Tuesday, December 12, 1978
13
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By JOHN LOGAN Staff Reporter
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The 16,000 Lawrence area customers of the Kansas Public Service Gas Company will face a $3 percent increase in their gas prices due to Wright's Lawrence City Commission meeting.
The new gas rates will mean an average monthly rate increase of 50 cents for all cars.
The new rates are being called for in an arbitration report that will be presented to the Commission by Drees, Dunn and a Kansas City, Kan., accounting firm.
The Commission has no choice but to approve the rate boost because of the city's charter with the gas company, Lawrence's privately owned utility.
Under the franchise agreement, when the city and the utility disagree on a rate increase, the disagreement must be submitted to a third party for arbitration. Both sides are required to accept the arbitrator's decision.
THE PUBLIC Service Company had requested a 4.8 percent increase in September, but the Commission voted to have the request arbitrated.
"The city felt that because of the tremendous complexity of recent gas regulation changes, experts should look at the request to get a fair rate of return." Buford Watson, city manager, said yesterday.
Ball Saleh, vice president and general manager of the utility, said that while the lower increase would not hurt his firm, he was not pleased with the decision.
"It's something we can live with."
Salome said. "But I can't say that we're
going to do it."
Salome said he hoped to be able to put the new rates into effect as early as next year, which will also increase one of the utility's largest customers, the University of Kansas.
THE UNIVERSITY could pay as much as $12,000 more for gas next year, according to Salome. University gas purchases run between $250,000 and $400,000 yearly, he said. The amount of gas the University buys varies from year to year because the school is under an interruptible contract.
Under the contract, the University must use its own reserve fuel oil for its boilers for several days a year when peak demand occurs. The university will take its priority customers, as residences.
Although the University operates only a few days a year on fuel oil, Facilities Operations has 230,000 gallons of the fuel used in most month's supply, according to FO officials.
In other business, the Commission will consider a proposed ordinance that would require Lawrence homeowners to fix up the exteriors of their homes.
"THE ORDINANCE would require
the paint or fix it on their bases when we
get home," she said.
Commissioner Jack Rose said the ordinance was a response to the decaying of the Oread neighborhood, immediately east of campus.
"The ordinance would be enforced uniformly over the city," Rose said, "although the greatest problem is in the Oread neighborhood."
Brent McFall, assistant to the city manager, said the proposed ordinance
would be enforced by the city inspection department.
"They would investigate complaints and give the owner a notice with a certain amount of time to clean it up," he said. "If that doesn't work, the work can go in and charge the owner. Or the owner can request a hearing before the Commission."
Currently, the only direct route to the center of the city from the area is north of Kasol Drive. But commissioners said last week that they were worried that a short, steep hill on Kasol north of 32rd Street would be impassable during snow.
THE COMMISSION will also discuss proposals to prevent residents of south-west Lawrence from being trapped in their neighborhoods by a snowstorm.
The Commission has proposed that Kasold Drive south of 27th Street temporarily be graveded to 31st Street to provide an alternate route out of the area.
The graveling, which would cost $10,000,
would be removed in the spring to allow
construction on that section of Kasold to
continue.
KU students plan KC bus safety
Bv LYNN WILLIAMS
Staff Reporter
Companies that reward their employees for safety on the job may benefit in reduced costs.
That is the finding of two students at the University of Kansas and a KU alumnus who are helping the Kansas City Transit system to train its employees to drive more safely.
Bob Haynes, Lawrence graduate student, Pat McGregor, Lawrence graduate student, and Randy Price, KU alumnus, are being funded for one year by a $39,000 grant from the Urban Mass Transportation Administrator to the federal Department of Transportation.
The grant is to finance the development of
the that the Kansas City bus system can
open.
Part of the safety program that Haynes, director of the program, and his co-workers have devised is a reward system for drivers who do not have accidents.
They divided 100 randomly selected drivers for the Metro in four teams. The drivers received tickets, accidents receive their choice as rewards, such as tickets to professional basketball games, movie tickets, free gas, free oil certificates and meal tickets at restaurants.
The teams are evaluated every two weeks for the number of accidents they've had.
"WE'RE GOING to change the gifts about every two weeks," Pine said.
Pine said rewarding the drivers on a frequent basis was probably more productive than not.
"Preliminary indications are that the incentive program should reduce the amount of accidents by about 10 to 25 percent," Haynes said.
Before the study began last June, the Metro was chalking up from 1,000 to 1,200 accidents a year and spending a half-million dollars a year on insurance claims filed by bus passengers and people involved in accidents with buses. Haynes said.
"They basically have two types of accidents," he said.
The first type is accidents with other
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vehicles and the second type is injuries to passengers.
"We function as 'part of their staff,' Haynes said. "All the instructors are really interested in our work."
Haynes and Pine have written a new training manual for the drivers, help touch
THE INCENTIVE PROGRAM helps bus
better and
reward them often after deriving
Haynes, Pine and McGregor also are helping computerize the accident records of the Metro, planning passenger-bus driver role plays to educate drivers in passenger relations, planning brochures and signs to educate passengers in bus safety. The installing of buzzer to warn passengers when a bus is stopping on materials, such as maps and route descriptions, for substitute drivers taking on new routes, is also planned.
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Senate will consider SBA amendment veto
The Student Senate will meet in a special session tonight to consider student body president Mike Harper's veto of an amendment the Senate passed two weeks ago.
But Harper, saying the amendment
imited the individual rights of SBA
members to the terms of the contract.
The amendment was attached to the Senate revenue code. It stipulated that the Student Bar Association would lose Senate funding if any member representing the SBA attempted to persuade the governor to move the Jimmy Green statue.
BARRY SHALISKY, Lawrence law student and the senator who introduced the
According to Senate rules, once the student body press voices an official "disapproval" of a Senate action, the Senate must act on it. Gregg Robinson, student vice president, said it would take a two-thirds majority to override the disapproval.
admittance, said last week that he would vote to unhold Harper's veto.
But Shalikny said that he was still very opposed to moving the statue and that he was considering proposing an amendment at the next regular Senate meeting in August, she says. BSA from the list of groups that receive yearly block allocations from the Senate.
Harped said he thought the Senate would uphold his veto at the meeting, which will be at 6:30 p.m. in the Big Eight Room of the Kansas Union.
"I'm still adamantly opposed to moving the statue," Shalinsky said, "but I don't see why that provision needs to be in the revenue code. What I did was to use a law that would put a past precedent in the Senate — I didn't expect it. I just wanted to publicize the issue."
'I do intend to investigate the SBA's use of money. I'm not convinced they deserve a job.'
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