City of Knoxville employees increased their total contributions by 35 percent for the 2015 Consolidated Charities giving campaign, compared with last year's giving. City employees pledged a total of $88,792.87. 

The percentage increase was greater than that of Knox County employees, which means that Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett will have to make good on a friendly wager he'd made with Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero. 

During last fall's United Way kickoff, the two mayors announced a friendly challenge to see whose employees could up their charitable giving by the largest percentage. The mayor whose donors came up lowest would be the other mayor's guest at either a City Council or County Commission meeting. 

Knowing Mayor Burchett's general dislike for meetings, Mayor Rogero has graciously offered an alternative settlement of the bet: Since Mayor Burchett would probably rather give his own blood than sit through a City Council meeting, the City has challenged him to make a blood donation this week. 

The mayoral wager wasn't the only friendly challenge made during the Consolidated Charities giving campaign. Police Chief David Rausch and Fire Chief Stan Sharp shared a similar challenge between Police and Fire personnel. 

Firefighters increased their giving by a larger margin than police officers did. In fact, the Fire Department more than doubled its contributions from last year. That means Chief Rausch and his officers soon will be cleaning some of Chief Sharp's fire engines! 

The giving campaign generated $54,422.30 in pledges to United Way, $20,197.63 to Community Health Charities, and $14,172.94 to Community Shares. 

"I want to thank all of our employees for their generosity," Mayor Rogero said at Tuesday night's City Council meeting. "Our City workers serve the community every day in their regular jobs. But this is really going above and beyond that to give back to the community."