I would like to call the special meeting of the governing body to order, Madam Clerk.

Dr.

Aldrich, present.

Mayor Collins.

Present.

Dr.

Emmons present.

Mr.

Escabel.

Mr.

Leborn.

Mr.

Moody.

Dr.

Rennie.

Mr.

Seagrave.

Present.

Mr.

White.

Present.

Mr.

Wolf.

One member is absent.

Mayor, we do have a quorum.

Wonderful.

Would you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Item number four, collective labor bargaining with the Cheyenne Professional Firefighters International Association of Firefighters, local number 279.

Thank you.

I've got a quick statement I want to make, but I want to change two numbers.

From the very beginning of this process, I think our governing bodies heard your concerns that your concern of salaries lagging behind the market by 30%.

So we've took that observation seriously, and we've tried to understand, and frankly, we can't get our math to support 30%.

We did every employee with their full compensation without overtime.

And we averaged each rank and we compared that to the maximum salary of the Wyoming departments.

So we tried again and we did inputs that uh that would only show up in a paycheck.

So some of the clothing allowances and things that did not make sense for you guys, we took out of that spread.

And then we looked at the years in rank, and we compared the steps of our average salary to the step a firefighter in the other communities that would be in a similar position.

And we use the community council for economic research, which uh compares how expensive it is to live in one city compared to another.

And it's based on actual prices of goods and services.

So they look at housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, health care, and they set the national averages of 100.

And uh it consists of a it it's consistent basket of goods updated quarterly to be able to compare the cost of living between communities.

And so we we did that, and then we included uh Casper's recently finished negotiations, which ended up with a firefighters and engineers getting a one percent raise, their lieutenant or their company officers, I think they're captains, aren't they in their community?

2.75, and their battalion chiefs getting a 3.25% raise.

And so we did the math again, comparing our firefighters, an example would be um our base firefighters are just under four years average in service.

So we compared that to a four-year average firefighter in other communities.

And when we compared that, we were higher than every community at every rank.

And so I went back again and I looked and said, well, what if we um added in some of their acting pays, things like that?

Um so when I looked at Gillette, the maximum they can get is $2,400 a year.

And even when you add in the maximum for every firefighter at every rank, we still rank higher at every rank.

Sheridan, Laramie, um, Loveland, we're not quite there.

We are um we're 3.3% behind in firefighters, 7.9% behind in engineers, lieutenant, 7% uh behind.

Um but we also get $300,000 more in retirement, and we run 44% less calls.

Um, and then I looked at our paramedic pay.

So when I look at what a paramedic gets paid over their career, let's say they become a paramedic in their fifth year, it'd be a hundred and fifty-five thousand.

But when you take that 70 percent of that number, and you put it over a thirty-year career, it comes to three hundred and eighteen thousand dollars more a paramedic makes in a career and in a retirement.

And we pay for the school, and we pay for all the costs to do that.

When I compare that to other departments, like when I talk to the chief from Rock Springs today, they do have a paramedic pay, but they don't pay for anything.

The uh the firefighter has to pay for the school, and their reimbursement or their pay was intended to reimburse the firefighter for the cost.

He said he thinks it costs them about twenty-four thousand dollars to go to paramedic school, and then they have to do shift trades, kind of like what we have to do in order to be able to get there.

Um we've tried to look at a number of different ways to do a comparison, but to uh maybe provide one last opportunity to uh to come up with a fair uh offer to you guys.

Um, we have one more thing we'd like to offer, and that is a three percent raise for everyone.

Three percent on all your added pays, longevity EMT, shift trainers, education acting, all of our special, all of our add on pays, and then to address the crew recruitment concerns, we'll take the probationary firefighter up to ten point four percent.

So there'll be less four five percent less than a firefighter step four.

And then to address the um the compression, we would increase the the captain's pay by three point five percent in addition to the three percent, and the battalion sheets four point seven five percent um to uh to help with some of those compression issues because there's only a couple percent difference in those ranks.

