The Petersburg Borough and the union representing its electric utility employees appear to have tentatively reached a contract settlement with the help of a mediator. That’s according to Petersburg Assemblyman John Hoag who serves as the borough’s lead negotiator:

“Well, we believe we’ve reached a settlement, I’m pleased to be able to say. There are details that still need to be ironed out between the parties. We have not been able to finalize language for various reasons on a couple of issues. So, I don’t want to provide any more details at this time until the IBEW negotiator and myself are confident that we have a final deal that, on approval by our respective clients, will be signed,” Hoag said.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers represents 11 borough employees at Petersburg Power and Light. They have a separate contract from the towns other municipal workers, who are members of the Petersburg Municipal Employees Association.

Negotiations between the Borough and the IBEW started in November. In Early February, the Borough Assembly approved tentative agreements on some of the contract language. During that meeting, Hoag told the members that the parties were still working on monetary issues at the time.

This week, Hoag declined to go into detail this on what the differences had been, but he said the two sides had met with a mediator on Tuesday:

“This is the same mediator that’s been used in the past for the negotiations with the main borough union, the PMEA folks. So, she’s familiar with the area and, yes, we met with her in mediation yesterday and her services were valuable in assisting the parties in reaching what we hope is a final settlement,” said Hoag.

During Monday’s regular assembly meeting, Hoag plans to give a briefing to members in a closed-door session. If there’s a consensus to ratify the tentative agreement, Hoag hopes to have it up for a vote in open session a couple weeks later.

The agreement will also need ratification by the IBEW members. We didn’t hear back from an IBEW representative in time for this broadcast.