Cheyenne Mayor Rick Kaysen says he still wants to include a 2.25 percent employee raise when the fiscal year 2014 budget takes effect on July 1.

The Cheyenne City Council Committee of the Whole voted earlier this week to place the money the mayor wants to use for raises in an escrow account until an employee investment study which is already underway can be completed. But Kaysen says he sees the raises and the study as two seperate issues.

The mayor has said previously that exit interviews in recent years with city employees who leave to take other jobs indicates 73 percent left for better paying jobs. Kaysen says he is concerned the city will continue to lose employees--and the training the city has invested in them--unless a pay raise is included in the new budget.

The full city council will take up the FY 2014 budget when it meets in regular session on Tuesday night.

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