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University Daily Kansan, February 1, 1984
CAMPUS AND AREA
Page 6
Coffeville asking for state aid
By United Press International
TOPERA — Coffeivey's new city manager yesterday asked the state to help the city stave off its looming bankruptcy, and city commissioners put their heads together to try to understand city's pocketbook from going empty.
If nothing is done, the southeast Kansas city of about 16,000 could be in the red by $700,000 to $900,000 by the end of the year under a worst-case scenario, City Manager William Snell said.
That would represent about one-fourth of the city's $3.7 million general fund 1984 budget, which excludes utility income.
If spending cuts are not made immediately, and city officials are looking at the reductions — the city is under the red within the next two months, he said.
"We're a government." Snell said.
"Obviously we can't shut the doors to it."
BILL ERVIN, chief of the Municipal Accounting Section of the state Administration Department, said that Snell had asked for the state's aid. Within the next few days, state workers from Ervin's office will go to Coffeville to try to confirm budget figures and advise the city on its financial mess.
Snell, who started work in Coffeyville just a few weeks ago, last week declared that the city was in a financial crisis and would go bankrupt unless it cut spending immediately. He said in a telephone interview that he was confident the city commission would not let the city go bankrupt.
THE FIVE-MEMBER commission met during the weekend, on Monday and yesterday and planned another day to try to sort out the dollars dilemma.
Commissioners have made no firm
decisions on what to cut, but Snell estimates they will have to save $1 million from the current 1984 budget, which covers the calendar year.
Mayor Jack Anderson said the commission would decide today whether to shut down one of the city's two fire stations.
About 75 percent of the budget is labor, and because many of the 200 city workers workers are union-covered, contracts are fairly strict, Snail said.
Part of the city's problems were caused by revenue drops. Snell said. In the past few years, three large workers laid off more than 1,200 workers and the city lost municipal franchise fees. Most commercially located where Coffeville is located near the Oklahoma border, has consistently topped the state's jobless figures in recent years. Sales also have dropped in the area.
Increased aid sought for shelters
By ROB KARWATH Staff Reporter
TOPEKA - Shelters for battered women in Kansas are operating on shoestring budgets and the legislature should provide money to keep them open, six witnesses said yesterday during a Senate hearing.
Two representatives from shelters for battered women, two officials from social agencies, and two state legislators met in a joint committee that, despite a growing demand
Barbara Smith of the Lawrence-based Women's Transitional Care Services gave the committee a first-hand account of how demand for shelters is increasing, but money is hard to find.
for shellers, budgets to operate the shelters were not increasing.
"In fiscal year 1982 we served 238 women; in fiscal year 1983 we served 359 women," she said. "That's an increase of 69 percent, but at the same time we had our budget cut from $84,000 to $44,000."
Smith said that almost all of the $40.00 lost was private financing.
if the legislature filled that gap, she said. "more private donations might aid" her effort.
And yesterday, during the senate committee's third day of hearings on domestic violence, representatives of both the Crime Victims Reparation Board and Social and Rehabilitative Services said that if money were used to shelter prisoners shester the funds to finance existing shelters and to be build new ones.
"The financial assistance these shelters are receiving is obviously not enough," said Ken Bahr, chairman of the Crime Victims Reparations Board.
Steve Johnson, a former Jesuit priest, quotes from the Koran while addressing members of the Muslim Student's Association. Johnson spoke to about 25 people last night at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union and stressed the values of human rights through the teachings of Islam and the prophet Mohammed.
Jim McCrossen/KANSAN
Mild weather gives County weed worries
Jerry Kemberling didn't expected to be firing musthist weed in February.
But unusually high temperatures have brought the dreaded battle against noxious weeds to Douglas County earlier than in past years.
Kemberling, the Douglas County director of noxious weeds, said that the Noxious Weed Department would begin to investigate and arrest the weed either today or tomorrow.
Musk thistle is the worst weed in the area to combat, he said. The pesky plant has nodding, musky flower heads and flourishes biannually.
The best way to treat the weed is to spray it with a chemical called Tordon 22-K when the weed has just begun to grow. Kemberling said.
THE CASTLE
TEA ROOM
"It's the only way we can get a fighting chance," he said.
The county will spray private farms for $16 an hour plus a charge for the chemical. The musk thistle flourishes in the soil and is a common main dermant in the ground year round.
The weed branches out and pushes the grass away, leaving pastures bare.
By ROBIN PALMER Staff Reporter
"Cattle can not graze on the land and the farmer loses his pasture. Kemberd."
phone: 843-1151
Although the spreading plant kills pasture grasslands, he said, the real threat is not loss of habitat.
Musk thistle produces at least 10,000 seeds a plant. he said.
Staff Reporter
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