CHESHIRE -- Having waited since October to vote on a new contract for the school district's teachers, the Town Council finally voted on the deal Tuesday night.
But because of the absence of Democratic Councilwoman Patti Flynn Harris and the abstention of Councilman James Sima (who has a daughter who is a teacher in the district), the four-year contract failed to get the five votes needed to win formal approval of the deal.
But even with a 4-3 vote by the council in favor of the contract, the nuances of local government mean the deal that the Education Association of Cheshire and the school board negotiated will take effect next week.
"Even though we just took a vote, in essence, we took no action," Council Chairman Tim Slocum said after the vote.
In order to scuttle the deal between the union and the board, Town Manager Michael Milone said the council would have needed to have passed a resolution that specifically rejected the terms of the deal and then gotten five votes in favor of that motion. And while none of the council members appeared happy about the terms of the contract, they were opposed to the alternative, which would have been to send the deal to arbitration.
"This can't go on forever," Democratic Councilman Michael Ecke said of the raises for the teachers in the new contract, which average 8.93 percent over the next four years. "But I'm not willing to spend $40,000 to $50,000 to go to arbitration and take the chance that we might get something even worse."
The council had not been able to conduct a vote on the contract since it was approved by the union and school board in October because the contract had not been submitted to the town clerk's office.
The delay in submitting the contract to the Town Clerk came because of a minor question in contract language that Board of Education Chairman Gerry Brittingham said took time to be worked out.
The new contract calls for what Brittingham has described as "significant changes" to the district's health care plan. Those changes include an increase in cost sharing in which teachers' contribution will rise from 5.5 percent to 9 percent by the end of the contract.