Cayuga Community College faculty members may soon be working under a new contract.

According to college President Daniel Larson, the college and its faculty members have worked through an impasse to agree on a tentative contract for faculty members.

The faculty association, the board of trustees and the county Legislature all need to ratify the proposed contract before the terms are released, Larson said. Ratification on the college side should occur by the end of April with the proposal reaching the Legislature's floor a month or two thereafter.

“I am excited and I am thrilled and I am very pleased that we can see this particular issue resolved,” Larson said.

College faculty have been operating without a contract since 2004 and internal efforts to negotiate a new contract had ended in an impasse. To break the stalemate, both parties turned to the state Public Employment Relations Board to have an impartial arbitrator mediate a solution that might lead to a contractual agreement.

A relations board report released to parties in December outlined causes of the impasse - from salary to fringe benefits - and proposed several recommendations.

A major cause of friction between the college and the association was employee contributions to health insurance premiums. Faculty members were contributing 15 percent in the final year of the contract, spanning from 1997 to 2004, and have continued contributing that amount since the contract's expiration date.

The college had maintained that faculty members' contributions should eventually increase to 30 percent, given the skyrocketing cost of health care.

Following the release of the fact finder report - which proposed a contribution cap of 20 percent for 2009-10, among other things - both parties went back to the bargaining table and met four or five times, Larson said.

“I think that both teams recognize that they did what they thought was possible for the parties they represent,” Larson said. “That give-and-take kind of negotiating process means that ultimately we came up with an agreement. I think that as the ratification process proceeds, with the members of the faculty association and the board of trustees and at the county level, we will see exactly how much agreement might be there.”

Larson, who joined the college last summer, has made it a personal goal to help bring an accord between both parties.

“As I look over these past couple of months now, I'm very pleased the conversation proceeded as it did,” he said. “There were many people involved in getting us to this point where there is a tentative agreement, so it's not just any desire that I had or encouragement that I could make. A lot of other people were working towards this end.”

Agnes Crothers, president of the faculty association, could not be reached for comment.

Staff writer Alyssa Sunkin can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 239 or alyssa.sunkin@lee.net