THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
WARM
KANSAN
The University of Kansas
Lawrence. Kansas
Thursday October 27,1977
Vol.88, No.43
Staff Photo by RANDY OLSON
Classical chords
Sila Godoy, artist from Asunción, Paraguay, played classical guitar to a full house in Swarthout last night
and received three encores. Godyo, who speaks no English, mixes
original compositions with the works of such artists as Agustin
Vargas.
Profs submit tax increment study
Staff Writer
Bv STEVE PARSONS
Two University of Kansas professors today will submit a study dealing with a controversial downtown improvement plan at the Green Bee Toppea and Atky. Gen.Curt Sandiker.
The case, to be heard in Shawnee County District Court, concerns a tax increment law that allows financing improvements to a school district. The board has declared the law unconstitutional.
Thomas Galloway, associate professor of architecture and urban design, and Darwin Daitec, professor of economics, have consulted on the project with private consultants. Galloway said yesterday.
downtown redevelopment could have as a result of using the disputed financing system. The study favors using the system, but is not concerned with the legality of it.
Galloway said the study was done to show the physical and economic impact that
The disputed system, known as tax increment financing, is a state law allowing a city to issue special revenue bonds to provide money to buy private downtown blighted lots. The bonds are issued by being sold to investors in installment payments, then gradually be reimbursed back with tax money gained from increased taxes after the lots are improved.
THE LAW stipulates that lot improvements must be made by a private developer, but the land can be acquired by the city, using its power eminent domain.
Galloway said according to the results of the study, Topeka would probably benefit from utilization of the system, although nothing definite could be proven.
eminent domain may possibly be used to acquire land for private development and profit and that taxes will be used for a purpose not intended by citizens.
He said the taxes used to buy back the special bonds were supposed to be city, county and school levy taxes and were not approved by voters to purchase downtown
Topeka is in the court case because it was the first city to try to use the tax increment bond.
He said that cities in other states that were studied showed an increased value of downtown areas by using tax increment or similar systems.
Changes in mass transit could raise KU bus fare
Staff Writer
By MELISSA THOMPSON
He said KU on Wheels needed to concentrate on campus orientation and service to the areas with the most students living in it before considering route expansion in the city.
The manager of the campus bus service said he thought that University of Kansas students would suffer financially as a result and recommended they be recommended by an Omaha consulting firm.
Steve McMurray, KU on the manager, said yesterday that he was concerned that recommendations the firm, Henningson, Durham and Richardson, might make in its final report in November would place an undue financial burden on KU students.
"I don't want KU students, frankly, to get screwed by paying the most money if it is
BECAUSE STUDENTS primarily use the bus system to get around KU, McMurry said he thought the Student Senate should have control over a voice in decision increasing bus fares.
THE FIRST PARTS of the study have been delivered to these groups and the last part, which deals with several optional modules in the systems, will be available in late November.
If the study recommends that the present systems—KU on Wheels, Bus 62, school bus delivery and taxis—be combined under one agency, there would have to be careful consideration given to any proposal creating such an agency, he said. Otherwise, McMurray said, the students might bear the brunt of the financial burden.
"We don't need to be paying to provide mass transit for the entire city of Detroit."
The firm's $20,000 study began earlier this year when the city, the school district and KU officials jointly asked that mass transit in Lawrence be evaluated.
Any proposals for change could not possibly be presented before spring because
the firm's recommendations need intensive evaluation. McMurray said.
He said he wanted to get a plan for bus service improvement to the Senate in the spring, and he wanted the plan to be based on logic.
"We know that we want to expand and build the KU on Wheels program," he said, referring to the new model.
If the Senate decides that a city-headed mass transit system would be best, that would be fine. McMurry said. But he wanted it to be a well-considered change.
THEY'RE REASONABLE examples of what can be accomplished," he said.
Other ways in which the system could improve a downtown area, he said, include decreasing police and fire services, which are expensive considering the benefit gained in a blighted area, and expeding the development and financing of the blighted areas of a downtown through the power of eminent domain.
It is difficult, Galloway said, to coordinate the efforts of several private owners to redevelop their property. Use of the tax increment system would bring coordination of development efforts into a single spot, be said, namely the city.
The study examined the downtown change
since 1950 in 12 Kansas cities, Galloway
Nine of the 12 had significant losses in
See TAX INCREMENT page two
Housing officials approve requested rebates for food
By GAIL MIROSTAW
Staff Writer
After more than two months of debate, housing officials have decided to退捐 food rebates to residents of six scholarship halls in the accordance with the scholarship guidelines.
Bob Rozelle, scholarship hall adviser,
said. "We decided to go with the scholarship
program."
Housing bookkeepers had threatened not to refund the amount of money that hall would receive for their work.
