PARIS — The Board of Selectmen voted 3-2 Monday evening to approve an extended sick leave policy that would allow employees to donate a portion of their accrued vacation, personal leave or holiday leave to another employee who has exhausted their own hours dealing with a loss or an illness.
Selectmen Ryan Lorrain, Gerald Kilgore and Samuel Elliot voted in favor of the policy, while Chairman Robert Kirchherr and Selectman Robert Wessels voted against it.
According to the policy, the maximum number of days that can be awarded from one full-time or part-time employee to another cannot be more than 12 weeks, and the donations of vacation, personal days or holiday hours must be calculated in 8-hour increments.
Town Manager Amy Bernard added that the employees who decide to donate their hours will remain anonymous to the employee receiving the hours.
“These donations are strictly voluntary,” Bernard continued. “Employees do not have to donate their time if they don’t want to.”
Bernard brought the policy before the board, explaining that an employee of the town recently suffered a catastrophic loss and would be unable to return to work in the near future.
“After reviewing several different policies that town attorneys had written in different towns, I found a policy that would work for our town,” Bernard told the board. “Most employees accrue more than 30 days of sick time and end up not using it. This would give employees a chance to give those days to somebody who might need them.”
During the meeting, Wessels said that he “loved the idea of being able to help coworkers,” but was concerned about paying out sick days that would not have been used otherwise.
“With where we are as a town, financially, I struggle with that,” Wessels said.
Prior to the vote, resident Janet Jamison told the board that she didn’t think they should “get in there and dabble around” with the sick leave.
“You take a rather laissez-faire attitude at that front table about benefits and everything else,” Jamison said. “Where I work, if there’s somebody at work that uses up all their sick leave because something horrendous has happened, we donate our vacation time, or our annual leave. We don’t give up our sick days.
“What if somebody else comes down with something?” Jamison said. “Then, you’ll have employees volunteering their sick leave to them, and it’ll be another fine pickle you’ve gotten yourselves into.”
mdaigle@sunjournal.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
