(a) Regular full-time employees shall be entitled to unlimited accumulation of sick leave on the basis of their respective basic hourly work week. All such sick leave and the accumulation thereof shall be in a unit of hours. The following schedule is hereby established to indicate the proper sick leave provisions based upon the basic hourly work week of the respective employee:
Basic Work Week of the Employee Hours | Sick Leave to which the Employee is Entitled for Each Complete Month of Service Hours |
40 | 12 |
54 | 24 (maximum of 192 hours/year) |
(1) Police Captains and Police Chief shall have the election to accumulate 4.62 hours of sick leave for each bi-weekly pay period (10.01 hours/month). Police Captains and Police Chief shall make such election within thirty days of their appointment.
(b) Employees may use sick leave for absence due to illness, injury, medical condition, exposure to serious contagious disease, and for serious illness or death in the employee's immediate family. Sick leave is used up by deducting the number of hours or parts of hours which the employee is absent from the normally scheduled work day.
(c) For the purposes of sick leave usage due to medical conditions, illness or injury, "immediate family" means: mother, father, spouse, son, and daughter. By special permission of the City Manager, sick leave may be used for illness or injury for other relatives. Employees who need to use one week or more of sick leave must submit Family Medical Leave certificate forms if the leave would qualify under the FMLA policy.
(d) For the purpose of bereavement leave (paid with sick leave accrual),"immediate family" means: mother, father, sister, brother, spouse, son, daughter, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, grandchildren, grandparents, aunts, uncles and other persons living in the employee's home. By special permission of the City Manager, bereavement leave may be used for death of persons other than those listed above. Bereavement leave coverage for funerals is limited to three work days. (Assistant Fire Chiefs are limited to forty-eight consecutive duty hours.)
(e) Sick leave or bereavement leave shall be documented with the appropriate leave request form including the relationship of family member to be completed by the employee as soon as is possible.
(f) A department head may require an employee to submit documentation from a medical doctor or other qualified person for the purpose of justifying an employee's use of sick leave or FMLA in accordance with Section 131.91. However, an employee shall be required to submit said documentation for leaves of five consecutive days or more. Assistant Fire Chiefs shall be required to submit documentation for leaves of three or more consecutive shift days. Return to work documentation shall also be required.
(g) When an employee is unable to work due to a job-related injury, the City will continue to pay the employee the regular straight-time salary or hourly wage for up to sixty calendar days. This sixty-day period will be reduced to thirty days if the Bureau of Worker's Compensation establishes a reserve for the employee's worker's compensation claim. The City Manager may continue such payments beyond sixty days when the City Manager determines that such a continuation will be beneficial to the City. There will be no deduction from accumulated sick leave for any period of time during which an employee receives wage continuation as a result of on-the-job leave pursuant to Section 131.35.
(h) Any employee covered by Pay Table I, as set forth in the ordinance passed each year, and the City Manager, Law Director and City Clerk who retire after at least ten years of service with the City of Sidney shall be entitled to payment of unused sick leave as follows:
(1) Except as set forth in paragraphs (h)(2) and (h)(3) hereof, employees shall receive thirty percent of their total sick leave accumulation.
(2) Payment for fifty-four hour per week employees shall be made by multiplying thirty percent times the total sick leave hours leave times the annual salary, divided by 2080.
(3) Police Captains and Police Chief who choose paragraph (a)(1) above elect one of the following options:
A. A Police Captain and Police Chief who retires after ten years of service with the City of Sidney, shall be entitled to payment for unused sick leave of thirty percent of the employee’s total sick leave accumulation.
B. Upon retirement or upon termination of employment other than retirements, a Police Captain and Police Chief who has at least twenty years of continuous service with the City and at least twenty-five years of service credit toward retirement shall be entitled to payment for unused sick leave of forty percent of such employee’s total sick leave accumulation. The maximum number of hours for which the employee will receive pay for is 960 hours.
C. Upon retirement or upon termination of employment other than retirement, a Police Captain and Police Chief who has at least twenty-five years of service with the City of Sidney shall be entitled to payment for unused sick leave of forty-five percent of the employee’s total leave accumulation. The maximum number of hours that the employee will receive pay for is 960 hours.
(4) If the deceased employee has 10 or more years of service with the City of Sidney, the City of Sidney will pay the estate of a deceased employee the sick leave payout the employee would be entitled to if the deceased employee would have retired and provided that the employee was a current employee at the time of such employee’s death.
(i) Regular full time employees who do not use more than one day of sick leave in a given pay year, except the City Clerk, Law Director and City Manager, shall be paid a bonus equivalent to eight hours pay at the employer's hourly rate. Said bonus is only available to those employees who do not use more than one day of sick leave in a given pay year and are on the City payroll from January 1 to December 31 in the year the bonus is earned. Said bonus, if earned, will be paid at the employee's rate of pay for the last pay period in December in the year earned and paid at the first pay period in February of the following year. Employees who retire after December 31st but prior to the first pay period in February will receive the bonus on their final check.
(j) Temporary light duty assignment may be accommodated in accordance with the following:
(1) Any employee desiring to be placed on a temporary light duty assignment for medical reasons shall submit a written request to their department head, explaining the nature of the medical condition and the proposed duty activities, and attaching a medical release for the light duty activities contemplated.
If light duty activities are available, but the employee has not requested them within ten days of taking sick leave, the City may contact the employee's physician to determine if the employee can receive medical clearance in order to perform said light duty activities.
(2) The City reserves the right to determine whether to make or approve temporary light duty assignments, including the assigned work schedule and to determine (with medical clearance) the activities to be conducted in such assignment, provided, however, that all such assignments will involve work that is directly related to the City operations and that each request for such assignment will be evaluated on the basis of available and suitable light duty work details for temporary assignments, as determined by the department head and the Human Resources Manager.
(3) Any employee temporarily assigned to a light duty status shall be paid according to the employee’s current pay rate. Temporary light duty assignment may involve work activities that are typically performed by a supervisor or another employer at a higher pay grade. However, the provisions of Section 131.34 will not be applicable to individuals assigned to light duty activities, as described above.
(4) The calculation of sick leave accrual for individuals on light duty status will be computed on the basis of that individual's regular shift assignment, even though the light duty assignment may alter the actual work shift.
(Ord. A-2065. Passed 12-23-96; Ord. A-2113. Passed 12-22-97; Ord. A-2152. Passed 12-14-98; Ord. A-2192. Passed 12-13-99; Ord. A-2324. Passed 11-25-02; Ord. A-2401. Passed 9-27-04; Ord. A-2422. Passed 1-24-05; Ord. A-2464. Passed 12-12-05; Ord. A-2544. Passed 12-10-07; A-2594. Passed 12-8-08; Ord. A-2614. Passed 6-22-09; A-2630. Passed 12-14-09; Ord. A-2778. Passed 12-9-13; Ord. A-2805. Passed 12-8-14; Ord. A-2841. Passed 12-14-15; Ord. A-2912. Passed 12-11-17; Ord. A-2990. Passed 12-9-19; Ord. A- 3111. Passed 11-28-22.)