TIVERTON — The personal side of the increasingly bitter contract dispute involving public school teachers and the School Committee has obscured the financial issue at the heart of the conflict — how much taxpayers can afford in the next contract.

The School Committee has taken an unusual position by acknowledging publicly how much of a raise the current budget includes for teachers — 3 percent — while continuing to hedge its bets that the money might be needed instead for unanticipated expenses.

Even as the current budget remains up in the air, Schools Supt. William J. Rearick has moved ahead with a proposal for the next fiscal year that initially contained a 2 percent raise for teachers.

Both the School Committee and the Town Council are required to submit budget proposals to the town Budget Committee next week, according to provisions of the Home Rule Charter.

The School Committee has said it is disinclined to go along with Rearick’s first budget draft, because it would require some programmatic cuts.

Next Tuesday, Rearick will present the School Committee with alternative scenarios designed to preserve programs, including a reduction or elimination of proposed teacher raises, according to Douglas Fiore, the school director of finance and administration.

The School Committee’s budget must conform with the state’s new property tax relief law, S-3050, which allows municipalities a maximum 5 percent increase in the tax levy for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Assuming that state aid to education remains the same, the 5 percent increase in tax revenue would permit an additional $965,413 on the existing bottom line, $24,416,425.

Total spending in the next fiscal year would be limited to $25,381,838, according to Fiore’s calculations.

Fiore was asked why the School Committee doesn’t grant the town’s 200 teachers the 3 percent increase provided in the current budget.

He said the union has been offered a scenario that “comes very close to 3 percent.”

The proffered proposal includes a 2 percent increase in base pay and a $500 stipend to offset an increase in out-of-pocket expenses for health insurance premiums about 10 percent to about 12 percent of the total cost of premiums.

By keeping the raise at 2 percent in the first year of the contract, school officials would hope to keep the cumulative increase in base pay “a little lower” in future budget cycles to meet the progressively declining limits on new tax revenue spelled out in the tax relief law, Fiore said.

Amy Mullen, president of the union, The National Education Association-Tiverton, said the salary proposal Fiore described is not the same as a 3 percent across-the board increase, especially since employees would simply give back the one-time $500 stipend to cover increased health insurance costs.

For the next budget year, Rearick has recommended that teachers pay 18 percent of health insurance premiums, including the 15 percent originally proposed.

The amount teachers pay for visits to doctor’s offices and emergency rooms would also rise.

In the last several months, the School Committee has “done a good job focusing on any missteps we may have made,” Mullen said.

She alluded to several controversies over the union’s tactics, including its plan — never carried out — to picket St. Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, the workplace of Denise de Medeiros, the chairwoman of the School Committee.

De Medeiros blamed the idea on Patrick Crowley, deputy executive director of the union’s state affiliate, the Rhode Island Education Association.

But Mullen said the plan “had nothing to do with him.”

Because of the committee’s adverse reaction to Crowley, however, Mullen said that the Tiverton union has distanced itself from him.

“The School Committee reactions and feelings toward Mr. Crowley made it very difficult for us to get anywhere” in negotiations, she said.

“We are willing to do whatever it takes to get a fair and equitable contract,” she said.

“We want them to consider binding arbitration, go back to mediation, or negotiate it,” she said.

“The legal fees are racking up and the only one making out on this is Steve Robinson,” the committee’s lawyer, Mullen said.

While the union and the School Committee sparred publicly during the fall over each other’s integrity and ethics, the school administration and the union’s negotiating committee have been meeting informally to continue talks.

Teachers have been working without a contract under a Superior Court order issued the day after Labor Day last September.

The same order required members of the School Committee to come to the table for mediated talks, but those bargaining sessions broke down in early October when the committee declared an impasse, rejecting a union proposal for a two-year contract calling for increases of 3.75 percent and 3.5 percent in the first and second year, respectively.

The committee has filed for nonbinding arbitration, with Rearick saying school officials are interested in an outside opinion but do not want to be bound by it.

In the meantime, the committee has authorized Rearick and Fiore to continue talking to the union.

Rearick, through Fiore, said he has authority to reach a tentative agreement, but Mullen, the union president, said the superintendent has not presented the teachers with any proposal in writing.

Mullen said it is “hypocritical and unfair” for the Town Council to have twice endorsed the School Committee’s hard line against the union, most recently on Monday, while it has approved substantial raises for police officers and the fire chief in the last few months.

“Don’t all town employees deserve an equitable and fair contract?” she said, emphasizing that she did not mean to detract from the well-deserved raises to police and the fire chief, Robert Lloyd.

In early October, the council approved a retroactive pact for police that will boost their base pay by about 10 percent over a three year-period ending June 30, 2009.

On Monday, the council granted Lloyd, the fire chief, a 5 percent increase for 2008, the first year of a three-year contract.

Although the agreement allows Lloyd to earn as much as 5 percent in raises in the second and third years, Town Council president Louise Durfee emphasized yesterday that those hikes are not guaranteed but based solely on performance.

She said Lloyd was well-deserving of the increase in pay he received, from slightly more than $73,000 to nearly $77,000.

The settlement of the police contract in early October was influenced in part by the fact that officers had gone without a raise since July 1, 2005, the beginning of the final year of that labor agreement, which expired June 30, 2006.

Durfee said, “Going forward, we’re going to be looking very hard at all raises” in light of the restrictions imposed by the new property tax relief law.

The Town Council will meet next Tuesday to consider its budget, at the same time the School Committee will hear from Rearick and Fiore.

According to the town’s Home Rule Charter, the budget proposals from the School Committee and the Town Council must be delivered to the town Budget Committee by next Tuesday, 120 days before the annual Financial Town Meeting, Durfee said.

But Durfee described the plans at this point as a “moveable feast” that everyone understands will be subject to multiple revisions until shortly before the Town Meeting in May.

gmacris@projo.com