ALAMEDA — The coronavirus may have closed businesses and left owners and workers feeling uneasy about their future, but those working in this city on minimum wage are still on track to get a raise.
The minimum wage in Alameda, now $13.50 an hour, will jump to $15 an hour starting in July, despite the pandemic.
The City Council decided unanimously Tuesday to go ahead with the raise, initially approved in October 2018.
Under state law, businesses with at least 26 employees must pay at least $15 an hour starting Jan. 1, 2022. But officials in some cities, such as Alameda, wanted the increase to happen sooner, especially against the backdrop of the East Bay’s housing crisis and the high rents that have left people scrambling to find affordable places to live.
“I don’t want to hurt the lowest wage workers and their ability to pay rent,” Councilwoman Malia Vella said.
While Alameda may be going forward with a raise, the Hayward City Council opted March 24 to postpone an increase, citing the need to support businesses that might be struggling to meet payroll amid the pandemic.
As in Alameda, the wage was set to reach $15 an hour on July 1. The raise will now be put off for six months in Hayward.
The Alameda council’s action was part of a broader effort to address the health crisis, including a $600,000 grants program to help small businesses.
Up to 80 grants of $7,500 each will be awarded to small businesses. The money can go toward rent, utility bills or other expenses.
When the grants will start getting released was not immediately available.
In order to qualify for the grants, a business must have one to 25 employees or be a restaurant. The business also must be located within Alameda and have experienced at least a 20 percent drop in income since March 16 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The resolution the council adopted did not give a deadline for a business owner to apply.
“I would hate to see a business go under if there was a way of helping it out,” Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft said before Tuesday’s unanimous vote to back the grants.
The grants will come from Alameda’s general fund and from money that the city has set aside to support local businesses, such as for its program to improve business facades.
Vice Mayor John Knox White said the grants might not be enough.
“These $7,500 grants are only going to carry people for a month or two,” he said. He also said he believed that putting more money in people’s pockets, such as through increasing the minimum wage, will encourage people to spend and support local merchants.
Councilman Tony Daysog said the council’s action was the first step toward reopening shops and restaurants in places such as the Webster and Park street business districts.
“While I am not yelling at the top of my lungs, ‘Liberate Main Street,’ ” Daysog said in an email after the Tuesday’s meeting, “we in City Hall must nonetheless allow our locally owned mom-and-pop businesses a fighting chance to survive, and, with this grant program, we are taking a positive step toward that.”
Daysog said he supported the wage hike, but had concerns.
“Many locally owned mom-and-pop stores especially need temporary relief from the imminent wage hike, since they simply don’t have the financial reserves that national chains have to weather this COVID recession,” the councilman said.
In April 2016, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that called for the minimum wage statewide to reach $15 an hour by 2023.
Under the state’s plan, pay raises will be linked to inflation and reflect the CPI, up to 3.5 percent annually.
As of Jan. 1 this year, small businesses had to pay employees at least $12 an hour and big businesses $13 unless they were located in cities with accelerated minimum wage timetables.