Mayor Ed Lee is proposing a $15 per hour minimum wage measure for the November ballot, which would place San Francisco in the stratosphere with its Pacific Northwest rival Seattle, where the city council got the nation's attention last week by boosting the minimum to $15.

But the San Francisco version would take effect faster, and without exceptions that Seattle made for workers who make tips, and businesses that provide health coverage. All of which led San Francisco's mayor and other supporters to bill the local measure as ensuring the city's status of having the highest minimum wage in the nation.

Lee's proposal would rachet the minimum wage to $15 from its current $10.74 by July 1, 2018. In between, it would bump up to $12.25 by next May 1, $13 by July 1, 2016, and $14 by July 1, 2017. The full rate would kick in on July 1, 2018, according to the Mayor's press office.

Ten members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors chimed in with support for the so-called "consensus measure," which is intended to preclude a ballot battle between competing proposals to get San Francisco back to the top of the minimum wage pyramid.

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Read the rest of the story at San Francisco Business Time