COEUR d'ALENE - Tim Skubitz said he's the poster child for turning a minimum wage job into a successful career.

Skubitz got his first job at a McDonald's restaurant when he was 15 and never left the company. He owns and operates McDonald's franchises in Spokane, Newport, Wash., and Rathdrum.

"I love living here and I love doing business in Idaho," Skubitz said. "But it's difficult when an outside influence comes in."

The most recent outside influence, Skubitz said, is a Coeur d'Alene minimum-wage initiative spearheaded by former legislative candidate Anne Nesse and Bob Bennett, former North Idaho College president. If their group obtains the necessary 1,681 signatures from registered voters in Coeur d'Alene, residents will vote on the initiative Nov. 3.

The initiative would require employers in the city of Coeur d'Alene to pay their employees at least $8.75 and hour beginning Jan. 1, 2016. The current minimum wage is $7.25.

"My restaurant in Idaho has always paid higher than the state requires," Skubitz said. "We currently pay $8.25 an hour for our starting employees. But you have to stay competitive with the rest of the market."

He added that his employees receive other benefits, such as a week of paid vacation, on top of the higher wage.

"They like it whether they're here for a year or a career," Skubitz said.

Minimum wages would be increased to $10.25 an hour the following year, and the initiative includes language for additional, annual raises based on the Consumer Price Index for the western region.

Having a minimum wage based on CPI concerns Skubitz because of his experiences as a business owner in Washington. The state's $9.47 minimum wage is based on that index, which Skubitz called a complicated model based on workers who live in urban areas.

"My restaurants are in rural towns that are far from being urban," he said. "It's not equitable at all in that case and I've given legislators over there my opinion on it."

Greg Crimp, who owns the Sports Cellar in downtown Coeur d'Alene, told The Press that he also starts his employees at a wage higher than the minimum required by the state.

"But it's long overdue to go up if you ask me," Crimp added. "People can't live on minimum wage. Ever since (President Ronald) Reagan, all the benefits have gone to the top and we're so top-heavy now that it's dangerous for the country and the economy."

At another small downtown business, Coeur d'Alene Souvenir and Sundry, owner David Jaeger said the local initiative would have no impact on his business because he and his wife are the only employees. When they do need to bring additional help on, primarily on a temporary basis, Jaeger said they pay above minimum wage.

"I'm for it," Jaeger said of the initiative. "Especially for waiters and waitresses who get sub-minimum wage. It's too low."

Under the initiative, tipped workers such as waiters and bartenders would earn 75 percent of the wages that hourly employees receive, which doubles the $3.35 minimum at the state level.

Jordan De Leon, 25, is a server and bartender for a restaurant in Coeur d'Alene and works 40-45 hours a week. She told The Press that she rarely sees any of her hourly wage because it often goes entirely toward paying taxes on the tips she receives.

If she makes more in tips than her hourly wage can account for, De Leon said she ends up having to pay the state at the end of the year. Twenty percent of her tips, which she said are hit or miss, go to the table bussers, hostess, and the bartender at the end of each shift.

"There's really no spectrum of what I'm going to leave the restaurant with," De Leon said. "All of the servers I work with say the same thing - 'We hope we are busy and that the customers are feeling generous.' It's an imbalanced way to live because I have to plan ahead for things I can't really predetermine at all."

De Leon added, while they are grateful their employer pays their taxes, she and her co-workers often joke about the hourly wages they will likely never see. They are hopeful, she said, that voters pass the initiative because of the stability that would come as a result.

"It wouldn't be so much like going to work and playing roulette with what I am going to leave with and what I can do," De Leon said. "There would be something to rely on other then people's generosity when they come into the restaurant."

She added that she doesn't buy the argument that jobs like hers aren't meant to be careers. Minimum and tipped-wage jobs are a necessary part of society, De Leon said, and a lot of people in the industry enjoy what they do for a living.

"You can go to Washington and get a higher minimum wage and those restaurants are doing just fine," De Leon said. "I don't even see a reason to be on the fence about this when it's profiting everyone - we're going to work harder, the customers are going to be more satisfied, and the restaurant will be bringing in more people."

Skubitz said he sees both ways of looking at the issue - one that sees a wage increase as harmful to business owners and one that sees an increase as a way to make everyone more successful.

"Maybe there's a happy medium," Skubitz said.