By Wayne Heilman
Colorado Springs Gazette, November 9, 2016
Colorado Springs business owners praised and panned a minimum-wage increase approved Tuesday by Colorado voters ...
"I thought it was very important to increase the minimum wage since it was almost even with the poverty-level wage in 1969 and for the last 10 years has been averaging about 60 percent of the poverty-level wage," said John Crandall, owner of the Old Town Bike Shop in downtown Colorado Springs. "If it had been $15 instead of the $12 an hour, I would not have supported it. But the level and the fact that it is phased in is important. It gives us time to prepare for it."
Old Town Bike Shop now has one recently hired employee making less than the $9.30-an-hour minimum that will be required Jan. 1. That employee will get a 5-cent raise. Crandall said the shop's employees make an average of $12 an hour and that average likely will rise somewhat by the time the minimum reaches $12 an hour in 2020.
"We have had a difficult year for the bike industry with competition from Internet sellers, primarily on parts, price and margin cuts by manufacturers and members of the millennial generation and Generation X are not embracing bicycles as much as baby boomers. But it still was important to get this passed," Crandall said. ...