Prior to the adoption of Ord. 17016 on 09/17/2001, Section 19-130 read as follows.

(b) Sick leave shall be granted to an employee only when the employee is unable to perform duties ~~due to the reason~~ because of personal sickness or injury; except that, an employee shall be granted sick leave for necessary medical, dental and optical examination and treatment, and for counseling; provided that, sick leave granted for such purposes shall not exceed the actual time necessary for examination or treatment and reasonable travel time (as determined by the department head). (See paragraph (j) of this section.)

(e) Sick leave shall accrue from the date of appointment, but may not be used until after successful completion of the first thirty (30) days of permanent employment. If an employee utilizes sick leave during the first six months of employment, and leaves city service within that six months, the employee's final pay will be reduced by the number of sick leave days utilized, provided final pay does not fall below minimum wage rate for hours worked.

(f) A department head may request that an employee be given an advance of sick leave not to exceed twenty (20) working days per calendar year, provided such employee has been a satisfactory employee of the city for a period of at least one (1) year. Requests shall be in writing and shall offer adequate justification for the request. The advancement shall be authorized by the city manager provided there is a reasonable chance that the employee will be able to offset the advance by future unused accruals of sick, vacation, other authorized leaves, and/or additional work as soon as possible.

(g) On separation from the city's service, an employee shall not be entitled to receive reimbursement for accrued sick leave, except under the provisions of the post employment health plan.

(h) A temporary employee who is subsequently retained in a permanent position shall accrue sick leave from the date of appointment to the permanent position.

(i) Any employee who is indebted to the city for sick leave advanced but not accrued at the time of his separation shall, whenever possible, have his final pay deducted sufficiently to offset the indebtedness, provided final pay does not fall below minimum wage rate for hours worked.

(j) Sick leave may be taken upon accumulation for the following reasons: Any illness an employee may contract; or any exposure to contagious disease he/she may experience in which the health of others may be endangered by attendance at duty; or any city-connected disability; and for emergency leave purposes. (See section 19-131, emergency leave.)

(k) Sick leave may be used only with the permission of the employee's duly authorized supervisor. This provision shall apply to all other sections of this plan.

(l) Employees shall notify their supervisor that they will be unable to work before their normal work day begins, pursuant to specific departmental rules concerning deadlines for such notification.

(m) Use of sick leave shall be extended by the city for proper cause and concern for the employee's future welfare as a city employee; and it is not an inherent right of the employee to be absent from work. As such, identifiable misuse of sick leave shall be just cause for not extending this benefit and abuse shall be just cause for dismissal.

(n) Individuals injured in the course of employment with another employer shall not be eligible for use of sick leave accruals for the purpose of recovering from such situations. Employees involved in such circumstances may be eligible for leave of absence provisions of these rules and regulations.

(o) Except as may be provided in departmental rules and upon the approval of the city manager, employees who claim sick leave and are concurrently gainfully employed, selfemployed or otherwise, shall not be eligible for sick leave; and if they are to remain employed, must request, and have approved, a leave of absence without pay (provided that they have exhausted compensatory and vacation time).

(p) Employees working in bona fide, full-time police and fire-fighting classifications may be entitled to receive separate injury leave in addition to sick leave allocations provided the employee is injured while performing assigned duties, as herein provided:

(1) Injury leave may be allocated in renewable eighty (80) hour (or less) increments at the discretion of the city manager (seventy-two (72) hour increments for fire department employees);

(2) To be eligible for injury leave provisions, the injury must be fully documented within one week of the actual occurrence pursuant to established on-the-job injury reporting requirements. Failure to abide by this time deadline shall constitute disqualification from eligibility for injury leave allocations;

(3) Before being eligible for injury leave, the employee must submit a timely report of his injury to the department head, if reasonably able to do so, and the department head will request injury leave allocation by the city manager, provided the department head agrees with the request by the employee. Until such time as injury leave may be allocated, the employee will use any accrued sick leave, which may or may not be refundable depending upon circumstances encountered, as determined by the city manager;

(4) Injury leave will be allocated (if deemed appropriate by the city manager) only for treatment and recuperation for a specific on-the-job injury, and not for incidental ailments which may be identified in the course of addressing the job related injury;

(5) Injury leave will be immediately revoked and repayment required through other accrued leaves in the event the employee does not provide medical status information as required by the city manager; and injury leave will likewise be revoked in the event the injury is determined to have occurred other than on the job;

(6) The city manager shall reserve the option to place the injured employee into a limited capacity at whatever tasks the city manager deems appropriate, taking into account the extent and nature of the disability. The individual's salary will be adjusted commensurate with the work being performed, and the difference in salary may be made up (if the assignment is lower paid) with injury leave so long as the city manager deems appropriate, at his discretion;

(7) Any reasonable suspicion of misuse of injury leave or questions concerning the authenticity of the injury's extent or occurrence, shall be cause for discontinuing the injury (or any other) leave, requiring repayment for any injury days allocated, and shall also be cause for disciplinary action up to and including dismissal;

(1) Eligibility. A permanent employee who, at the end of a fiscal year, has accumulated unused sick leave equal to or in excess of the regular hours the employee normally works in a twenty-six week period (for example, one thousand forty (1,040) hours for an employee on a forty-hour workweek) shall be eligible to participate in the city's sick leave buy back program for the following fiscal year. To be eligible a person must still be employed by the city on the first day of the new fiscal year.

(2) Buy back provisions. The city, upon the written request of an eligible employee, shall buy back up to one hundred (100) percent of the total unused sick/emergency leave accumulated by the employee during the preceding fiscal year which is in excess of the minimum required for eligibility. For each hour of sick leave bought back by the city, the employee shall receive seventy-five percent (75%) of his hourly rate of pay in effect at the time that the sick leave buy back check is written or, in the case of a former employee, the former employee's final rate of pay. The employee's total accumulated sick leave time will be reduced by the number of hours of sick leave sold back to the city.

(3) Procedure. The deadline for eligible employees to make written requests for sick leave buy back is November 15 of each year, unless extended by the city manager. Employees shall be given at least four (4) weeks' notice of the deadline and the proper procedure for requesting sick leave buy back. For good cause, the city manager may allow an employee to make a late request for sick leave buy back.

(4) Police and firefighters' injury leave. For purposes of calculating the amount of sick leave which the city will buy back, the total unused sick leave accumulated by an employee during the preceding fiscal year shall be reduced by the amount of any injury leave granted to the employee by the city manager during the preceding fiscal year pursuant to subsection (p) of this section. This provision reduces the amount of sick leave which the city will buy back from an employee. It does not reduce the employee's accumulated sick leave.

(5) Major illness. An employee who has participated in this program and who subsequently uses all of ~~his~~ the employee’s accumulated sick leave may be granted, at ~~his~~ the employee’s request, additional leave at one-half of ~~his~~ the employee’s normal rate of pay, up to the number of hours sold back to the city ~~since~~ between October 1, 1988 and September 30, 2000, and at onefourth of the employee’s normal rate of pay on the number of hours sold back to the city after October 1, 2000.

(Code 1964, § 22.755; Ord. No. 12104, § 1, 1-3-89; Ord. No. 13817 § 1, 9-20-93; Ord. No. 14208 § 1, 9-19-94; Ord. No. 14617, § 1, 9-18-95; Ord. No. 15355, § 1, 9-15-97; Ord. No. 16191, § 1, 9-20-99; Ord. No. 16618, § 1, 9-18-00)

	Earned per Year	Maximum Accrual
General employees	18 days	Unlimited
56-hour employees	10 days	Unlimited