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Show Utah State Press Box 1327 P. Salt Lake City, Asn. Ut 84110 Thursday, April 15, 1976 Price, Utah 85th Year Number 16 24 Pages Price 15c Honoring America's Bicentennial The Price Downtown Retail Merchants Association, a sub- committee of the Carbon Chamber of Commerce, formally requested Monday that the city raze the old Central School building to make way for additional parking on the school grounds and supported their request with a petition signed by 68 business owners and employees from the downtown area. Meeting with the Price City council Monday evening, Don Hoffman, spokesman for the group, presented the request for the destruction of the school building, which was in service until last December when the Price Elementary School was finished. Hoffman said the building, located in the midst of a large block of downtown parking which the retail merchants hope to develop, is unsightly and was confusing to shoppers who are unaware that the school grounds are available for parking. However, Hoffmans presentation did not meet with immediate approval as the mayor and some council members said they felt the building was still usable and that parking which is already available on the site is not being fully utilized. Councilman Jim Jensen, who is the councilman in charge of the building department and was principle when the building was in use as a school, said a study of the possible uses of the site had revealed that space for approximately 140 parking spots existed at the Central school with an additional 119 available on the Harding School grounds. He added that the great majority of these spaces went unused and said estimates made recently placed cost for destruction of the building at Celebrating Our 85th Anniversary Year between $35,000 and $50,000. Failing, at least for the moment, to receive council approval of the request, committee members , suggested that signs directing shoppers to the parking site be erected & asked for a further meeting between their group and the councU, which was agree to. Price city engineer John Huefner came before the council to ask for permission to readvertise for bids on the citys planned culinary water diversion and settling basin on the Price River after the original set of bids had been rejected because of excessive costs. Huefner said the original bids, which had been measured against an estimated cost of $50,000, had all been in the $100,000 plus range because of provisions written into the specifications which discouraged contractors from bidding $240,000 budget addition proposed com- petitively. After a brief discussion of the matter, the council approved Huefners request. City administrative assistant Gary Tomsic met with the council to explain a request from the State Highway Department which would allow the department to construct an extension of Sixth South from Fourth West to Third West. Tomsic explained that the department wished to abandon the old bridge located in the area which provides the only access from the south to that area but could not without providing an alternate route, which, he said, they wished to do in extending Sixth South. He added that the city would incur no expenses by allowing the road to be built and the council agreed to the arrangement. The Price City Council will be asking citizen support of a reopening the 1975-7- 6 budget which will add nearly of a million dollars to the citys general fund expenditures in a public hearing to be held Monday, April 26 during the councils next meeting. However, the additional expenditures will not cost one-quart- er taxpayers anymore as the city expects excess revenues of some $129,000 from the general fund from unanticipated taxes plus $300,000 plus in revenues from utility sales. The bulk of the $240,850 proposed expenditure will be taken up, if approved, in a $155,000 outlay for Cedar Hills Drive, which will link the developing northeast . Another section of Price with U.S. Highway for administrative is expenses, such $58,000 proposed as payment of employee benefits which were underestimated for the year. The rest of the money will be spread out in lesser amounts through various city departments. 50-6- iepmities disputfe 'mvesfiiiipifci police sl(aiii7 G6mp06isa6is Two Carbon County Sheriffs Deputies, who live in the East Carbon area, feel they were unfairly singled out in a recent article carried in an East Carbon newspaper two deputies was far different from those of the East Carbon policemen. In an interview Tuesday, Hansen said the three sheriffs department officers who had been singled out for this investigation represented about 60 years in accumulated ex which supported the salary requests of citys Hansen and Robertson were quick to come to their own defense pointing out that the training, duties and responsibilities of the sheriff and his that policemen and used the as a basis of deputies salaries comparison. V ' - bicentennial year, was described as a great success by organizers who only regretted a smaller than SA photo expected turnout. Janet Curts, a speaker from the Institute of Cultural Affairs at last Saturday's Town Meeting '76 held In Price, addresses the noontime gathering. Price's town meeting, the first held In the state during this Price's Town Meeting Public apathy, gov't cooperation named as issues than worthwhile as many areas of public concern were discussed and a number of possible solutions proposed. Participants spent the morning outlining and discussing the challenges facing the community especially in areas involving economic and social issues. Discussion groups identified the apathy shown by most citizens to community affairs and, what they considered to be, a lack of cooperation between local branches of government as two of the most pressing issues facing the community. Lack of social involvement and a could care less attitude was named again (See TOWN MEETING, Page 3) Issues involving public apathy, lack of communication between public leaders and their constituency, poor coordination between branches of local government and problems involving housing and employment were identified as leading concerns of a relatively small, but enthusiastic, group of local citizens who participated in Prices Town Meeting 76 held last Saturday at CEU. Meeting organizers said they were somewhat disappointed that no more than 150 citizens took part in the event, aimed at identifying local concerns and proposing solutions to these problems, but did feel the project to be more $Me, mtiomS The Federal Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974 and Utahs Health Resources Development Act of 1976 had one primary goal: to improve the health systems of the nation and the state; a public hearing was held April 6 in Price to familiarize area residents with the health planning system to be developed. Gar Elison, a health planning consultant from Salt Lake City, told Sheriffs deputies Keith Hansen and Jim Robertson, both veterans of the department, said this week that the article was incomplete and inaccurate and said a comparison of salaries alone did not represent a true picture of the differences between themselves and the police officers dispatching. system discussed the hearing that the agencies set up under the Federal law will attempt to improve the nations health system by: the availability, Increasing accessibility and quality of health services; Restraining increases in the cost of providing health services; unnecessary