Forer challenges report on sanitation department
By STANSTENERSEN
Norman Forer, associate professor of social welfare, last night gave to the City Commission a 60-page report answering statements made about the Sanitation Department and suggesting ways in which the department's performance could be improved.
Among Forer's recommendations were the following:
Support for an increase of 25 per cent in city garbage collection rates. The increase has been requested by City Manager Buford Watson.
-Rejection of a proposal to turn over the cell trash collection to private contractor.
- Modification of the "incentive system," under which employees are encouraged to complete their routes as quickly as possible. Modifications should attempt to provide
both good service for residents and safe working conditions for the employees.
- Strengthening of supervision within the department and establishment of clear standards of what constitutes good performance by trash collection crews.
- Support for the city manager's request of cost of living increase for sanitary workers.
contractor. The Commission will consider the matter in August.
The controversy surrounding the Sanitation Department is confusing to many people. They may give up trying to make sense of such apparent inconsistencies as payment of overtime to employees who only work part of their regular 40-hour week.
The confusion may be overcome if one understands the sanitation workers' schedules. Crews that pick up trash work 10-hour days. They are given collections routes that must be completed, and they are told that if they finish the route early, they may leave and still collect ten hours' pay. They call the "incentive system."
The number of workers and trucks isn't enough to do six days of trash collection in a 40-hour work week, however. At present, only about one-third of homes from homes and once a day from businesses
Therefore, additional routes are established and employees volunteer to work an extra day or two on the routes. Because they have already worked four 10-hour shifts, they are paid overtime for the additional routes.
and other facilities that can't store all the trash they produce.
The McKinney Report criticized these practices and suggested that the city could save money if it found a way to change the collection system. The Forer Report in turn criticized a number of the statements in the McKinney Report as misleading. The disagreements can be summarized as follows:
WAGES. The McKinney Report noted that the average employee in the Sanitation Department earned $11,847. The Forer Report said the figure was incorrect and misleading. It said the gross average income was actually $8,048 for all workers and considerably less for many.
Laborers, who make up 60 per cent of the work force, average $7,428 with overtime, $6,024 without. Drivers, who make up 28 per cent of the work force, average $7,373 without. Supervisors and other support personnel average $13,312.
"The typical" sanitation worker, more accurately, is a candidate for the federal food stamp program, even given his sub-committee of overtime work," the Forer report said.
It also said that a sanitation worker earning the department's startakehome pay of $234 a month would do at least as well or better if he were a welfare client. TIME ON THE JOB. The McKinney Report said employees were completing their routes in about half the assigned time. The Forer Report said the actual figure was
closer to two-thirds of a normal work week,
or 28.6 hours.
The McKinney Report, it said, didn't take into account that the crews don't take coffee breaks allowed by the city, often begin the day with a cup of coffee and wash trucks after they have clocked out. OVERTIME. The McKinney Report suggested that ways be found to cut overtime payments because the regular work was being performed in so short a time.
The Forer Report said in reply that under the present system, overtime couldn't be given to employees homes and once-a-day pickup for businesses were continued. The city would have to decide whether the cost of men and women preferred to paying overtime, it said.
THE INCENTIVE SYSTEM. The See FORER page A.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
The University of Kansas—Lawrence, Kansas
No.170
Wednesday, July 30, 1975
Kansas also canine capital
cable installation and minit fill-in and paving work remain before the section of Nalmith between Crescent Dr. and 18th St.
Finishina the job
See page 2
Southwestern Bell contractors search for cable outlets near the nearly completed tunnel under Ninshi Drive. New utility
240 student stadium seats go to Athletic Corporation
By JACK McNEELY
This fall the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation (KUAC) will get 240 more usable seats in the student section of Memorial Stadium than it had last fall.
The Athletic Seating Board, which regulates seating in the student section, reached a compromise yesterday on a rule that early this summer for 824 more inclusive seats.
At the start of the board meeting Doug Messer, assistant athletic director and a member of the board, reduced the KUAC request from 524 more usable seats to 336.
