The city of St. Joseph and its firefighters agree their bargaining finally yielded a wage offer.

And that’s about it.

The Local No. 77 of the International Association of Firefighters is suing the city in Buchanan County circuit court for bargaining in bad faith when the sides met to discuss wages and other conditions last winter. Law prohibits firefighters from striking.

While the suit drags toward a June 1, 2010, bench trial date, the two parties continue to trade barbs in and out of court. They met Monday, and neither reported much progress. The city did address the firefighters’ main contention by offering a wage proposal — a three-year freeze of the current salary structure, according to firefighters attorney Steve Bukaty.

“It’s insulting,” Mr. Bukaty said. “It’s unconscionable that they are asking these guys to risk their lives every day, while they spend millions of dollars on pet projects.”

To solidify its position, the firefighters gave the News-Press copies of the city’s 2007 compensation survey and the union’s 2008 follow-up. The city identified 20 cities in six states that it deemed comparable to St. Joseph, including Lee’s Summit, Mo., Joplin, Mo., Council Bluffs, Iowa, Decatur, Ill., Topeka, Kan., and Springfield, Ill.

On average, St. Joseph’s firefighters made 31 percent less than the other cities in the 2007 study. St. Joseph’s entry-level salary of $30,032 ranked behind every city except Independence, Mo., and its average of the minimum and maximum salary range ($36,368) trailed all 20 cities.

The union’s survey looked at 15 of those 20 jurisdictions from the city’s survey for firefighters after one, six, 11, 16 and 20 years of service. Averaged out among those six steps, St. Joseph firefighters’ base salary lags behind those other cities by 40 percent.

Mr. Bukaty alleges the city spent nearly $4 million this year on projects that weren’t necessities — like the Chiefs’ training camp or a new elevator at the YMCA — while denying the firefighters a raise they feel is long overdue.

“Disputing or not disputing what the numbers reflect, that doesn’t create new money for the city,” said Ivan Schraeder, an attorney from the Lowenbaum Partnership in St. Louis who the city hired in this case. “Whether you agree or disagree with the assertions that the city employees are behind other communities doesn’t really help when you don’t have the available revenues to commit the pay.”

City Manager Vince Capell said the firefighters received what amounted to cost-of-living raises two of the past four years and the city would give more if it could.

“I don’t think there is anybody who would want to give a raise more than me,” he said. “But I’ve got to have money to do it.”

The union fired back that the city underestimates its revenue and overestimates its expenditures to the tune of a $2 million discrepancy each year, and the firefighters hired an accounting firm from Oklahoma to refute the city’s assertions. But even that turned contentious, with Mr. Schraeder claiming the union refused to let him question the firefighters’ expert or ask questions about the study’s methodology.

“We are very close to impasse, if not already there,” Mr. Schraeder said.

That too is debatable with Mr. Bukaty, who claimed the two sides have anywhere from 50 to 100 proposals on the table, and the real point of contention is the city’s refusal to negotiate wages. Mr. Schraeder countered that the city is negotiating with itself at this point.

Ultimately, it’s up to Judge Randall Jackson to wade through all of this and find a verdict if the two sides can’t hammer out a resolution in the next seven months. But even then, the court can’t order the city to make a specific proposal, only to negotiate in good faith.

So for a resolution, the two sides will have to agree on more than just whether a proposal is on the table.

“While the judge can’t force them to make a particular proposal,” Mr. Bukaty said, “the citizens of St. Joe and the City Council can.”

And vice versa.

R.J. Cooper can be reached

at rjcooper@npgco.com.