Texarkana, Texas, firefighters union and city negotiators on Wednesday set ground rules for a new round of contract talks and scheduled three more summer sessions.
In the first meeting since negotiations dead-ended last year, the parties hashed out how they will proceed in two July meetings and another in August.
They agreed to negotiating teams of up to four people, including a chief negotiator on each team. Attorney Bettye Lynn will serve as the city's chief negotiator, and Joe Tellez, a district representative with the union-International Association of Fire Fighters-will have that role on the firefighters' side. Each chief negotiator will have the power to make tentative agreements on behalf of their team.
The city's other team members are Human Resources Executive Director Jim Powell and HR Specialist J.W. Bramlett. Union team members are Scott Robertson, local president; Scott Daniel, local vice president; and members Paul Lauk and Eric McCasland.
In a change from last year, all meetings will be held in the City Council chambers at City Hall, and video of the meetings will be live-streamed on the city's website.
The parties also agreed to contact the media only through news releases with "mutually agreeable language." The union and City Council will not contact each other during negotiations.
Further meetings are scheduled for July 9, July 15 and Aug. 5, at 9:30 a.m. each day. All are open to the public.
In 2018, multiple meetings and an attempt at third-party mediation went nowhere. Union members voted against accepting a contract proposed by the city, rejecting it as unresponsive to firefighters' concerns about pay, staffing levels, working conditions and disciplinary procedures, among other issues. The city rejected the union's request to resolve disagreements through binding arbitration.
In November 2016, Texas-side voters elected to allow TTFD to engage in collective bargaining. Firefighters later chose the union, IAFF Local 367, aka the Texarkana Professional Firefighters Association, as their representative in employment talks.