BREWER- In a closely watched referendum Friday, members of the local teachers union rejected a proposed three-year contract that would have succeeded a previous agreement that expired at the end of August.

According to Teresa England, a spokesman for the Brewer Education Association, association members rejected the contract proposal offered by the school committee by a single vote. The final tally was 55-56, with all but 18 of the group’s members participating.

Since September, teachers here have continued working under the terms of their previous three-year labor pact as the union and the committee struggled to hammer out a new one.

The contract offer rejected Friday would have given teachers a 3.5 percent pay increase and a cost-sharing formula for health insurance that would be phased in over the duration of the agreement, among other things.

Contract talks have been going on since late 1999. According to representatives from both sides of the divide, the two biggest sticking points have been pay and benefits.

Last fall, the Maine Labor Relations Board appointed a three-member fact-finding panel to help bridge the gaps. In mid-December, the panel issued a 14-page report of its findings, as well as recommendations for resolving the contract dispute. The recommendations later were the basis of post-fact-finding negotiations.

The union and the committee reportedly had agreed to accept the fact-finders’ recommendations in most of the areas they were asked to consider. These areas included such details as bereavement benefits, work hours and teaching loads, teachers’ rights and dues deductions, to name a few.

The teachers and elected officials, however, had differing interpretations on what the panel recommended in the area of health insurance cost-sharing for the contract’s last year and asked the three members for clarification.

After the previous contract expired and a series of teacher protests began, representatives from both sides have cited salary and benefits as the two main points of contention.

It was not clear late Friday if the rejection of the contract offer would be among the topics discussed during a school committee meeting scheduled for Monday night at which school officials plan to discuss next year’s budget.