City Clerk

A year after being rescued from the floor of a dimly lit room in City Hall, Lord Camden is still waiting for his big makeover. The frayed, flaking oil portrait of the British aristocrat, who gave Camden its name, was transferred last October from a Council anteroom to the Camden County Historical Society for safekeeping. From there, the image of His Lordship - in a flowing wig and fur-lined robe - was to be moved to a conservator's studio for a $5,000 refurbishing. But Lord Camden's subjects have raised only a couple of hundred dollars, leaving him still a lord-in-waiting.

One month after his comments about homosexuality sparked a national controversy, Green Bay Packers star Reggie White is scheduled to speak tonight at a rally in Michigan against a city ordinance that bans discrimination against gays and lesbians, a rally organizer told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel yesterday. The Rev. Levon Yuille, pastor of the Bible Church in Ypsilanti, Mich., said White was invited to speak after organizers heard about his speech in March to Wisconsin state legislators.

Audubon's municipal court clerk is suing the borough for alleged sexual discrimination, charging that she is being paid less than she deserves because she is a woman. Kathleen M. Dollarton, who has worked as the court clerk since 1978, has filed a complaint with the state Superior Court in Camden, contending that the borough pays her "a salary which is substantially less than that paid male employees and department heads. " In the lawsuit, filed last month, Dollarton contends that her work requires the same skill and effort demanded of male department heads and that she should be paid accordingly.

The Camden City Council is set to approve a 27 percent salary increase for the post of mayor of Camden, effective Jan. 1. The increase to $75,000 a year from the current $59,000 a year will benefit Mayor-elect Arnold W. Webster, who takes office Jan. 1. "We think the mayor of the city is underpaid," said Council president James Mathes Jr. following a Council caucus yesterday. "The raise is not relative to the person, but to the position. It is designed to attract the kind of leadership this city needs.

Frank Costello, the second-longest-serving mayor in the county, will resign effective Jan. 1, becoming the latest in a group of mayors who have recently retired with more than 20 years in public office. Costello's tenure, 24 years, is surpassed only by that of his cousin, Herman Costello, mayor of Burlington City for 25 years. Last year, Riverside Mayor Robert Renshaw, Willingboro Mayor Paul Krane and Riverton Mayor Ann Cannon retired after each had served a long stint on council and eventually as mayor.

Burlington City officials are scouring the town for a building that could serve, at least temporarily, as a new city hall. At a closed meeting Thursday, the City Council authorized the city clerk to look for new quarters for municipal offices, Council President William Tillinghast said in an interview this week. The current city hall, built in 1842, would require nearly $1 million in repairs to remain the seat of local government, Tillinghast said. The council must decide whether to move city offices to another building, build a city hall or relocate temporarily while the hall is repaired.

The Burlington City administration and police force are moving for the second time in as many years because the owner of their offices at 437 High St. is raising their rent. After a wrenching budget process that ended with a 113-percent increase in local purpose taxes just to make ends meet, the city doesn't have a cent to spare. The first phase of the move begins tomorrow, when the police department relocates from its first-floor offices on High Street to two buildings next to Commerce Square, a city-owned industrial park alongside the Burlington- Bristol Bridge.

Camden Republican mayoral candidate Keith A. Walker does not own property or pay taxes in the city he wants to run. Walker, a Camden native, returned to the city on March 1, when he moved in with his brother on South 12th Street. His wife and children still live in Delaware. Nevertheless, Walker says he is committed to Camden and would move his family into the city if he wins the November election. His current living arrangement does not violate Camden's municipal-election rules.

It would seem to be a dubious prize - running a city that is $25 million in the red, a city where 40 desk cops had to be put on the street to fight crime, a city whose civic center burned down 15 years ago, a city where blacks and whites inhabit separate enclaves and cast ballots on the basis of race. But Trenton is the prize that Douglas H. Palmer had wanted all his life. On Tuesday he achieved that goal, in a runoff election, becoming the city's first black mayor by a margin that gives the lie to the argument that an individual vote counts for nothing in American politics.

A campaign to let Camden residents decide the fate of a controversial takeover of the city's police department by Camden County hit a roadblock Wednesday when the city filed an injunction seeking to block the referendum. In a complaint filed in Superior Court, Camden attorneys argued that the decision whether to implement the plan is not up to voters and is within the sole authority of city and state officials. The action comes three weeks after police-union officials and community activists submitted a petition with 2,800 signatures calling for an ordinance to block the police takeover, arguing it was a union-busting maneuver that would make the city unsafe by replacing veteran police with younger, inexperienced officers.