New negotiations between the city of Coeur d’Alene and its police labor group are underway.

The Coeur d’Alene Police Officers Association, which represents more than 100 members, requested multiple cost-of-living adjustments Thursday for a newly proposed three-year contract to begin Oct. 1, 2026, and end Sept. 30, 2029. This includes a 5% market adjustment for 2026-2027, another 4.5% adjustment for 2027-2028, and a final 4% adjustment for 2028-2029.

Monetary figures related to the proposed adjustments have yet to be calculated, according to the city. 

“We’re not asking for the world,” Police Association President Don Craft said.

If city officials approve the new contract request, it would mark the second time in two years a market adjustment has been made for the police association. In September 2025, city council reached an agreement with them to extend its current contract by one year, at a 3.5% market adjustment for police wages.

“We had a contract in place up until 2025," Craft said. "We came to the table last year to negotiate what we’re doing now, and we agreed with the city to do a one-year extension.” 

That adjustment alone, which was increased from 2.5% before the approval, cost the city’s general fund $454,986. In that same time frame, the Lake City Employees Association, a labor group representing city workers, was also granted a two-year 3.5% market adjustment (each year), costing $201,376.

The rest of Thursday’s meeting, which took a little more than an hour, focused on proposals such as rewording current contract language, what positions should qualify for specialty pay, modifying volunteer hour requirements, sick leave and vacation rules, and more.

The Coeur d’Alene Police Department currently offers additional incentive pay to employees who take on specific specialty assignments. According to Craft, the labor group seeks to make more jobs essentially qualify for extra pay, including forensic interviewers, the bike and bar team, and the person who acts as the K-9 decoy.

Craft said the K-9 decoy is a “heavily relied-upon” person who gets “beat up quite heavily throughout the day.”

Holiday assignments also went under the microscope. When it comes to working holidays like Christmas and Fourth of July, Coeur d’Alene police officers are paid “double time.” That rate, however, ends when midnight strikes, so the officer’s rate gets dropped to “time and a half.” The new contract calls for holiday double time to be paid after a new day begins on an officer’s shift.

Meanwhile, the police labor group is requesting a holiday paid-out hours increase from 88 to 96, with a new inclusion of Juneteenth as a recognized holiday.

The labor group is also calling for hourly vacation accruals made monthly to be increased. For example, the department currently allots eight hours of vacation time per month to its employees in their first to third year of service. It’s now proposing that vacation hours accrued per month for this employee group increase to 10 hours. On the other side of the spectrum, the police labor group is proposing that an employee with 20 or more years of service receive 28 hours of vacation time per month.

These new negotiations between the city and the police department’s labor group come as the city eyes a $3.1 million deficit for fiscal year 2027. The police department’s expenditures alone have increased from about $21.47 million to a projected roughly $21.67 million. A budget hearing is currently slated for Aug. 4.

“The current budget, as it’s proposed, does not have any requests for the police association,” Mayor Dan Gookin later told The Press. “So, on Tuesday, the council will be going into executive session and be presented with the numbers.”

Gookin said, in his experience, negotiations typically take four or five meetings to finalize.

“It’ll be their decision on what to do,” he said of the city council.

Further negotiations are tentatively set to take place in two weeks.

“It will give us a chance to go over that,” City Administrator Michael Dominguez said.