MANCHESTER — Mayor Ted Gatsas warns that the city's proposals to the school district teachers union when new contract talks begin “won't look the same” as they might have if teachers had agreed to modifications in the current agreement.

Last June, members of the Manchester Education Association rejected health insurance concessions designed to save money and reduce the number of layoffs required to keep the school budget under the city's tax cap.

The battle is expected to be fought again when talks open on a contract to replace the agreement, which expires June 30.

“They need to understand that there will be a proposal coming,” the mayor said. “It would be better to talk sooner, rather than later, so we can have an intelligent conversation.”

Union leaders have said they anticipate a difficult negotiation period if the city attempts to win the rejected concessions as part of the new agreement.

The mayor said without a new agreement in place, coming up with a budget figure for the Board of School Committee by the March 30 deadline means using fixed expenses in the current agreement as a guide.

“We probably would form a budget with everything that doesn't need to be negotiated,” the mayor said. “You have to move forward.”

Gatsas said he's open to sitting down with the teachers' union at any time.

But the mayor said the city is facing some costs it didn't have to consider when developing the budget that resulted in scores of teacher layoffs on July 1.

Both school and city pension costs will jump next year, with an additional $1.7 million payment for city departments and $2 million for schools.

Gatsas said the city is also unlikely to have a $1 million dollar surplus in its snow removal budget as it did after the mild winter of 2011-12. The leftover snow removal money was applied to pre-paying some expenses for the current fiscal year, leaving more money for the schools.

“People keep forgetting one very serious thing,” Gatsas said. “The budget the city (departments) saw was a minus; all the increases with the tax cap went to the schools.”

City agencies begin making their pitches for next year's spending in little more than a week; the first departments will make their budget presentations Nov. 1.

Teachers union officials have said that rather than sit down to negotiate changes in an agreement that has barely eight months to run, they are concentrating on developing a proposal for a new contract.

In the meantime, the union leadership has been discussing which candidates to recommend for election to the Charter Commission in next month's election.

“I'm just sad that they're concentrating on who is going to be on the charter (commission) rather than talking about the future of the school district,” Gatsas said. “I don't know what they're waiting for.”

wsmith@unionleader.com