City Clerk

Mary Moran has accumulated more than 130 sick days at her job as city clerk, and now she can reap some benefit from the stockpile without getting sick. Under a resolution passed Monday by the City Council, Moran and nine other nonunion city employees who accumulate 50 sick days can sell 15 of them back to the city each year. The employees will receive half a day's pay for each day they sell back. The resolution applies, among others, to the city clerk, the police chief, the deputy fire chief and some of the public library directors.

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.

The Camden City Council last night revived a plan to have some of its members elected from wards, only days after city Democratic leaders failed in a petition drive to get such a measure on the November ballot. The plan was reviewed at a council caucus meeting yesterday and will be introduced for first reading at the council meeting tomorrow. The measure would keep council at the same size but would have three of its seven members run at-large and four elected from wards. Now, all council members run at-large.

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.

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.

The records room clerk at the city Detention Center was hooked on a $500-a- day drug habit when an accused killer offered her $7,000 to help him escape, the clerk's lawyer said. Sherrilyn "Tracey" Morton, stepdaughter of Phillip Dukes, deputy superintendent of prisons, accepted the offer in March 1990, then used a prison computer to reduce Jimmy Ruiz's bail from $350,000 to $10,000. Ruiz was released, but showed up in court for his trial. Because he was on bail, he was allowed to come and go as the case proceeded in November.

It was unusual work for several white-collar employees of the city Records Department. Yanking off their jackets and loosening their ties, they slipped on rubber gloves and spent two days this week sifting through more than 300,000 pounds of trash at a city dump. The department accidentally had trashed a box filled with 741 unrecorded deeds and mortgages. "It was really an honest mistake," said Mark Gaige, spokesman for the city managing director's office. The blunder occurred when a Records employee placed the box on top of an office trash bin Tuesday to bring it to eye level, Gaige explained.

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.

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.

An era ended yesterday in City Hall. After 23 years as city clerk, Charles H. Sawyer conducted his last roll call and recited his last ordinance. The 74-year-old Northeast resident, a protege of former Mayor James H.J. Tate and a survivor of four city administrations, retired to the accolades of both Democrats and Republicans. "It's a tremendous loss for us," said Republican Councilman W. Thacher Longstreth. "He represents the best of the so-called bureaucracy - hard- working, totally honest and highly professional.