Preventing duplication of health resources. Two new kinds of agencies will be seL up in Utah under this law for health planning:related functions. The first is the State Health Planning and Development Agency. This body is required to be an agency of state government, and Gov. Rampton has already named the State Department of Social Services to serve in this capacity. The duties of the State Health Planning and Development Agency will include conducting state health planning Indigent misdemeanor fees . County to refuse payment involved. The scenario leading to the deputies attack on the article began early this month when the East Carbon city council, on a split vote with a councilman absent, voted to increase Chief John Hodsons salary to $900 from the $864 he had been receiving with officer Terry Smiths salary also taking a rise. The vote increasing these salaries had been an extremely controversial one as councilman Sonny Fratto had resigned his post earlier as a result of an argument he had involving the increases. The raise gave Hodson a 30 percent hike in salary since he was hired by the city less than a year ago. Shortly after the raises were approved, an investigation of the two policemens salaries in comparison with those of Sheriff Albert Passic, and the two deputies was published which, in effect, supported the granting of these pay increases plus the granting of a $100 per month allowance to the officers wives for activities, reviewing appropriateness of existing health services and administering the facility construction program. Advising this body will be the Statewide Health Coordinating Council, the functions of which include reviewing and coordinating Health Systems agency plans and preparing the State Health Plan. The second kind of agency is the ' (See HEALTH, Page 3) t Carbon County commissioners, on the recommendation of county attorney Ron Boutwell, decided last Wednesday that the county would not, as a rule, pay the legal fees of in- digents who are assigned legal counsel by the Price City Court or the various justice courts in cases involving Class B misdemeanors or less. Meeting Wednesday in regular session, the commission received Boutwells recommendations concerning the payment of legal fees for indigents in a letter sent to the commission. In it, Boutwell quoted a recent opinion handed down by the Utah Supreme Court which held that, although a defendant had a right to legal counsel in any action against him, he did not have the right to counsel at ' public expense when charged with a misdemeanor in a city or justice of the peace court. Boutwell said that, holding this Calling for a balance industrial and the development conservation of social and environmental values in the state, John Preston Creer, a the for candidate Democratic Partys nomination for governor, visited the Carbon area last Friday, kicking off his campaign tour of the state. Creer, a Salt Lake attorney and a former Salt Lake County commissioner, said in an interview that his great love for the state of Utah and his wish to preserve the integrity of Utah lifestyles had led to his decision to seek the Democratic nomination. The 43 year old candidate, who visited with a number of small groups Friday on his swing through the area, named the economy and the environment and their intertwining relationships as the top issues in this election in noting that the growing energy industry in the state would inevitably bring a great influx of people into the state and added that, only through orderly planning, could the state hope to preserve its - unique mixture of a growing economy, a good family setting and a clean environment. Creer said this type of planning was especially important in energy impacted areas of the state where instant towns, consisting of trailers set out on inadequate roads with inadequate services, could easily spring up. He said he also agreed with the growing sentiment in state and local government that the state should take an increasingly active role in front-en- d funding of Utah Senator Frank Moss has reported that the Coal Mine Training Act has received Senate committee approval and is on its way to the floor of the Senate with a good chance of passage. Moss noted last week that the bill is services for energy impacted areas to insure that these services would be adequate to acmunicipal commodate anticipated growth. Turning to the controversy concerning the proposed Kaiparowits Power Project, Creer indicated that he supported its construction and added that he felt the federal government should not have taken as active a role in the issue as it has up to this time. The state should have (See CREER, Page 3) ' has set down minimum standards that each county must meet in providing legal counsel for indigents. In this statute, he said, the legislature decided that society, not the legal profession, must provide for these types of services but only be imposed A in cases involving Class misdemeanors or more. Thus, he said, while statute does not prohibit lower courts from assigning legal counsel to indigents in misdemeanor cases, it does not provide that counties are responsible for paying the legal expenses in these cases. With this as a basis, the county attorney recommended that legal expenses for indigents be paid only in A cases involving class misdemeanors or greater. Following the discussion of this letter, a proposed fee schedule for lawyers taking on these types of cases was discussed but tabled for further study. will help CEU program balance' advocated by Creer between finding in mind, the Utah Legislature Sen. Moss says coal bill pTS Industrial, environmental perience and training as compared to 15 months represented by the two East Carbon officers. Hansen also pointed out that each officer in the sheriffs department had attended the Utah Police Academy and had spent countless hours in police workshops and seminars in addition to a state requirement of fulfilling 40 hours of training every (See SALARIES, Page 3) of particular importance to community colleges such as the College of Eastern Utah that offer coal miner training programs. Two parts of the measure are designed to meet the critical need for qualified personnel in the mining industry. Under provisions of the act the National Science Foundation would survey the industry to determine the exact needs of the mining companies and then community colleges would be given grants to continue and improve mining training. Moss said that CEU would be able to begin immediately to train miners because the college is already involved in training programs. CEU vocational coordinator Rue Ware said the college staff is happy and elated that the bill may soon become law. He said the CEU is looking forward to increasing the capabilities of the college in meeting the needs of the industry in this respect. Moss noted in his report that there is now a critical need for properly trained medium level personnel such as foremen, fire bosses, safety Utah Governor hopeful John Preston Creer (standing left) accepts the floor from Dr. Orrln Selman before addressing Carbon County senior citizens last Friday. Creer said he would be emphasizing planned industrial development and protection SA photo of the environment In his campaign. engineers, and other people in the technical field of ever-increasi- mining. He concluded that the measure has a very good chance of passage & must be implemented if the United States is going to meet the energy needs of the future. |