The Mills Town Council on Wednesday agreed to negotiate with the town’s firefighters and also granted the mayor authority to hire a private contractor to provide emergency services to the community.
Those decisions were passed as resolutions at a hastily arranged town council meeting Wednesday morning. The council spent nearly an hour in executive session before passing the resolutions.
Mills Mayor Seth Coleman said the resolutions will give the town some breathing room to continue to address the future of the fire department. Amid budgeting problems, the town voted in April to lay off its nine full-time firefighters as of July — a decision that town residents and the firefighters have fought.
Neither of Wednesday’s resolutions promise any certain outcome, Coleman said.
At the town’s last council meeting, Coleman proposed using a private company to provide fire service to Mills in lieu of funding the existing department. The option would save the town more than $500,000, Coleman estimated. Given the town’s impending budget crisis, Coleman has said it is one option to help balance the Mills budget.
He had also proposed paying the Natrona County Fire Protection District $425,000 to staff the Mills station with county fire personnel. Mills gave the county district until May 28 to respond to that offer.
Natrona County Fire Protection District interim chief Brian Oliver told the Star-Tribune the county fire service would not enter into a contract with Mills. He said it was not the right time.
“We’re still rebuilding ourselves here,” he said, referencing the $1 million cut the district’s budget took in 2017.
Oliver said the district responded Tuesday. Coleman said Wednesday he had not heard from the county fire district, but if the district had sent its response via mail, Coleman would look for it. Having not heard from the district, the town decided to move forward with researching hiring a private company to provide emergency service to the town, Coleman said.
Earlier Wednesday, Coleman had said an agreement with the county was not out of the question. After being told later Wednesday the county fire district had declined the town’s proposal, Coleman was less certain what the next steps would be.
The town will not seek a private company to provide ambulance service and will continue to rely on the Wyoming Medical Center for emergency medical response, according to the resolution.
The town called the special meeting Tuesday afternoon. Notice was posted at a number of locations around Mills, as well as in a Facebook post. The town did not issue a news release regarding the special meeting.
Coleman told the Star-Tribune that the short notice was because of conversations between the firefighters union’s attorney and the Town of Mills attorney. The town could not take action on those conversations outside of a formal meeting, Coleman said.
Union discussions
As for the mediation, Mills firefighters union president Jeremy Todd said the union and Coleman will meet June 4 for that discussion.
The union has accused the town of violating Wyoming’s collective bargaining laws. The union contract provides for a “good faith bargaining” process to renegotiate contracts. That process, Todd said, requires 30 days for the town and the union to come to an agreement. If no agreement is met, both parties would go to arbitration. In arbitration, a third-party would hear arguments from both sides and essentially make the decision for the parties. Todd said it was not the most desirable outcome, but it is required after 30 days of stalemate in labor negotiations.
The union asserts that the town failed to meet with the union, which violates the collective bargaining agreement, and also has refused to enter into arbitration.
Mills Fire Department engineer and paramedic Tyler Houser said town officials failed to show up to a contract negotiation meeting in mid-April.
“We showed up and waited for 25 minutes,” Houser said.
He said the union representatives were then informed town officials had forgotten about the meeting and would reschedule.
Within a week after that failed meeting attempt, the union received notice that the fire department would be closing. The town then declined to meet for further contract negotiations, evident in a May 3 letter from Coleman to Todd.
Coleman wrote in the letter that town officials would meet with the union to “cover the topics that should have been covered by the fire department’s leadership much earlier.”
“These will not be contractual negotiations,” the letter continues.
The union has threatened legal action against the town for these alleged violations. The union is seeking judicial action that would force the town to go to arbitration.
Mills officials deny violating any collective bargaining laws.
“We completely dispute that,” Mills attorney Pat Holscher said.
As a means of avoiding further legal action, Coleman will meet with union representatives next week to try to come up with a workable agreement.
Both Todd and Houser said the union would not agree to anything in that mediation short of a contract to continue providing fire service to the town.
“The mediation is to come to an agreement on a contract,” Todd said.
Holscher said the town is willing to discuss all options during that mediation.
“Our presumption would be there’s no issues off the table,” he said.
The mediation would also prevent either party from incurring onerous legal fees, Holscher said. He said any court proceeding is expensive by nature, and both parties would likely want to avoid those costs.
Still, if the town does not offer the firefighters a new contract, Todd and Houser both said the union would file a lawsuit against the town. Houser said the union is willing to negotiate elements of the contract to help save the town money, including changing staffing shifts and helping with public works projects.
“We swore an oath to protect our citizens,” Houser said. “This is part of that.”
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