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Show nnw AibM'iiiit? T - SffCsf iWnewnDciDnimtt; Did you participate in any of last week's "Spend It With A Local" activities,? Dp, , i Ml VV JJL Lisa Hartwick No, I did not participate. I knew nothing about it. . r:' :; i ri.r.u'.r.tn '! 1 Thursday, June 25, 1981 Page A2 '( I rvt 'i -i I Boards need to cooperate For the past five months, the relationship between the Park City Board of Education and the City Council has been almost cozy. During that time we have seen the board and the council reach, without much grief, an agreement allowing the Planning Department to use the Marsac School. And plans for a joint fieldhouse venture got as far as the local voters before they were shot down. But now there's a cloud on the horizon. Something known as tax increment financing is threatening to rain on the parade. A little background is in order. Thr.ee years ago, by a vote of the City Council, the Park City Redevelopment Agency was created to help bring new vitality to the downtown area. Actually, it's not the agency itself but the method it uses to generate money which has become a source of friction. The method is known as tax increment financing. Here's how it works: First, the agency establishes the boundaries of the redevelopment district. The boundaries cover the "blighted" area which the agency intends to upgrade: The total assessed valuation within the district boundaries is measured. . In the case of the Park City Redevelopment District, the boundaries were drawn to include much of the older part of town plus Deer Valley. The total valuation of the district was determined to be $5 million in the agency's first official year of existence, 1978. The revenue from the tax base was shared normally by the traditional taxing entities: the county, the schools, the fire district and the city. However, any increase in valuation within the boundaries of the district is credited to the Redevelopment Agency. In other words, the agency is entitled to use any funds generated by anything above that $5 million base figure. Here's where things start to get a little touchy. Since 1978, the valuation within the district has soared from $5 million to $21 million, giving the agency a nice $16 million nest egg. Incidentally, the agency's board of directors is composed of none other than the members of the city council. Although final figures have not been set, the agency's budget for the coming fiscal year is said to be about $700,000. The way the School Board sees it, that's $700,000 that otherwise would have gone to the traditional governmental units. According to Superintendent Richard Goodworth, more than half of that amount is coming out of School District funds. So, in the board's opinion, people in Snyderville and Silver Creek Estates are indirectly subsidizing the Redevelopment Agency. And the board doesn't like it. Actually, it gets more complicated than that. Because of the way the Uniform School Fund works, a drop in the valuation of the Park City School District means that the people in the district will be paying less money for the education of their children. Or, to put it another way, people in the rest of the state will be paying more. If you follow that logic to its conclusion, you'll see that Utahns in places like Kanab and Cedar City are subsidizing the Park City Redevelopment Agency. What irks the board members even more is the fact that Deer Valley, an area where property values would not be as included within the district boundaries. The city's response is that, if it were not for the Redevelopment Agency, property values would not be as high as they are. The agency is like a perpetual-motion machine, according to that perspective. By pumping money back into the "blighted" areas, the agency is creating high property values that otherwise would not exist. The city believes that there is a real need for improvement in the downtown area, and that the Redvelopment Agency is a legitimate means to bring about those improvements. From our perspective, it seems that the City and the School District are on a collision course. By ignoring the needs of the other, each entity could end up hurting itself. There are already rumbles about selling the Marsac School to the highest bidder rather than offering it at a reasonable price to the city. But is such confrontation really necessary? We think not. Park City is not the first urban area in the state to create a redevelopment agency. Others exist in Brigham City, Bountiful, Salt Lake City, Murray, Ogden and Provo. Somehow, they have managed to work out their differences with the various taxing entities, or at least are taking steps in that direction. We urge the School Board and the City Council, a.k.a. the Redvelopment Agency, to work together to resolve their dispute before it gets any worse. -DH QHoWTwchpowerdoes it Wfe to screw up the environment)...? A. one watt... Weekly Special by Jack Anderson Joe Spear Shortage of inspectors means abundance of waste Washington President Reagan promised the American people that his administration will pursue every allegation of wrongdoing thoroughly and objectively. But his budget-cutters don't seem to have gotten the message. :The Office of Management and Budget has put a limit on the number of inspectors general and their staffs. The IGs are supposed to be the taxpayers' first line of defense against waste and corruption. But the budget-cutters have set a limit of 5,500 employees for all of the IG offices in the federal government. Critics of this penny-wise, pound-foolish policy have amassed some grim figures that show just how inadequate this police force is. Here's one