Despite a heated, ongoing legal battle over pay discrepancy between the St. George firefighter's union and the department, things appear to be cooling off.

"We've talked to the fire chief. We're trying to work out some resolutions. The lawsuits are not dropped on either side per se, but put on what I call a pause," said St. George Firefighters Local 4524 president Jason Turner.

The five-year suit began when the union demanded pay information from Chief Gerard Tarleton, alleging he violated state law by paying new hires more than some longtime employees.

Since then, a countersuit against the union was filed and nothing has been resolved, until last week, when union representatives and chief finally sat down to discuss a resolution.

We're told a large part of that discussion centered around what the chief considered 'personal attacks' from the union on Facebook.

"We did go back and forth and it's unfortunate," Turner said about those posts. "We are going to work and defend what we believe is right for our members and that's what we were working to do and we won't stop fighting for our members and we will continue to do that, but we want to do it more in an office setting sitting with the chief and the board of commissioners and trying to resolve our issues there."

The biggest issue still stands--the pay discrepancy being fought out in the courts. No offers have been made to resolve that part yet.

In the suit, the union alleges the department owes 150 or so firefighters around $25 million in back pay.

"We're not trying to bankrupt the fire department per se but we do want to come to a resolution and our members and employees made whole, as whole as possible," said Turner.

According to union vice president Kyle Peel, they are willing to negotiate, but the absolute lowest number they are willing to accept is $19 million--less if the department will sign a cooperative endeavor agreement with benefits built in.

"We're going to have some sort of compensation. It's going to be corrected," said Turner.

The union plans to meet with the chief on Thursday to discuss a potential settlement.

Chief Tarleton did not return our call for comment.