BERNE — Gerald O’Malley has been serving as Berne’s tax collector for 28 years, and emphasizes his experience as he campaigns for re-election. A Democrat, he is running on the Democratic and Conservative party lines.

O’Malley, 76, has lived the town of Berne for over 60 years, after coming to the town from New York City with his parents. He graduated from Berne-Knox-Westerlo, after which he served in the United States Army for three years; he was stationed in Germany for two years during the Vietnam War.

He volunteers with Helderberg Ambulance and the East Berne Fire Company. O’Malley is also a former president of the New York State Association of Tax Receivers Collectors, and is the chairman of the Berne Democratic Party.

O’Malley retired from KeyBank 15 years ago, where he worked as a senior bank auditor. He said that he has found similarities between his job of 42 years and being tax collector. He said he likes to see people and work for the townspeople.

“I just enjoy doing it … ,” he said. “I keep upgrading the system and working with the people in the tax department,” he added, of the state Department of Tax and Finance.

O’Malley also oversaw Berne’s transition from a paper tax collection system to a computerized one. As someone who had formerly worked with a computerized system in the bank, he said it was a fairly simple task of buying and installing the software.

“We’ve been working with that ever since,” he said.

O’Malley works from home and is available on-call for people who need to see him. He will also work from the town hall on Saturdays in January, he said.

“It’s not a job that you work from nine to three, or something like that, or nine to two … ,” he said. “I’m available most of the time.”

He said that, should someone need to be seen from their home, he would travel there, though he sees that as unlikely to happen as he has never experienced it before.

“If they needed it, yes, I’m here,” he said.

He said he did not think dividing tax collection into separate payments would be feasible, because the school district uses an outside vendor to collect its taxes for two months and passes this along to the town, while the town’s tax collector is available year-round; he added that the school district needs to make its payments by a certain time or it gets re-levied by the town.

O’Malley concluded that he hopes to continue trying to make paying taxes as comfortable as possible for Berne residents.

“I’m just kind of here to help the people,” he said.