Emergency Paid Leave Guidance

Guidance updated January 12, 2023.

Emergency Paid Leave (EPL)

For full-time and hourly employees who have been with the City since 2022, 40 hours of EPL was made available in early January of 2022. This leave was carried over in 2023, and can continue to be accessed pursuant to City guidelines. New full-time employees continue to be granted EPL upon hire. EPL is intended to support employees through the COVID-19 outbreak. EPL may only be used for the following purposes:

  • An employee or their immediate family member(s) has a COVID‐19 diagnosis or is in quarantine or isolation due to COVID‐19. 
  • An employee or their immediate family member(s) needs to obtain a COVID‐19 vaccination, including boosters, and to recover from the effects of a COVID-19 vaccine.
  • An employee needs to care for their child or another individual who cannot care for themselves due to the closure of their school, childcare facility, or another care program due to COVID‐19.
  • Either a positive at-home test or a positive PCR test is needed to access EPL.

Additional Considerations.

  1. While EPL can be used to obtain boosters or to recover in case you are unable to work due to the side-effects of a booster, employees are limited to the use of 24 working hours of EPL use to recover from a booster. If additional leave is needed, employees will be required to use other accrued leave like sick leave.
  2. Managers and Supervisors must have documentation of the needed reason for leave. Employees must provide documentation of the necessary reason(s) for the leave. Employees who cannot provide documentation must use another leave code – including leave without pay. Such documentation might include proof of positive test results, vaccination or booster shots, daycare/school emails regarding COVID-related closures, etc.
  3. Supervisors should continue to grant employees up to 30 minutes off of work to get their booster. Beginning January 1st, 2023, employees need to use EPL or other accrued leave if they need to be off in order to get their booster.
  4. If any other federal or state law requiring COVID‐19 related paid leave is enacted, the Emergency COVID‐19 Leave, and any uses of such leave shall be applied as part of the federal or state-mandated paid leave. The Emergency COVID‐19 Leave shall not be supplementary to any such federal or state paid leave.