Kent’s Joyce Mitchell: ‘Hire Me to Fire Me’

In an already unique election season in Putnam County, Joyce Mitchell has to have the most catching campaign slogan around: “Hire Me to Fire Me.”

Mitchell has worked with global non-government organizations. She has lived in Afghanistan and Iran, and she has worked at the UN as the Director and Treasurer of the World Citizens Foundation. After all that globetrotting, trying to eliminate poverty and hunger in the third world, she wants to remove something from Kent, the position of Receiver of Taxes. Her plan? To get elected Receiver of Taxes.

Speaking of the typical manual tax-collection process, in which homeowners mail or bring in their tax payments to a central location, Mitchell said, “It was very valid in the 20th century, but in the 21st century, it can be replaced with electronic convenience.”

“There is no facility for people to pay taxes online,” Mitchell explained. “Young people pay many of their bills online already. Much of the property taxes are already collected by mortgage companies; they would certainly love to have an electronic option.”

“There are some people, I’d say 15 percent, who like to come in and sit with the receiver of taxes and write checks. Some people even pay in cash,” she added. “So the problem is finding a way to service those people without these positions and longtime pensions.” Mitchell believes that a town clerk could be given a modest raise to handle receiving those taxes that would not be facilitated by online transactions.

Mitchell said that she has naturally found resistance to the idea. In Kent, the salary for the Receiver of Taxes is $34,000 plus benefits. Potentially a receiver of taxes can receive a retirement pension, as well.

If elected, Mitchell plans to work with the county to consolidate taxcollecting services. She also plans to work out a favorable deal with a bank or other electronic service to collect taxes. Once she makes the proper arrangement, she would then focus her energies on promoting a referendum that would abolish her position.

“I don’t want to keep the job,” Mitchell said. “That’s the only difference between me and the other candidate. There is no difference in character, I think.”

Mitchell is running against incumbent Jean Johnson, who is running on the Republican and Conservative lines. Mitchell describes herself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. She left the Republican party some years ago, and is running on the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families lines.

Mitchell’s campaign has also shown an admirable fiscal restraint of its own. Along with some friends, she has built four signs out of spare timber from a renovation. “I’m keeping it under $1, 000,” Mitchell said. “We may have some yard signs before the election.” She also has a website: www.hiremetofireme.com.

She believes that it may take her a full term to make the arrangements for electronic collection and push a referendum to eliminate the Receiver of Taxes position. “But I will dedicate my time to it,” Mitchell said. “It isn’t a full-time position, but I will work on it full time.” Mitchell plans to continue teaching an exercise class for seniors that she has been leading at the Putnam County Office of the Aging. “That is the one thing I won’t give up,” she said.

Mitchell believes her campaign can appeal to people across the board, and she hopes it will become a statewide movement that would streamline government and save taxpayers money. “I was shocked at the vacuum of fiscal planning. There are so many levels of government in New York, and there is such a sense of entitlement among politicians,” Mitchell said. “It just has to change.”

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