Cheyenne Mayor Rick Kaysen says he is basically pleased with the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget passed by the city council on third and final reading Monday night.

The mayor says the budget is essentially the same as his proposed budget, except that the council refused to endorse a 3.4 percent sanitation fee increase. Kaysen says that means there will be no increase in any kind of sanitation services for city residents in fiscal year 2014.

The sanitation fee increase was unpopular with some members of the council in part because sanitation fees not only go towards sanitation, but have for many years also gone towards other areas of city government. Because of the defeat of the proposed sanitation fee increase, a provision to use some of that money to bring the minimum hourly wage for all city employees up to at least $12 an hour was also cut from the budget.

But Kaysen says the defeat of the sanitation fee increase impacts only about .5 percent of the overall city budget, adding the budget can be adjusted to deal with that impact without creating major problems. The council did approve water and sewer fee increases of 3.4 percent, reflecting the increase in the southeast Wyoming Consumer Price Index at the end of 2012 compared to the end of 2011. The new budget takes effect on July 1, 2013.

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