example: The Environmental Environ-mental Protection Agency has a $29 billion construction program. It involves in-volves 12,000 federal grants. Yet the EPA has a grand total of only 10 investigators in-vestigators in its IG office. Any third-grader could figure that out: Each EPA investigator is supposed sup-posed to oversee 1,200 government grants. That's bad enough. But EPA officials told Congress that of their 10 investigators, in-vestigators, only three or four are professionally qualified. The rest are still being trained as criminal investigators. in-vestigators. In fact, the agency's investigative strength is spread so thin that there isn't a single investigator for the 12-state 12-state Chicago region. The 13-state Western Region also doesn't have a single EPA investigator; and that region includes California, the nation's most populous state. There are other examples: At the Commerce Department, it has been estimated that if the inspector general's staff tried to do every job it is required by law to do, with their present staff they could do a management audit only once every 36 years. And at the Labor Department, the IG's office pointed with pride to the job it has done weeding out waste and fraud in Comprehensive Employment and Training Act programs. But officials admitted that it is the only program that they have been able to investigate. They don't have the staff to look into the activities of the rest of the Labor Department. Rep. Eliott Levitas, D-Ga., is bitter about the administration's failure to give adequate funding to the inspectors general. He accuses President Reagan of "blowing smoke in the eyes of the American public." Partisan rhetoric aside, it is strange that the parsimonious Republican administration ad-ministration has seen fit to pinch pennies pen-nies on the inspectors general budget. We have been told that for ever dollar spent on IG investigations, the government gover-nment gets back anywhere from $5 to $7. That's the kind of economy in government govern-ment that a Republican ought to appreciate. ap-preciate. Temperamental missiles America's nuclear umbrella may not work in the rain. According to a classified Defense Department report, if it is raining or snowing in the Soviet Union when the United States launches its missiles, they may miss the targets. The secret report reveals that there is no such thing as a missile system that can perform in all weather conditions. States the document: "The missile warhead is eroded by ice-cloud particles and water droplets upon re-entry through regions of adverse weather. This con result in a loss of aerodynamic configuration and hence a decrease in the accuracy of the missile. In the extreme case, physical breakup of the re-entry vehicle can result." What the Pentagon is admitting is that, if there is bad weather over the Soviet Union, the warheads may miss their targets. And bad weather over Russia is not all that rare. The secret Pentagon report also says that high winds and fluctuations in air density and temperature may affect the accuracy of the missiles. What it all boils down to is that America's nuclear force may not be as effective as we have been led to believe it is. Headlines & footnotes The FBI is now wrapping up its probe of the allegations that Paula Parkinson, Washington's sexiest lobbyist, traded her favors for votes. Now we've learned that the G-men are also quietly investigating in-vestigating charges that the attractive tattletale was involved in a Kansas insurance in-surance swindle. Paula denies the allegations. Secret Service agents were X-raying X-raying the mail delivered to the White House recently when a greeting card addressed to the president suddenly began flashing. As it turned out, the card was rigged with batteries so it would light up. But for one terrible moment, the Secret Service agents thought it was a bomb. Earlier this year, a U.S. government govern-ment geologist predicted that Peru would be rocked this summer by violent earthquakes. It's a little awkward for the United States to be forecasting another nation's disasters, so the State Department hunted up scientists who would refute the geologist's prediction. predic-tion. But just in case, State Department employees are quietly being trained in how to deal with emergency evacuations in an earthquake zone. The Peruvians have not been informed about the training program. Copyright, 1981, United Feature Syndicate, Inc. Sheila Purdom I spent the day with a local and it was a great success. f ft A - S-v. Carol Fontane i ; i . I saw "Spend it with a Local" in print somewhere and had no idea what it meant. Mary Lanman I went to see some of the sales at Holiday Village. I thought some of the sales were good and it was a nice touch to be given a carnation. Jim Stephens I was here but I was working. !1 ' ' - i , - Anne Hersey I went swimming at the Racquet Club for free swimming. I haven't any idea as to whether or not it was a success. ' 11 w , .. ," i by Stanley Karnow flmtteirpiretfive lEepoDirit Limit arms sales abroad? . Not the Reagan administration Washington, D.C. Israel's use of American aircraft to bomb an Iraqi nuclear installation last week dramatizes a frightening feature of the booming arms business. For as the United States and other industrail nations strive to sell more weapons abroad, they plainly cannot control their deployment. Krupp, Zaharoff and the other notorious munitions makers of the past look like pikers these days. For the global arms business currently is breaking all records, and it augurs no good. Common sense suggests, therefore, that the world's major weapons exporters expor-ters ought to be seeking ways to curb the