Wiscasset support staff at the town office and community center have two-percent a year wage hikes coming after selectmen have ratified a new three-year collective bargaining contract with them.

Town Manager Marian Anderson announced terms of the new contract March 16. Selectmen ratified it March 15 by a vote of 4-0-1 with Chairman Ben Rines Jr. abstaining.

The new contract includes the two-percent raise for union employees for each year of the contract retroactive to 2015. The new agreement runs until 2018. The percentage of pay increase is the same as what selectmen agreed to with the town’s three-member police union in December.

The support staff has six active union members. They include at the town office: the code enforcement officer, town clerk, treasurer, tax collector and assessor (currently vacant). Union employees at the community center include the assistant recreation director (vacant), aquatics director and facilities manager.

Anderson said the only contract left to settle is the bargaining unit representing full-time employees of the highway department, treatment plant and transfer station. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union represents them. Like the police and support staff their contract was up for renegotiation in 2015.

Judy Flanagan, vice chairman of the board of selectmen, told the newspaper she was relieved to have two of the contracts settled. “I compliment both bargaining units for working with the board to get what’s fair for them and fair for the town. I’m quite pleased,” she commented March 16.

Flanagan presided over the board’s discussions of the police and support staff contracts in the absence of Rines. Rines took no part in any of the discussions pertaining to the contracts and abstained from voting on their ratification. He previously explained he’d been a member of the same union for 33 years while employed at Bath Iron Works.