And so um that would be an offer that we would be willing to make.

And I apologize we transcribed two of those numbers backwards.

I wrote them in there in the correct form.

You can hand that to our clerk.

Thank you, Mayor Collins.

Uh, we'd like to take a moment to caucus to review this proposal.

Thank you.

The rest of the offer that we had was the same as before.

Welcome back.

Thank you, Mayor Collins.

The union would like to begin by thanking the mayor and the members of the city council for bringing forward this proposal tonight.

In the interest of making meaningful progress, the union is prepared to move towards resolution on wages with the following framework.

No, no, that's not what I'm saying.

So currently there's a sunset clause in there.

Um in the event that the city of Cheyenne employees receive a cost of living adjustment during this contract period.

Members, meaning members of the union shall receive the equivalent increase at the same time expiring on June 30th, 2026 at 1159 p.m.

We're proposing that's extended for the duration of the upcoming collective labor agreement.

So it would the sunset would be I understand.

Okay.

The second contingency that we have is acceptance of the MERP language as proposed.

We want to emphasize that the MERP is a critically important item that supports the long-term health and well-being of our firefighters.

And we believe that this agreement presents an opportunity for the city to be a part of this lasting legacy.

This proposal reflects a good faith effort to recognize the city's movement, build on areas of agreement, and continue working towards a fair and sustainable contract for both parties.

If we on the second page can agree on the vacations, I would be amenable to talk about the MERP.

So one of my biggest priorities in this contract is to try to get overtime under control.

I don't think anybody's doing overtime to be malicious, but I just think we're set up to fail in that.

And so the language that we propose is four vacation slots.

Um would be available for selection.

And then uh if a vacation slot's not filled, I believe we could use a EOD, as long as it doesn't create it.

Two stage two slots above the minimum.

We're not asking for that.

We're asking for four days.

And if we could agree to this language, I would be open-minded to um to the MERB with one exception, and that was language that uh chief of staff Ash talked about.

And that is we like we have a current firefighter that's on non-paid, uh not working without pay, we shouldn't have to pay the the money when they're not paying.

So as long as the the firefighters paying into it, we would pay into it.

I think that language uh that I think that's the only thing that we had in um as an exception to to that.

So if we could agree on the um uh uh the vacation uh as is written, um I think I can get around to a MERB.

I have one amendment I'd like to make to the vacation language, and that is uh those four vacation slots.

I want them to be four vacation or EOG slots that gives our membership availability to to use those slots and still be able to use their comp time.

Anything beyond that would then fall into the criteria of the two slots above a minimum and not cause an overtime at the time it's taken.

Give me two seconds to go talk to the chief.

I want to make sure I understand how this works, and I'll be right back.

Absolutely.

Okay, let's see what your understanding and my understanding are.

Okay.

Sure, sure.

So we have four slots every day, 365 days.

From October 1st to December 1st, vacation slots are taken.

So every member is exhausted all of their vacation accruals.

Right.

Then if there's a day there's three and somebody wants to take an EOD day, they can take it up to so there's up to four slots can be can be taken.

Yes, sir.

Um, but we'll still be two slots above the minimum when uh when the BC gets there.

So if there's an injury or sickness or whatever, we'll we'll always have two slots above the minimum.

Yes, that is my understanding as well.

Um I think that's what we're asking for.

Okay.

So I think we could agree to that.

And um also to for second part that um that Amber presented, yes, I'm I'm agreeable to that.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

And I'm not sure how we're gonna let the treasurer know that happens.

So we'll have to that'll be incumbent upon us to somehow get that word to the treasurer that we don't do that.

Okay.

Um on our list, uh section 20 uh section 27 of the contract, um, which would allow um day personnel to take uh sick leave.

Yeah, we're we're agreeable with that.

There's one more thing.

And then the last thing, uh I think was number eight.

We're we're struggling when people leave and getting a corole set up.

Um if someone quits, um, it's in section 20 section 27.

