City Clerk

A notice of an intention to recall Camden Mayor Milton Milan was certified yesterday by the city clerk. Organizers of the drive said they expected to have petitioners on the street by the weekend. The organizers will receive formal notice of the certification by mail within three working days, and the mayor will be notified within five working days. "We're off and running," said Councilman Ali Sloan El, one of the leaders of the drive. "We'll be stopping people at the groceries.

Former Indiana Rep. Katie Hall, 73, one of the sponsors of the 1983 legislation that established a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has died. Rep. Hall's husband, John Henry Hall, said she died Monday in Gary from an undisclosed illness. He said his wife's work on the bill to make Martin Luther King's Birthday a national holiday was her proudest accomplishment. Katie Hall, who was Indiana's first black member in the U.S. House, got her start in politics working for the election of Richard Hatcher as mayor of Gary in 1967, when he became one of the first black mayors of big U.S. city.

Think of it as a little bit of Paris in downtown Woodbury. Restaurateurs and other food and beverage merchants along Broad Street will soon be able to open sidewalk cafes in front of their stores. City Council introduced an ordinance at its meeting Tuesday night that would permit outdoor seating and provide licenses for merchants. City officials said they hoped the sidewalk cafes would stimulate the downtown economy and add an aesthetically pleasing touch to the city's downtown business district.

For the first time in about 30 years, there will be a contested primary among Democratic candidates for City Council in Gloucester City. In the June 4 primary, members of the "Experienced Democrat Leadership Group" will run against members of the "Regular Democratic Organization" in two of the city's three wards. "It comes down to jobs," said Bob Gorman, chairman of the Gloucester City Democratic Executive Committee. "The one person that's leading the other slate, Dan Spencer, wanted to be city clerk.

These last few months - as girders went up and tiles went down and one gargantuan fish tank took in water - it seemed just possible for Camden's well-wishers to think a single, unclouded, hopeful thought about the city. That is: to applaud the New Jersey State Aquarium as a real-life, no-kidding accomplishment, standing on the waterfront for all to see - a much-needed alternative to dwelling morosely and endlessly on Camden's dying-city anguish. But now, a group of local activists is campaigning to block special support services for the very building that city and state officials have been urging the rest of the world to see as a symbol of the city's potential rebirth.

Some municipal employees in Gloucester City will get a 5 percent salary increase in October if the City Council approves. The Gloucester City Council will hold a public hearing Oct. 1 to decide whether the employees, including some of the highest-ranking in the government, should get more money. If the pay-increase ordinance is approved, the salary increases will take effect immediately. The proposal was approved on first reading at the Sept. 3 council meeting. Under the terms of the proposal, the city administrator would receive $60,000; the deputy fire chief would be paid $43,050, and the construction official would make $36,037.

Bert Murphy is settling in nicely as the new municipal clerk of the city of Beverly, and if he isn't getting rich on the salary, it doesn't detract from his love of the little town where he has lived for 32 years. "It's still a good little town," said Murphy, who took over the clerkship on April 1 and is the closest thing to a day-to-day official presence in tiny Beverly - population 2,919 in the 1980 census. "It's a small town," he said. "Everybody knows everybody. " Murphy now has official hours when he can be found in the clerk's office in the basement of City Hall, a converted school on Broad Street.

Mayor Milton Milan has named a new acting director to head the city's troubled Department of Utilities - the second person to be named in the last two weeks. James Reynolds, the former assistant business administrator for the city, will oversee the Utilities Department's transition toward partial privatization, city officials said yesterday. William Heller, a retired engineer with the city, was named two weeks ago to head the 110-employee agency, which operates the city's water and sewer systems and street lights, but withdrew his acceptance early last week, citing personal reasons.

DAWSONVILLE, Ga. - Moonshine distillers are making their first batches of legal liquor in this tiny Georgia town's city hall, not far from the mountains and the maroon, orange, and gold canopy of trees that once hid bootleggers from the law. A handful of moonshine distilleries are scattered around the South, but observers say this is the first time they've ever seen one in a city hall. The distilleries are part of a trend spurred by increased interest in the United States for locally made specialty spirits and beer brewed in homes and microbreweries.

Poor Lord Camden. The oil portrait of the British aristocrat, who gave the city its name, had hung in Council's chambers for more than 60 years, slowly deteriorating while the city conducted its business. Then came the final indignity. The flaking, frayed image of His Lordship - resplendent in a flowing wig and fur-lined robe - was taken down in the late 1980s and left on the floor of a dim Council anteroom. And that was where it had remained, propped against a wall along with folding tables and chairs, until its rediscovery last winter during the renovation of Council's chambers.