(A) Each employee shall be entitled to one and one-quarter days of sick leave per month of service, to be cumulative without limit.
(B) Sick leave shall be granted for the absence from duty because of a doctor appointment, illness, injury, disease, exposure to contagious disease, or attendance upon members of the family whose illness requires the car of such employee. Substantiation for sick leave requests may be required at the discretion of the Mayor or the department head.
(C) At the time of retirement from service with the city, an employee shall be paid, in cash for one-third of the employee's accrued but unused sick leave, up to a maximum accrual of 120 days (i.e., 40 days pay maximum).
(D) Notwithstanding the above division, all employees covered by the chapter, hired prior to January 1, 1996, shall at the time of retirement with the city, be paid in cash, for one-third of the employee's accrued but unused sick leave, up to a maximum accrual of 160 days (i.e. 53.33 days maximum).
(E) All employees covered by this chapter, may convert unused sick leave above and beyond the maximum accrual as stated above to days off at the rate of two unused sick days to one day off.
(F) Payment for accrued sick leave upon retirement shall not be applicable to any removal, voluntary or involuntary resignation or any termination except a retirement pursuant to state retirement laws.
(G) In the event that a city employee has exhausted his or her sick leave due to a catastrophic illness as documented by the employee's physician the Mayor may request that other employees of the city be permitted to donate up to 24 hours of sick leave to be deducted from the donating employee's accumulated sick leave. Employees must have a minimum of 500 hours of accumulated sick leave in order to be eligible to donate time. The actual hours received by the receiving employee shall be based on the dollar value of the donated time divided by the receiving employee's current rate of pay, rounded to the nearest hour. The actual hours transferred are subject to the approval of Council, who may limit the total number of hours transferred. The actual transfer will not take place until the pay period in which the receiving employee has exhausted all of their accrued time. Once time is transferred, it will not be returned to the donating member, even if it is not used by the receiving member. In the event that the receiving member separates service for any reason, the donated time is not subject to cash conversion irrespective of any other section of this chapter.
(H) All request to transfer time shall be submitted to the Finance Department in writing on the form and in the manner as designated by the Finance Director. The donation of time is purely voluntary and no employee shall be coerced to donate time.
(I) Unless addressed by specific language in a bargaining unit agreement, the sick leave transfer may also be offered to bargaining unit employees. However, if a bargaining unit agreement has specific language relating to donating of sick time, the bargaining unit agreement shall prevail.
(Ord. 159-04, passed 1-24-2005; Ord. 13-08, passed 1-22-2008; Ord. 148-08, passed 11-3-2008; Ord. 20-13, passed 2-18-2013; Ord. 45-14, passed 10-20-2014; Ord. 27-2018, passed 9-17-2018; Ord. 07-2020, passed 2-17-2020)