Called this uh committee hearing to order of the economic development and small minority business committee.

Uh we uh thank everyone for joining us today and those that are watching online with us.

Um today we are talking about the potential uh changes to the Department of Development's minimum uh qualifying incentive wage threshold policy, more commonly referred to as the city's wage threshold.

The wage threshold sets the minimum pay requirement for jobs directly created or supported through multiple municipal tax incentive agreements.

In 2022, I held two hearings on this topic that led to an increase from $15 an hour to our current wage threshold of $20 an hour.

And really proud of that work and want to thank uh the department and the mayor's administration as well as my colleagues for helping us do that.

Tonight we will hear uh two presentations that will help council uh decide if the wage threshold should be increased and if so by how much.

First, we will have a presentation from our friends uh at United Way of Central Ohio to discuss data around our asset limited income constrained uh employed population, uh wise known as Alice.

And then we will also have a formal presentation from our Department of Development, and they will go over data on the pay scales of jobs presently in the city's incentive portfolio, comparing policies for um peer cities and a recommendation for this body to consider.

Following the presentations, we will jump to general discussion, uh, public comments and closing remarks in that order.

Um, first I want to thank uh Paul's and say thank you to uh both Director Stevens and the development team uh that are here with us uh on their engagement on this uh to date and my council colleagues for their thoughtful consideration.

It is my hope that after tonight, members of the public and community advocates will gain new perspectives and a stronger understanding of the challenge of the changes council is currently considering.

Um again wanna uh say echo those thanks to uh Mark Landine, who is with us as well as Bill Webster, and we'll hear from them uh as well.

Uh with that I will jump right into the presentations uh and I'm gonna turn over to our friends at United Way.

With us, we have Miss Melanie Hugh and Colin Helper.

The floor is yours.

Thank you.

And good evening.

Thank you, Councilmember Bankston and other members of council for providing me with the opportunity to present information about Alice for consideration during this hearing to discuss the city's wage threshold.

As you said, my name is Melanie Hill.

I'm the director of data analytics at United Way of Central Ohio, as well as the Alice State lead, where I work to raise awareness about this important data.

For those not familiar, Alice is a body of research and data that gives voice to an often forgotten and overlooked segment of our community that's working hard but still struggling to make ends meet.

Alice is an acronym for asset limited income constrained employed.

Put in simpler terms, Alice households are those with limited assets that rent rather than own their homes.

Their income is constrained despite working, and there's not enough money to cover all of their expenses or an emergency, and an unexpected event could plunge them into debt.

Alice households bring in income above the federal poverty level, but less than the cost of basics in the county where they live.

While Alice households have been struggling in the shadows for far too long, the irony is that we all know Alice, but many have used terms like the working poor or the invisible to describe them.

I'd like to stress that Alice individuals and households are everywhere, and the Alice workers typically include folks like our child care providers, uh, retail salespeople, cashiers, waiters, delivery drivers, gas station attendants, and the like.

Typically, we hear about financial hardship by way of the federal poverty level, and when we look at federal poverty in our state and our county, the numbers don't show how many central Ohioans are actually struggling.

In Ohio, we have 13 percent or 643,000 households that were living in poverty as of 2024, which is the latest data available.

But there were another 1,149,000 households or 23 percent that were considered Alice, which when combined with poverty, we have 1.7 million households, which is a staggering 37 percent that are below the Alice threshold, which is the average income needed to live and work in today's economy.

This is the reality of hardship in Ohio, and it is concealed by outdated measures that have long been considered the standard.

When we look at the county numbers in Franklin County, it's very similar to what we see in the state: 13% in poverty, 24% Alice households, and 37% combined below Alice.

That is over 200,000 households in the county that are struggling.

The numbers, our numbers in the county are similar to those in the state, but they can vary across and within counties.

So for example, within Franklin County, if you look at the neighborhoods, 67% of households in the Linden area were living paycheck to paycheck compared to 12% in the New Albany area.

Some other areas in Columbus with a high Alice prevalence are the 43223 zip code with 58% households struggling, and 43227, 43203 had 57% of households that fell below the Alice threshold.

Alice spans all of across ages, race, gender, different demographic categories, and there are some groups that experience hardship disproportionately compared to others.

So for example, we can look at race and ethnicity.

Black and American Indian Alaska Native households are experiencing hardship at 51 and 52 percent respectively.

If you look at households that are by age, households headed by someone under the age of 25 are at 63 percent below Alice, and single female headed households are at 71 percent.

Also worth noting are single male headed households at 38 percent, and 46 percent of households headed by somebody over the age of 65 are falling below the Alice threshold.

There's several factors that impact a household's ability to afford the basics, including barriers in our community, but the crux of the problem is really the mismatch between increasing cost of expenses and wages that are not keeping up.

So to understand this better, we want to look at the Alice household survival budget, which you can see on this graphic, and this is for a family of four in our community.

So the household survival budget shows the minimum cost of housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, and technology, plus taxes.

For a family of four in Ohio with two adults and two children, one in preschool and one in child care, their household survival budget was 81,852 in 2024.

When we combine the full-time wages from two of the most common jobs in Ohio, a cook and a bank teller, we see that this family with both adults working brought in just shy of 64,000.

That is nearly $18,000 short of the cost of basics.

Hourly, that breaks down to $13.18 an hour for cooks and about $18.74 for the teller.

When we compare this to the federal poverty level, which is $31,200, you can see it in the gray column.

It becomes pretty obvious that Alice families are struggling, and that the federal poverty level, if it's used to determine eligibility for assistance programs, it's gonna leave people without the support that they desperately need.

Costs can vary greatly depending on the composition of a household.

And Alice takes that into account.

So there's a household survival budget designed for what a household looks like, and this is available for each county.

In contrast, the federal poverty level is the same whether a household needs child care or not, for example.

So this underscores how out of touch the federal poverty level is with today's economy.

The only family composition for which a survival budget below $20 an hour is feasible is for single adults that don't have children.

And that's just for survival budget, not a thriving budget.

So for single-headed households with at least one child, the wages in Franklin County need to be around $24 an hour to meet the survival budget.

With households that have more than one working adult and young children in them, the combined wages are over $20 an hour.