A Message from Troy on Sick Leave Buy Back and Pooling

 

As an incentive to stay healthy, the City offers to ‘buy back’ up to three days of sick leave per year.   Employees will see this buy back on the pay check that comes in two weeks.  Participation in this program is optional.  Since most employees want whatever buy back they have earned, we are asking employees that don’t want to sell their sick leave to inform Hilary or Doris by November 15.

The buy back amount is calculated in a fairly complex manner.  If an employee took 4 sick days during the past year, an employee could sell back 16 hours of sick leave so long as the employee has 96 hours left in their sick leave bank after the buy back.  Here is the formula:  Hours of sick leave bought back = 24 - ((Hours of sick leave used during the past 12 months / 96) * 24.)  The hours are then multiplied by your hourly rate and the amounts are added to your check after taxes are taken out.  The City pays out about $68,000 to employees under this program. 

Another program that is offered to employees is the Sick Leave Pool.  It is with great fortune that we have not used this pool extensively over the past few years.  The Pool allows employees to donate leave time to the Pool and then Pool dollars can be used to help another employee that is suffering from an unusually grave or serious injury or sickness.  Vacation hours and/or sick leave hours eligible for buy back can be donated to the Pool.  Thus, if any of you are interested in donating to the Pool, now is a great time to do it.    

Donated hours are converted to a dollar amount and kept in the Pool until used.  No money comes out of the Pool unless there is a recommendation to use it from the Employee’s Association. 

Employee’s often are motivated to donate by a specific employee’s circumstances.  As you consider donating, please note that once the dollars enter the Pool, they are tagged for any sick or injured employee, not a specific one.  Also note that the employee receiving the benefit is under no obligation to repay any amounts used.

The Sick Leave policy has a lot in it.  Take a moment to review policy 19 in your handbook to remind yourself of all of the details.  As usual, if you have questions, talk to your supervisor or Administration.