September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 46

Revisiting

Minimum Wage
Increases

Park and recreation professionals talk
budgets and staﬀ pay ﬁve years later

By Anthony Iracki, MS, CPRP

F

or park and recreation professionals, there are few questions with
the power to foreshadow significant changes more than " How
should we handle an increase to the minimum wage? "
It is no doubt a polarizing question. What is deemed a positive
for society can pose a significant challenge for those who are tasked with
administering it. Implementing an increase in minimum wage can result in
a loss of staff, an increase in pricing for services, a decrease in service-based
programs and contention among stakeholders. Park and recreation professionals often are the first to see adverse operational impacts before the
positive sets in.

The truth is this challenge has been
occurring regularly for quite some
time. In fact, the U.S. Department
of Labor reports the minimum wage
was increased on a semi-regular
schedule between the years of 1938
and 2009 (tinyurl.com/y76ctddg).
Typical time between increases
were as short as one year for a period through the 1960s and 1970s.
Since 2009, the minimum wage has

44

Parks & Recreation

not increased federally, and to this
day (11 years later) remains at $7.25
per hour. Adjusted for inflation, an
item that costs an hour's wage in
2009 would cost $8.72 today - an
increase of 20.2 percent.
In 2015, I began researching this
topic as part of my master's thesis.
Encouragingly, I discovered that
there were park and recreation
agencies across the country that

| S E P T E M B E R 2 02 0 | PA R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N .O R G

were already taking steps to enact a cost recovery plan to recoup
expenses in response to increases,
putting their state or city minimum
wage near the $10 mark.
In early 2020 and prior to the
coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, I revisited some of those agencies
to discuss how they have fared since
2015 and what their plans are for
the future. Many are in states that
recently have enacted laws setting a
minimum wage of $15 by 2025.
The information speaks to challenges with an increasing minimum wage in times of normal
operations. However, the lessons
learned from this period can be applicable in any toolkit designed to
look at the impact of lost revenue,
increased expenses or depressions
in the economy.

September 2020 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of September 2020 - Parks & Recreation

September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 1
September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 2
September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 3
September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 4
September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 5
September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 6
September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 7
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September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 9
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September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 45
September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 46
September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 47
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September 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 60
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