More than 30 city employees cashed in on unused vacation and sick time last year, boosting their take-home pay by more than $100,000 in a public-sector perk a fiscal watchdog is warning must end.

They were not alone. Another 135 city employees also used the “other” category to pad their gross pay, a Herald analysis of Boston’s 2024 payroll shows.

It’s all a budgetary danger zone, warns Marty Walz, interim president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau

“Large payments to Boston’s public employees for unused sick and vacation time create a financial incentive for employees to bank time rather than appropriately use their benefits and also create a substantial liability each year as employees retire,” said the Research Bureau’s boss.

Walz said the agency, a non-partisan fiscal watchdog for the city, said the organization has been repeating this warning “for more than 20 years.” But, she added, it must be tackled during contract negotiations.

“We’ve urged the city to continue to address this issue during collective bargaining negotiations by ensuring the amount of used sick and vacation time an employee may accrue is capped, as is common in the private sector,” Walz said.

Why it matters

Walz stressed that “restraining the growth in personnel costs” is vital because it “represents two-thirds” of the city’s budget.

The city’s payroll grew by more than 2.28% last year, from $2.14 billion in 2023 to $2.19 billion in 2024, when accounting for regular pay, overtime and “other” pay, among other add-ons to annual salaries.

The average salary for city employees was $105,034 in 2024, a big jump over the prior year when employees were paid $74,330 on average, payroll records show.

A city spokesperson confirmed the use of buybacks “depends on contractual obligations outlined in union agreements.”

The city has attempted to cut that back, “but has a responsibility to follow existing contractual obligations,” the spokesperson added.

“Payouts of this size are limited to those employees with provisions in their collective bargaining agreement, which represent a subset of the City workforce,” the mayor’s office added.

That wrinkle allowed for wild paychecks for 2024, with two “senior custodians” cashing in $200,000-plus in the “other” category. A “Building Services Fleet Manger,” a school custodian according to the mayor’s office, pulled down $413,000 by having the city buy back his unused vacation time, as the Herald reported last week.

The Herald has learned school employees can take vacation time in lieu of overtime and cash those hours back when they retire at 100% of their value. The mayor’s office was asked but did not answer if that was a practice that was being cut out of the contract.

The list of city employees banking on the “other” category extends across almost every department.

Even a “Junior Custodian” cashed in $74,337 in “other” pay, cleaning up with a “gross” pay of $125,725.

Boston’s 2024 city employee payroll: ‘Your Tax Dollars at Work’

The Herald asked, but City Hall didn’t answer about the vacation and sick time buy-back habit. (Libby O’Neill/Boston Herald)