Messer said yesterday he had reduced the request, which would have taken about a third of the seats used by seniors on the 50-yard line, because discussions with student members of the board had convinced him the original request wasn't a good option.
LAST YEAR KUAC used 624 seats in the first 15 rows of the student section between the 20- and 56-yard lines. Most of the seats were in the first 12 rows.
Opposition fails to squelch Loop
The Haskell Loop will be built.
By LYNN PEARSON
Kansan Staff Reporter
After an extremely emotional public hearing that lasted more than three hours, the Lawrence City Commission voted四 to one last night to continue land acquisition on Pennsylvania Street and in other areas of east Lawrence to build the Haskell Loop.
The commission, at the insistence of Commissioner Donald Binns, added a stipulation to the Haskell plan. The stipulation was that no truck traffic be
Safety controls for laser use issued by FDA
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Food and Drug Administration issued yesterday the first federal safety standards protecting workers and workers from laser radiation injuries.
The FDA said a 1973 study of laser use found "serious deficiencies in safety practices and in products" in schools and businesses.
Lasers concentrate and amplify light frequencies. Their use is increasing in schools, grocery stores, hospitals and industry.
Small units used in schools and grocery check-out lines are generally not considered dangerous, the FDA said, but industrial beams have a hole through heavy steel beams in seconds.
Excessive laser radiation can cause severe eye and skin burns.
About 30,000 lasers are used in college and school classrooms for science demon-
ing experiments.
The standard establishes four classes of lasers, depending upon their power, which ranges from a microscopic beam to one several inches in diameter.
The standards go into effect July 31, 1978. After that date, all lasers manufacturers must bear warning labels stating their compliance with the FDA performance standards.
The more powerful lasers must have fail-safe safety interlocks, visible or audible signals when the unit is one, and key-operated switches. Lasers used for delicate applications such as eye surgery must have a way to measure the radiation that they emit.
allowed on Haskell Avenue until the Loop was completed.
The ultimate plan is to arc the Haskell Loop from 11th Street to 23rd Street to provide easier access from 23rd Street to points north.
The decision wasn't an easy one to make. Much argument was presented on both sides of the issue, and much of it was emotionally charged.
Marl Beke, the only commissioner who voted against the Loop, said that only one person who lived in east Lawrence made a favorable statement about the loop at the meeting. That person was Ed Downs, vice president of Lawrence Improvement Association.
Downs said the Loop would further progress in east Lawrence. He said people would adjust to the noise and the traffic that would result from traffic on the Loop.
Sherry Ward, 946 Pennsylvania St., said that her family had been paying for their house for 24 years and that her father-in-law should have to readjust to a new neighborhood.
If the city has trouble finding housing for 27 families who will have to be relocated, he said, it can easily move the entire house to another location.
A. R. Bailey, 1120 Oregon St., asked the commissioners whether they had considered that the persons who are being taken away from them are the taxes or unkempt on newer, property.
"A! 57, it's not easy to pick up and start all over, especially when you don't want to."
Though the East Lawrence Improvement Association voted to endorse the loop last fall, she said, the association didn't really reflect the views of the entire neighborhood.
"These poor people can't stand too much of this," he said. "They are on fixed incomes. Their homes over here are modest, but it's the best they can afford."
Wilms said the Haskell Loop would attack traffic to the neighborhood rather than use it for a residential area.
"This petition with 244 names on it does reflect opposition to the Loop in the neighborhood."
Barbara Willits, 1265 Delaware St. presented the commission with a petition that opposed the Loop, which was signed by 240 persons in east Lawrence.
When Commissioner Fred Pence questioned the credibility of the petition, he said that Mr. Trump had no evidence.
as smart as anybody else, they know whether to out their name on a petition."
Pence asked whether the petitioners had pressured east Lawrence residents into buying the property.
Al Hack, president of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, gave the commissioners copies of a prepared statement endorsing the Loop.
