Paul,

Thank you for your concern and excellent question.

First, it should be noted that the City does not have contracts with any hotel to house its guests. In fact, when people come to Charlottesville in an official capacity they are given a list of hotels from the tourism bureau from which to make their own arrangements. The City does use various food vendors for its activities. Again, we do not have any contractual arrangements but instead solicit bids when required and most of the time use small Charlottesville food service vendors when bidding is not required.

To my knowledge nobody has developed any pay range data about any of the hoteliers or restaurateurs in Charlottesville. I believe LAG and VOP have tried to gather a list of businesses ( in general ) that pay a living wage ( like mine ) but their research has not been comprehensive and does not include hospitality concerns.

I believe that it will be real difficult to ban the use of hospitality vendors for three reasons: First, the data of what various businesses pay their employees and their benefit packages will be extremely difficult to obtain. The City just do not have the authority to collect this data. Second, if we change our policy to make all vendors bid for a contract ( it would then fall under the current living wage ordinance ) to provide service it would assuredly rule out many of the small businesses that we tend to want to cultivate. Third, we would have to consider the impact of State law that currently says we can not discriminate in this way.

I would favor developing a preference list of those vendors that we can determine pay a living wage and hopefully LAG and VOP will help us to do this. If the City is demonstrative about this,I think it will cause many to sign on. In my first term, after a brief foray into the demonstration side of the Living wage movement, I have instead been following a path of individually approaching all types of businesses including those in hospitality. And I have to say that the ethic is slowly changing by force of the economy as well as the issue is becoming a badge of honor for those that do pay the living wage. I have already committed to this type of persuasion and would continue in a second term.

Finally, in my business the living wage made sense many years ago, even for unskilled labor. However, in the hospitality industry a big determent to this ethic is the high turnover rate ( 50%+ ). If the City with partners could help the local industry to solve this issue through targeted training, it would go a long way in convincing the businesses to raise pay levels because of the resulting efficiencies. Currently, PHAR has undertaken a program to do just that and I hope that I and Council can make their program a resounding success.

Thanks,

Blake Caravati (electronic mail, February 19, 2002)