Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Twin Falls City Council met on Monday, September 28, 2026, at 5:00 PM at City Hall. The meeting included a firefighter promotion ceremony, approval of a collective bargaining agreement with Firefighters Local 1556, restructuring of the city attorney position as an employee, transit funding agreements with ITD and Downtowner/Via, adoption of a zoning ordinance change, and a third‑quarter financial presentation. All consent and action items were approved unanimously (6‑0). One member of the public spoke during general public input, and the council adjourned to executive session.
I saw the link because I sent it to Lucy, but that's awesome. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for the opportunity to recognize Driver Operator Isles and celebrate the accomplishments with him and his family. With your permission, we'd like to allow driver operator Isles, his family, friends, and others to go ahead and exit, take two minutes to exit, go outside for more photos and some more congratulations. But once again, congratulations. Good job. Would you have our newest driver operator maybe introduce the family that he brought this evening? So we oh never mind. He did it. Perfect. Okay, we'll go ahead and move on to our next agenda item, and that is a request uh request to for approval of the collective bargaining agreement between the city of Twin Falls and Twin Falls Firefighters Local 1556. We have Kristen. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight I'm bringing forward the proposed 2627 collective bargaining agreement or CBA between the City of Twin Falls and the Firefighters Local 1556, like was just said. So the city administration and the executive uh board of the union have been meeting over about the last five months. Um as I say that I want to recognize the members of the executive board who are here with us tonight and thank them for the time that they have put into the process. Um I believe our president Kyle is here and he may have a few words that he would like to share at the end. So I'm proud to say that we continue to have a very good working relationship with the local 1556, and I truly appreciate the conversations that we've been able to have throughout our negotiations. As you can see in the background packet, our discussions covered several topics, including preventative health screenings, company staffing and work periods, wages, and longevity pay. I want to start by clarifying that one item from the list that was um the preventative screening did not reach a final agreement, but those conversations are continuing, and we anticipate that some form of additional preventative screening will be provided in the future. For the agreement before you tonight, um agreement was reached on three primary changes. The first is an update to Section 11 work period. We agreed to remove the alternative D and E shift language. The D and E shifts were originally created to help provide coverage and balanced staffing across our A, B, and C shifts. However, the arrangement created some operational and personnel challenges. Having one or two firefighters rotate amongst the three shifts made it more difficult for those employees to become fully integrated with a single crew and also complicated some scheduling such as vacation selections. The second change is to appendix A, the pay table. It provides a 3% wage increase effective October 1st of this year, which is consistent with the wage adjustment being provided to all other city employees. And lastly, we updated longevity pay so that it is based on each employee's anniversary date. Employees become eligible beginning with their sixth consecutive year of service and calculated at $6 per month for each year. Under the new language, rather than waiting until the end of the calendar year to recognize additional service, longevity pay will be adjusted and based on the employee's actual anniversary date. The underlying longevity benefit and calculations not changing. It's just the timing of the implementation. All of the uh financial implications associated with the changes talked about tonight have been included in the city's FY2627 budget. All of the uh financial implications associated with the changes talked about tonight have been included in the city's FY2627 budget. Um with that, um I'm happy to stand for any questions or if President Kyle Eldridge would like to come down and speak. Any questions from the council? Kyle here tonight. Kyle, I'm sure you want to say something.