The city’s push to raise the minimum wage for the tourism industry (and bump up a few other workers in the process) is going to the City Council Sept. 16. That means there are a couple short weeks left for a flurry of negotiations. City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera and the mayor’s office want to avoid a referendum.

Already exempted: The Zoo. The draft ordinance advanced by a council committee months ago would have included the San Diego Zoo but now it won’t. City leaders felt the zoo as a nonprofit was not a major target of the effort.

I asked Brigette Browning, the head of the Labor Council and chief advocate for the new law, what she thought about that.

“Workers at the Zoo did not have strong feelings about being included – wages at the Zoo are pretty good. We felt and the city felt

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