However, housing officials and scholarship advisors agreed Tuesday to change their initial recommendations and require the board to accordance with bark bookkeeper estimates.
Six of the eight scholarship halls operate under a system allowing refunds from a
hall's food budget if the residents understend it by more than $5 a resident. Miller and Watkins do not have the same budgeting system. Their residents pay a smaller contract fee than the other halls, but have to buy their own food.
Kent Ervin, All Scholarship Hall Council president, said yesterday that 1976-77 residents of Battenfeld would receive $20-$30 Pearson, $40; Grace Pearson, $50 and
JULIE GORDON, scholarship hall ad-
dress Douthart will receive $4 and
Sellarsnell $10.
Housing department figures earlier had shown that Battferen would not receive a rebate because there was only $2 per student underserved. Pearson residents would have received $10 each, Grace Pearson $17 and Stephenson residents each
Mail problems force Senate adjournment
Bv ALLEN HOLDER
Staff Writer
A bill was to have been presented to the Senate by the Fall Budget committee that recommended Sunday night that the Senate give $2,361.13 in supplementary funds to 30 candidates.
"I THINK THEY (the senators) made the right decision," Leben said. "I can't see how they could have passed 30 allocations without having had time to see them."
Among the recommendations was $540 in supplementary funds to Women's Coalition, a group that was questioned at last week's meeting. The organization with the Lawrence Lehman Alliance.
Members of the Student Senate voted to adjourn last night before acting on any legislation, including a bill that would have allowed such allocations to 30 carcass organizations.
The affiliation was questioned because of current administration guidelines that state that religious and political groups, or groups that deal with personal "activities, habits or proclivities" cannot be funded by the Senate.
The Senate meeting adjourned after Senate members voted to honor a regulation that requires that senators have at least three working days notice of pending legislation. Senate members could have voted on the legislation last night, but with the necessary two-thirds vote to bypass the regulation their actions would not have been binding.
Steve Leben, student body president, said last night that copies of the legislation were not sent to senators on time because of staff issues with the mail and weekend meetings.
THE SENATE has not met since Sept. 28.
A meeting scheduled for Oct. 12 was canceled.
Copies of the Student Senate Record, the official Senate publication that contains the agenda and legislation for Senate meetings, were not mailed until Tuesday morning, Leben said. As Senate members to vote on the budget have been mailed by midnight last Friday.
"I realize that there are problems with the U.S. mail," Charlotte Kimbrough, graduate student senator, said at last night's meeting.
"However, to ask us to vote without even having copies of legislation in our hands . . . is inexcussible."
ABOUT ONE-FOURTH of the members present at last night's meeting had not yet signed.
Psychic reads books, not cards
By BETH GWIN
Originally, it was calculated that each resident of Grace Pearson would receive $50; Sellards, $35; Pearson, $25 and Stephenson, $20. Douthart and Battenfeld had not figured the amounts of their resident's rebates.
aim to be neurobi
Susie Cottrell doesn't claim to be psychic
Cottrell, Meade freshman, is just starting college after being on a road tour that included an appearance on "The Tonight Show."
but with ESP she can read her parents' minds. Eight of 10 of her
parents come true when she calls what cards a person is holding and
doesn't need to ask.
Although she said she missed being in the spotlight, she knew that coming to school—something she decided to do four days before graduation.
"I said I'm not getting anywhere, I love being around people. I love entertaining people, but I'm not reaching my full potential."
would have had to pay $19. Doutheast and
northwest would have received $12 and $respectively.
would have received $14 and $respectively.
She compared the entertainment world to a big iron door
"IT'S HARD TO get in. Something like "The Tonight Show' is getting your foot in the door," she said. "And right there you have the choice of saying 'no' and backing out of the door. The door closes on you and you never get back in, but you can say 'yes,' walk inside the door and it closes behind you and it's hard getting back out."
Figure differences between initial housing and scholarship hall estimates created tensions among scholarship hall residents, because they were being cheated out of their money.
COTTRELL IS 1MORING in political science and considering law school or a possible medical career.
"If it was back in the 1940s, I probably wouldn't be in school because in entertainment you could stay in it till you were 90 years old—till the day you die," she said. "Nowadays, Hollywood is so you last only about four years."
She said she wanted to use her talent to help other people.
Cottrell said a college degree offered security.
In May, Cottrell completed seven months at the Biomedical Synergistics Institute in Wichita, where doctors ran tests to learn
They discovered in one test with withdrawn children that she could communicate with them, Cottrell said.
In the test the letters of the alphabet were set before the child. Cottrell thought of a specific letter and the child would pick that
She then thought of letters in order to form a word. Then the object the word represented—for example, water, dog, candy—was given to the child. The experience was repeated until the child began to associate the group of letters with the meaning.
Ervin said the difference in the scholarship and housing figures was between the two groups.
