Politics & Government

Special Baldwin Council Mtg. Friday Nite to Consider Raise for Tax Collector

The borough's current property tax collector is requesting a cost-of-living adjustment.

Gail Dobson Mikush, the real estate tax collector for Baldwin Borough property owners, has written to the Baldwin Council to request a salary raise for her position.

Mikush is requesting that the borough's tax collector be paid an additional $2,400 per year from 2014 to 2017, when the newly elected collector—which could be Mikush again—serves his or her term in office.

The raise would bring Baldwin's tax collector salary up from $10,000 per year—which it has been for the past eight years—to $12,400.

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Mikush got the $2,400 number by a taking a 2-percent "cost of living increase" from the $10,000 ($200) and multiplying it by 12 (the number of years that the position's current salary has been in effect plus the next four years of the collector's term).

By law, a tax collector can only request a salary change during a year that his or her position is up for re-election, and a decision on that change must be made by the end of Feb. 15 (Friday).

Find out what's happening in Baldwin-Whitehallwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

As such, the Baldwin Council will meet at the borough municipal building along Churchview Avenue at 7 that night in order to vote on Mikush's request. The meeting, which is open to the public, will be held in the council chambers of the building, and should circumstances dictate, it would be moved to the municipal auditorium of the same building.

"This position requires a lot more time and energy than meets the eye," Mikush wrote in her letter to the council. "The (tax collector) office over the last several years has had many changes occur that make my job a full time position not a part-time position. Most days, even when I am not in the peek (sic) collection periods, I am at the office until 5:00 in the evening. Work is taken home on a steady basis and I come in on days that I don't have hours just to keep up with the volume of work."

Click here for more Baldwin Borough news.

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