The City of El Paso and the El Paso Association of Firefighters (Local 51) held a negotiation session on July 23, 2026, to review healthcare enrollment data, proposed contract language regarding property tax caps, and a series of wage and benefit counterproposals. The city presented healthcare census figures and rate projections, while the union introduced several revised proposals on wages, specialty pay, and other incentives.
Thank you. Thank you. So very good. Today we have a short short agenda. We wanted to go over some health care. We hadn't talked about the healthcare enrollment yet. And the city's initial proposal on that. And then we had talked about the language coming that was similar to what they put in the Austin. So if you're ready, who's taking the leave? And so we just wanted to show you all what the total census is for the different health plans, and then we'll show you where everybody's at. So as you can see right here, so this is basically the census as of uh the start of January. So showing you a majority of your members on the fire side are in the C D HP, the consumer driven health care plan. So in this plan, you get not only a lower rate, you have a higher deductive, obviously, but then you get the uh contribution from the city for the HSA as well. And so that was one of the things that we used to drive not only our fire union members as well, but also our civilian employees, so majority of our civilian employees are in the C D HP as well. Um and then if you break down even further, and so we broke out um a few years ago going from that three plan option to the fourth plan option. So we broke out the employee and children and the employee family to break out the spouse. Um so you can see about 72 percent overall are either in the employee only or the employee and family plan. So it's about 98.3% overall on the CHP, and then you see you've got still a few that around 16 that are in the basic plan right now. And then this is very small, but you all have the handouts, and then we'll get this posted to the backup as well. Um, but what it shows you is it shows you for current fiscal year 2026, it shows you what those rates are currently. Um that's currently in the agreement, and then if you follow along for the next uh four fiscal years, it shows you what those rates would be if you apply that 22% increase in each of those following fiscal years. And so you can see, for example, in that uh basic at the top, currently the 1920 for the employee only. If you follow along, it increases to 234 dollars, two eighty-six, three forty-nine, and then four twenty-six. But again, there's only sixteen members over on that basic plan. So it really probably won't look at the CDHP, is really where you're gonna see a large majority of the impact. So on the employee only, it would only go from 28.48 cents to at the end of the contract up to 45 dollars and thirty-seven cents. That's just for the employee only. And that's again as if we keep that 22 percent increase, which we're open to discussion on that. And then there is one more item that we wanted to discuss. And so I I mentioned a little bit about this a couple of meetings ago. Some of the the limitations or challenges that not only the El Paso is facing, but just across the state, and available funding, right? So we currently have in place a three and a half percent cap on property taxes without going to the voters, but anything above a three and a half percent increase in property taxes, um that's a cap. And so uh if you've been following along and I made these comments to you all, the governor and others have continued to make comments about wanting to continue pushing further restrictions on property taxes and other revenue sources on the city. That obviously creates challenges for us to be able to fund not only our fire department but our police department and just all of our city services in general. It makes it very very difficult. So we do have some recommended language to include into the agreement because the challenge is if let's say we come to an agreement, uh let's say we accept your proposal as is. However, in one given year it pushes us over what that current property tax cap is, obviously we had to find a way to fund that. And so the only way to be able to fund that would be go to the voters, get the voters to approve that property tax rate associated with that uh particular budget and that tax rate. So what this language basically says, um, and I'll read it, and so beginning year one of the agreement, which would probably be 2026, hopefully, and for the following years, in the event of any change in state law that modifies the city's budgetary and or revenue authority, and so it's not just been property taxes. I mean, there's been discussions of looking at franchise fees and some other potential revenue sources that we utilize, so restricting or limiting our ability to collect those revenues. Um or if the city council adopts a budget requiring a voter-approved tax rate election, and the voters do not approve the proposed tax rate, then basically the city would bring that back to city council, we'd bring back recommendations on the adjustments that we would need to make, and then ultimately it would be up to city council to either accept the recommendations of the city manager or to identify other adjustments to get the budget adopted. And so basically it's if we're going to adopt or enter into an agreement that pushes us again over that cap, or if we pay something in the next legislative session that ends up costing the city a loss of three, four, five million, whatever the case may be, that obviously has an impact that we weren't preparing for and anticipating, and then that creates additional financial challenges to the city. So feel free to take this language. We know that you know the comments that you made, you all are looking to put the city in that type of position, but it is something that we're facing that's and this property tax cap has been in place since 2019, so it's nothing new. However, as you've seen our budget continues to increase and increase, and we've been getting closer and closer to that property tax cap in the last few years. So it is something that we've had a lot of discussions with the council about, particularly because it's again not only that property tax cap, but it's what would we do if we lose additional revenue from some of these other sources? And that's I believe that's all we had. So if I if I may, can we go back to that one slide? I'm sorry. I do want to highlight the last sentence that it's important that the city will provide 30 days' notice, of course, to the association before anything is brought to the city council.