trade, perhaps through an international inter-national agreement of the kind that strives to control nuclear proliferation. But instead of taking the lead in such an approach, the Reagan administration ad-ministration is hurtling headlong in the opposite direction. Former Sen. James L. Buckley, undersecretary un-dersecretary of state for security assistance, announced last month that the administration intends to spur conventional con-ventional arms sales overseas, partly by removing restrictions on potential client countries and also by extending low-interest loans to those that cannot afford to buy. Consistent with this initiative, Buckley already has rescinded the so-called so-called "leprosy letter," a Carter administration ad-ministration order to U.S. diplomats abroad not to help American arms salesmen. Henceforth, State Department Depart-ment officials will be expected tp act as promoters. The administration has moved forward, for-ward, moreover, by approving the sale of F-16 jet fighter aircraft to Venezuela, thus reversing a longstanding U.S. policy of denying sophisticated equipment equip-ment to Latin America. Reagan aides are lobbying Newspaper strenuously as well '! to overcome congressional prohibitions' ' 6n: arms sales to Argentina and Chile. They also are trying to crack the ban on supplying advanced weapons to Pakistan, which was excluded as a customer in order to discourage its plans to build a nuclear bomb. It would be naive, of course, to halt arms transfers completely. Many of America's allies depend on U.S. weapons for their security. Besides, providing them with military hardward is some assurance of maintaining their allegiance for broader foreign policy purposes. To cut back on arms sales to Israel or . Egypt, for instance, would be to court disaster. Countries like Thailand and South Korea, existing as they do in tense areas, deserve assistance. But the real issue, it seems to me, is one of selectivity or, in other words, who gets what. In this respect, consider the Reagan administration's controversial con-troversial proposal to sell five Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis certainly merit help. Their defense concerns are legitimate. They are playing an important role in reducing friction in the Middle East. And they have been models of moderation in maintaining oil production produc-tion and prices at an acceptable level. The question, though, is whether these contributions make them candidates for fancier U.S. weapons. Critics of the AWACS sale point out, for one thing, that it would alter the balance of forces in the Middle East by giving the Saudis an edge over Israel. They submit, too, that the Saudis might pass on the technology to less friendly Arab states. The case also can be made that internal inter-nal ferment rather than external threat is the greatest menace to Saudi stability, and that an arms buildup could aggravate that danger A TiiM recenthistoryof iraniswuifflnteiiil A Arms purchases alone were not' responsible for the collapse of the late shah. But the U.S. decision to let him spend billions on weapons, which dates back to the Nixon administration, surely was a factor in the eventual, dislocation of his society. At its worst, however, the arms trade is devastating in truly poor lands, where local leaders determined to enhance their prestige with shows of strength squander resources that would be better spent on economic and social needs. A few years ago, for example, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency estimated that military expenditures expen-ditures by developing nations were rising at twice the rate of their economic growth which means, in simple terms, that health, education and welfare are being sacrificed for the sake of guns. The United States is not entirely to blame. The Soviet Union has pulled ahead of America to become the world's No. 1 weapons peddler, and France is high on the list. Interestingly, French President Francois Mitterrand asserted after his recent election that he would not restrain his nation's arms trade. The Reagan administration sees this competition as a stimulus rather than as a problem. As a result, it aims to sell more and more weapons, as if airplanes and tanks were vacuum cleaners. The challenge, then, is for Congress to use its authority to keep the lid on a business that is lethal, wasteful, and above all,, against long-range U.S. interests. Released by The Register and Tribune Syndicate, 1981 Subscription Rales, $6 a year in Summit County, $12 a year outside Summit County Published by Ink, Inc. USPS 378-730 ; Publisher jan Wilking Editor ; Bettina Moench Advertising Sales Jan Wilking, Bill Dickson Business Manager Rick lanman Graphic Consultant Terry Hogan , Graphics Becky Widenhouse, Liz Heimos Reporters David Hampshire, Rick Brough, Doug McCulloch Photo Editor Phyllis Rubenslein Typesetting Dixie Bishop, Paula Gibson Subscription & Classifieds , . Anne Bennett Distribution , ...Bob Grieve. Entered as second-class matter May 25, 1977. at the post office in Park ( it), l lah 84060. under the Act of March 3, 1897. Published every Thursday at Park City. Utah. Second-class pottage paid ul Park City, llah. , . a (- . , Unsolicited manuscripts and photographs are welcome and will be considered for publication, however, The Newspaper will assume no responsibility for the return of such material. All news, advertising and photos must he received prior to the Tuesday noon deadline at our office, 419 Main Street in ParkCily, h mail P.O. Box 738, Park (it), I I. 84060, or by calling our of fire 80l649-904. Publication material must be received h I uesdav noon for I hursda) publication. ! J |