who say hefty wage hikes are necessary to make it possible to live in an increasingly expensive city and business owners (with support from business groups such as the Boulder Chamber) who argue that skyrocketing labor costs could force them to close up shop. 

Colorado’s minimum wage, which Boulder currently mirrors, is $14.42. Boulder’s increases, final approval of which is essentially a formality after Thursday’s first-reading vote, would occur in 2025, 2026 and 2027, and would apply to workers of all ages. (City leaders had considered exempting unemancipated minors from wage hikes).

Unitarian Universalist Church minister Rev. David Schwartz said significant pay increases are necessary because the current minimum “doesn’t come close” allowing Boulder workers to meet their basic daily needs.

While “the concerns of our lower-wage workforce is absolutely something we share,” Boulder Chamber CEO John Tayer said, an increase out of step with the state minimum wage “is the wrong tool. It lacks the flexibility” to address the needs of Boulder businesses.

Not all business people were against aggressive wage increases. “Paying people a livable wage is an economic development,” small-business owner Lori Garcia said.

In late 2023, the Boulder County Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously in favor of an aggressive approach to its minimum wage, increasing it to $15.69 in 2024 with plans to boost it incrementally each year until it reaches $25 in 2030. 

That move — which made Boulder County the first government in the region to take advantage of House Bill 19-1210, the legislation that allows local cities and counties to increase their minimum wages beyond the state mandate — applied only to workers in unincorporated parts of the county, including those in Gunbarrel and Niwot. Other local government bodies in the county are following a similar process as Boulder for raising the minimum wage within their respective municipal limits.

Four Boulder City Council members — one short of a majority — favored a more aggressive wage-hike regime championed by Councilmember Lauren Folkerts that would have established a 15% increase in 2025, followed by 8.5% bumps the next two years. 

The plan to bump wages by 8% each for the next three is “an insult” to minimum-wage earners, Folkerts said, and represents a cop-out that allows Boulder leaders to claim support for city workers “without taking the meaningful action the community is clearly asking for.”

on Facebook on LinkedIn