"SOMEHOW TM transmitting something to them that hasn't been transmitted before." she said.
Her family always has encouraged her to "do right with it". When she was three years old, her mother noticed that she could
Yet Cottrell didn't realize until she was 13 that she had ESP.
knew what calls they were home. So she
still thinks that everyone has some ESP.
She said, "I always have to it and they realize it and sometimes put it off as coincidence," she said. "I think I have it for a reason and I think it was an accident."
"I had no idea that no one else knew what cards I was holding like I knew what cards they were holding," she said.
SHE HAS TOURED the country displaying her talent the last two years.
After she beat Amariilim Slim, a professional poker player, at cards, he suggested she go to Las Vegas and meet some people he knew.
See PSYCHIC page 10
Leben said the legislation was not maild until Tuesday for several reasons.
He said he was out-of-town last week and was not able to help Anne Stucker, aSenate executive secretary, prepare the committee meeting also slowed down the process, he said.
The copies were taken to the post office shortly before its noon closing Saturday, he said, but a mistake in the amount of postage prevented the record's mailing that day.
The Post Office was closed Monday because of the traditional Veterans' Day holiday, so neither the record nor the budget bill could be mailled until Tuesday morning.
THE FALL BUDGET Committee's recommendations were to be mailed separately. Leben said, because the committee did not finish deliberations until Sunday night. They could not have been included in the record, he said.
The Senate did approve a resolution concerning an alumni appreciation day Nov. 19 in conjunction with Higher Education Week, which is Nov. 14 through
ERVIN EXPLAINED the problems involved in the rebate decision.
"The residence directors who kept the records for their scholarship halls took a in-house method, knowing the individuals in the house. The housing bookkeepers looked at it more as a macromethod. I don't think that (housing bookkeeper's way) is as fair, and I think we've come to the right way to do it." Ervin
"There isn't any argument about how much was spent for food. The problem is on the fact that there are more people."
The scholarship hall bookkeepers, Ervin said, figure the number of people in the hall and multiply that by $372, the amount each resident pays toward food. Then that figure is subtracted from the total expenditure for food.
Ervin said the added problem that housing bookkeepers face is that the accounts are based on the fiscal year, July 1 through June 30. Housing bookkeepers do not include payments made after the fiscal year.
As an example, Ervin used the Pearson hall figures. Pearson has 50 residents. Multiplied by $372, the total is $181.600. The amount spent for food was $164.83. That amount left to spend on housing among the 50 residents, about $42 each, according to Pearson resident directors.
HOWEVER, HOUSING officials only showed $16,953 collected from Pearson residents for food income. Subtracted from the $16,493 spent for food, this would result
See REBATES page eight
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN Capsules From the Associated Press, United Press International
Social Security proposal defeated
Carter to favor arms embargo
WASHINGTON—The House yesterday rejected a proposal to require six million federal, state government workers and employees of non-profit organizations in the Social Security Administration.
The vote was the first action on a bill to finance Social Security into the next century, partly through increases in both employer and employee payroll taxes. By rejecting the proposal, tax increases scheduled to begin in 1981 will increase the number of workers cost by not bringing the additional workers into the system. See story page two.
WASHINGTON—President Carter has indicated he would support an embargo on arms sales to South Africa by the U. Security Council in protest of
U. S. Ambassador Andrew Young consulted in New York yesterday with French, British, West German and Canadian diplomats in an effort to form a joint strategy within the Security Council for dealing with South Africa. See story page two.
Decriminalization gets partial OK
WASHINGTON - The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to decriminalize possession of up to one ounce of marijuana in an effort to find a more realistic alternative to drug treatment.
The vote was tentative because some committee members were absent and will be polled later on the question. One committee member, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Uthai, was so angry about the vote that he threatened to seek stifter penalties for possession of even small amounts of marijuana.
Negotiators agree on solar loans
WASHINGTON- House and Senate negotiators have agreed on part of the conservation segment of the new energy bill, deciding to offer 100 million in subsidies for renewable energy.
Negotiators had a "vanguard" ride-sharing program that President Carter had proposed to save fuel. Negotiators also predicted they would have the first carbon tax on energy in 2015.
Study begins on state line dispute
ST. JOSEPH, Mo — A committee of legislators from Missouri and Kansas began on-site study at the St. Louis River near here to investigate whether the handling of Missouri ticks could be improved.
The boundary question arose 25 years ago when the Missouri changed course. Any agreement reached by the two states will ultimately have to gain traction.
Locally...
Although Lawrence fire inspectors have set occupancy limits for all bars opened during the past three years, older bars do not have limits. Fire prevention officer Larry Stemmerman last week there were no immediate plans to put occupancy limits on the older bars, although some are already in place and overcrowding in any bar. Aside from occupancy rules, all bars must meet the same fire safety standards in order to obtain a license. See story page five.