Um we have we have a number of things there, but number eight is if someone cut quits on the 10th of of the month, what we'd like to say is uh you have to work a full month to gain an accrual.

So if you live on the 10th, you're not gonna get any curls to longevity and those things because it's very difficult for us to figure out calculate those and pay them out and still meet the FSA timelines.

So that's how we do it with all of our employees.

So we just want to make that consistent with everybody else and and help um Amber and and uh and I think it's Kelly in our uh HR office and number seven talks about uh members affected by military deployments or in may be able to um schedule work.

Um vacation times section 27 number seven.

I believe it's actually I've got section 26.

Go ahead, we're wrong.

Section 26.

I'm trying to guess I'm tracking arguments.

There's too many pages here, and I'm tired.

No, I I understand.

Yep.

Six and seven were we're mostly uh six was in case there's an emergency.

Uh it gives flexibility for our uh leadership to be able to grant somebody some emergency leave, uh, in exception to our our our policy.

Um I think there should be some room for that.

We would be agreeable to all that.

Um to um add to that under the vacation section is the conversion of benefit hours um for our daytime personnel.

We use that correction factor on literally everything else of theirs, and we'd like to apply it um as we've proposed uh to them to make them whole.

And I hate to be a stick in the mud on this one, but uh you know, I read what eight or ten different contracts.

Every one of them treats daytime and plutoin differently.

I think for two reasons.

One is the flexibility that a daytime person has.

If you want to go have lunch with your wife, you can do that.

You guys are on duty, you can't do that.

So there's a lack of flexibility.

And we have 11 or 12 paid holidays in the city that they get to take advantage of that you don't.

So when you're on holiday or you're working and it's um New Year's Day, you have to work.

Those dates will have those 11 days off.

They're already getting that extra time off.

So quite frankly, I I cannot agree to that.

And if you if you've read all those contracts, the everyone has a conversion for a day.

So when you go from from platoon today, it goes down.

And when you come back, it goes the other way.

So honestly, I don't think that that's a good policy.

We we agreed to do it for pay a couple years ago.

Um you guys made a compelling argument, Lieutenant's Lieutenant, and we agreed to that.

But the one thing we push back on was the vacation time, because quite frankly, I believe they have significant flexibility and they're already getting, I can't remember if it's 11 or 12 days off on top of what we're doing.

So if you add those hours, they're already there.

Okay.

That's that's not the hill I'm gonna die on tonight.

So going back to um your earlier statements regarding uh working the the whole month to accrue that vacation and leave.

I'm agreeable to that.

Okay.

What was there one more again?

I'm sorry that you've got to do that.

Yeah, step in 26.

We had emergency exceptions.

Um, this gives the on-duty battalion chief, deputy chief, or fire chief, they can grant vacation time or use of AOD um in that window that we're not supposed to if it's an emergency, and it's just they can't cause an overtime.

We're agreeable.

So if we have uh um humanitarian reasoner for whatever that would be, we would like to be able to uh and we agree to that.

Yes.

And then the part about vacations being scheduled and used each calendar year.

Correct.

Okay, the number eight.

Yes.

Okay, that's all agreeable.

Yes.

I think that's everything that was on our list.

Chief, did I forget anything?

Is there anything else on your list?

Uh no.

Oh, we agreeable with with our proposal with the the wages and the MERC.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Uh do you want me to get with uh Chief Dijkwin tomorrow to finalize any language and uh chief won't be here tomorrow.

I believe he's on spring break with his family, as is okay.

Okay, I can get with the deputy chief.

He's running the show right now along with the battalion chiefs.

Um, but we'll uh we'll probably next week we can get all together and finalize all the language.

Okay.

And then um we'll bring that to the governing body here in two weeks.

Okay.

Um can we get that done in time, Lisa?

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

If there's nothing else, I think we can adjourn.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, all of you for all of your time this month.

I appreciate it.

Thank you guys as well.

Thank you.

Appreciate you as well.