Hack said the Loop is an important part of the arterial street system in Lawrence. At present, there is no street connecting north and south in Lawrence that runs north and south in east Lawrence.
Johanna Kollmorgen, representing the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission, supported Hack's statement. The report also outlined outlet for commercial and industrial traffic.
Tom Patchen, chairman of the East Lawrence Improvement Association housing rehabilitation committee, said the association and east Lawrence residents had to look to those in authority for expertise in planning.
"We have no knowledge and no way of doing this kind of planning," he said. "We took the advice of Oblinger-Smith on the Haskell Loop."
Mark Kaplan, 1032 New York St., said the Loop was a way of getting rid of traffic in west Lawrence and funneling it into East Lawrence.
Oblinger-Smith, Inc., was the city's planning consultant for the Loop.
Mibee said that the community development funds were supposed to help east Lawrence, and that the people of east Lawrence should be considered.
"My house is going to be a block from Haskell Loop and, believe me, I'd rather see that baseball diamond than that street," he said.
"All of the commissioners have spent a lot of time at neighborhood association meetings," he said. "And I do think that we are able to honest reflection of community feelings."
"I Lawrence isn't that big a city," he said,
"I still believe that the city could spend that
money."
The East Lawrence Recreation Center will lose its baseball diamond. Haskell Loop will run directly over the diamond area at 11th and Delaware streets.
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP)—The United States and 15 other nations of the Organization of American States voted last night to lift mandatory economic and political sanctions they had imposed 11 years ago against Communist Cuba.
Mayor Barkley Clark said the commission had had input from the neigh-
"The road is a natural planning tool," Clark said. "It does make sense to buffer the residential from the industrial areas. It lets you get traffic off the residential streets."
OAS lifts Cuban embargo
U. S. approval of the resolution doesn't necessarily mean that Washington is ready to remove its unilateral embargo of Castro's regime. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has said the embargo is being studied.
Clark said the commission had listened to residents of east Lawrence and had heard stories of people who died in the fire.
Some persons were happy, and others cried.
Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay opposed
the accession, and Brazil and Nicaragua
obstained.
The commission voted to build Haskell Loop.
The resolution passed 16 to 3. There were two abstentions. The resolution allows individual OAS members to resume relations with Fidel Castro's government.
The move required a two-thirds majority
"Today is a day of liberation for the Americas," he said.
of the 21 voting members but received two votes more than was necessary. Supporters had gained 15 pledges of yes votes before the special meeting convened and then Guatemala announced it also would approve.
The sanctions were decreed in the Rio de Janeiro mutual defense treaty when some OAS countries accused Castro of exporting revolution.
Mexico refused to abide by the sanctions and in the past few years eight other OAS members reversed their stands and refused to continue trade relations with Castro's government.
Mexican Foreign Minister Emilio Rabaza, who was a leader of the campaign to drop the sanctions, was jubilant after the vote.
But seats in the first seven rows of the stadium are bad seats. The view is obstructed and the seats aren't high enough to give spectators a good view of the field.
So of the 624 seats KUAC had last year,
only 28 were usable.
KUAC uses seats in the student section for high school recruits and for the families and friends of students.
Messer said high school recruits hadn't been getting good seats in the stadium. That has been hurting the recruiting program, he said.
"We're not trying to ramrod anything," he said. "We just have a problem. We want to lay out our problem and let the board look at it."
The proposal drew sharp criticism from StudEx, which passed a petition to the University administration that strongly condemned KUAC.
TEDDE TASHEFF, chairman of the board, said, "I want to see the students get as many seats as they can, and yet I understand the official corporation's problem."
KUAC's first proposal, submitted early this summer, was to take about a third of the seats used by seniors on the 65-year line. The 182 seats (812 usable seats instead of the 282 it had).
DAVE SHAPIRO, member of the seating board and an author of the petition, said at yesterday's meeting that the petition had been based on a lack of information and that it wouldn't have been written if he had known more about KUAC.
