President of the Professional Firefighters of Sierra Vista Chris Klasen (right) talks with a member of the public during Thursday’s city council meeting.
The Sierra Vista City Council voted Thursday 5-2 to not approve a resolution that would open the door for establishing a meet and confer structure between the city and its firefighters who are members of the Professional Firefighters of Sierra Vista which is the local branch of the statewide Professional Firefighters of Arizona.
The vote rested on whether or not to allow the city manager and the president of the professional firefighters of Sierra Vista to draft a Memorandum of Understanding or MOU which will establish the legal and civil parameters of a meet and confer structure.
Meet and confer, as defined by the Cornell Law School, is a process where two parties meet to discuss and try to resolve disputes “without court action.” However, if no consensus is found after multiple back-and-forth discussions, the door then opens for arbitration or litigation.
Professional Firefighters of Sierra Vista Charity Coordinator Matt Brown described meet and confer during Tuesday’s work session as a “Give-and-take.”
“We’ll use fire trucks as an example: ‘We want three fire trucks this year,’” said Brown at Tuesday's work session. “And you guys come back to us and say ‘Hey, we can give you one.’ We have a choice at that point. We can either come back and say ‘Let’s look at the budget numbers. Okay, hey we see that we have $5 million dollars here. How are you telling us that we can’t buy three fire trucks?’ You go ‘Well, we have this, this, and this.’ Okay, then we go back to the table and go ‘Hey, we have enough money to get one, guys. We need to table that and go on.’”
Professional Firefighters of Sierra Vista President Chris Klasen, who proposed the resolution and draft MOU, said that the main reason centers around representation and communication.
“It really just comes down to giving all of our folks at the fire department and our EMS division a voice and some input into any policies or any changes that come along,” said Klasen. “Now, it’s kinda just dictated to us what we’re going to get or how we’re going to work, what our wages are.”
Sierra Vista Mayor Clea McCaa, who was endorsed by the Professional Firefighters of Sierra Vista during his campaign along with council members William Benning and Mark Rodriguez, brought the resolution and draft MOU to the council.
“They just want their voices heard, and I promised them that I will, when I get in office, I was going to bring this discussion to the council,” said McCaa.
He said the move was not about politics.
“I want people to understand that if they bring issues, we will hear them,” McCaa said. “It’s not all about politics. We just want communications across the board.”
The draft MOU, which Klasen said was based on a template made by the Professional Firefighters of Arizona, states that the City of Sierra Vista and the Professional Firefighters of Sierra Vista shall meet and confer “In order to reach an agreement concerning wages, hours, working conditions, and non-health related benefits of the employees of the City of Sierra Vista Fire & Medical Services.”
It proposed changes to the current structure for how communication and negotiations — to include wages, benefits, working hours, and conditions — currently work between the city and its firefighters.
Mayor Pro Tem Carolyn Umphrey, who voted against the resolution, said that it would change the current city structure drastically.
“This is likely the biggest decision that we’ll ever see in front of this council,” said Umphrey, who voiced concerns about the draft MOU’s language, the potential for an “us vs them mentality” between city council, management, and staff, and the potential for extra costs to the city.
Umphrey wasn’t the only one who cautioned about the change.
Sierra Vista City Manager Charles “Chuck” Potucek said during Tuesday’s work session that he did not recommend the council approve the resolution, citing city code violations and additional costs to the city.
“You’ll notice in the discussion, the city manager was left conspicuously out of the discussion,” said Potucek during the work session Tuesday. “By ordinance, the council has the city manager … In charge of all matters relating to personnel, budget, etc. This MOU, the way it was presented, takes city management out of that particular loop and bypasses it.”
“So, the other departments are then not represented at the table when it comes to resource allocation, budget, the application of the personnel rules and regulations — which drive things like the grievance process, things like the disciplinary processes,” Potucek said.
He continued that the city currently doesn’t have a lot of issues regarding communication and managing personnel.
“Anybody can come and talk to the chief,” Potucek said. “Certainly, anybody can come and talk to me. Anybody that works in the fire department knows I go down there virtually every Saturday, open myself up to any discussion or questions that anybody cares to have.”
Council Member William Benning asked if the fire personnel had any issues with a disconnect in communication.
“But if you got it good, you got it good,” Benning said on Tuesday. “Why change something that’s going good just for change?”
Klasen said on Tuesday that he feels that there doesn’t need to be a disconnect to establish meet and confer.
He said on Wednesday that feels the firefighters don’t have an avenue to speak with the city council as one of the reasons to push for meet and confer.
“But to actually reach them is a difficult situation,” said Klasen. “With the city council being the policy-makers, we currently don’t have that right now, that seat at the table with everybody.”
Out of the 91 total municipalities in Arizona, city officials said that 19 have meet and confer, but the Professional Firefighters of Sierra Vista said the number is 22. 44 municipalities do not have meet and confer. In Cochise County, only Bisbee and Douglas have meet and confer.
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