Brookhaven raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour for a handful of city employees.
During a Tuesday council meeting, Mayor John Ernst said about five or six permanent, part-time employees were making less than that amount. He said the city previously bumped up full-time employees to $15 an hour about three years ago.
“I believe that we need to pay a living wage, an accepted wage, for everyone (including) permanent, part-time employees,” Ernst said during the meeting.
An effort to raise the statewide minimum wage to more than $7.25 an hour has been a long-sought goal by Georgia Democrats. Up to this point, that decision has been left to individual cities and counties.
Clarkston, another city in DeKalb County, became the first city in Georgia to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour for city employees in 2017. Soon after, the City of Atlanta followed suit.