For example, Shapiro said, one item in the petition charged that KUAC was trying to keep the United States from partnering with the Kansas Union so that KUAC would get more profit at the expense of the Union,
That charge shouldn't have been made, Shanro said.
Before last year, the Union took a percentage of the gross revenue from concessions sales at athletic events, Shapiro said.
LAST YEAR THE contract was renegotiated so that the Union took 30 per
cent of the net profit, he said. Partly as a result of the renegotiation, the Union took more money from athletic concessions last year than it ever had before, he said.
The Union and KUAC recently finished negotiating this year's athletic concessions contract. The Union will again take 30 per cent of the net profit.
Shapiro said StudEx should have taken its opposition to the KUAC seating proposal directly to Athletic Director Clyde Walker instead of passing a petition to the University administration that condemned KUAC.
AT THE SEATING board meeting Shapiro proposed the compromise that was adopted. It gives KUAC good seats for high school, while it does not sit among the areas in which are among the best in the stadium.
The compromise, as amended and passed unanimously by the board, gives KUCA 624 seats between the 20-yard lines, mostly in rows seven to 12.
Messer asked for 624 good seats—seats higher than row seven and between the 10
"FTS NOTHING I can't live with," she said. "I want to compromise patient." I wish I had more knowledge of the treatment.
He got 528 good seats and 96 bad ones. But he didn't know in front of the KU Band, which was calling him to pick up.
Messer said that he might distribute earplugs to the people who had to sit in front of her.
In other business the board agreed to let KUAC continue selling spouse tickets to children of KU students. A spouse ticket costs $14. A student ticket costs $10.
The board will meet Aug. 19 to examine the priorities of seating for freshmen, juniors, seniors, graduate students, law students and KU Med Center students.
THE BOARD also will decide what to do with 272 seats that have become available for the next season.
The seats formerly were given to athletes in sports other than football. A recent NCAA ruling prohibits schools from giving free tickets to athletes who aren't on the team for that sport.
Nigerian government overthrown in coup
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP)—Gen Yakubu Gowon, who ruled oil-rich Nigeria for nine years and crushed the Blairan revolt, was shot by a bloodless coup, Radio Nigeria reported.
It was reported this morning that the new leader of Nigeria is Brig. Gen. Muritala Rufal Mohammed, who helped bring Gowon to power.
Gowon was in Kampala, Uganda, attending a summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity when fellow army officers ousted him as leader of black Africa's wealthiest and mostly populous nation.
The coup was announced yesterday in a radio broadcast by Col. Joseph Garba, commander of the elite brigade, which Garba is considered a friend of Gowon.
Garba said there had been no bloodshed, and that a dusk-to-dawn curfew had been ordered and that violators could be shot. The coup was accomplished so quickly and quietly that many Nigerians left their homes for work without being aware of it.
In Kampala, Gowan, a 40-year-old,
moderate with broad support in Africa,
addressed an OAU session Monday night
when he met with the head when an
aide advised him of the coup.
"I have a clear conscience. There is nothing to worry about," the general said.
He then left for his hotel room. He reportedly looked calm.
Diplomats said the coup apparently was organized by a group of colonels and majors following months of military dissension and student unrest in Nigeria.
In his broadcast, Garba ordered workers at public utilities, hospitals, ports and communications to go to their jobs and be summarily dealt with. A public order will be summarily dealt with.
Troops closed the Lagos airport, sealed off the borders and shut down most means of communication. There were no reports of violence.
Gowan came to power in an army coup in July 1966 and became Nigeria's strongest ruler since the country gained its independence from Britain in 1960.
Pressure was building for a return to citizen rule and there were continual trials.
Diplomatic sources said Gowon was trying to assess the situation in Nigeria and had not ruled out the possibility of attempting to return to power. Other sources reported that military commanders at home to determine whether he retained any support.
Diplomats also said Gowon had suspected that members of his military government were plotting to incarceration and had taken action in the movement of his family to London before leaving Nigeria.