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Show Utah State Press Assn P.O. Box 1327 Salt x Lake I 84110 Ut City, Saturday December 4, 1976 Price, Utah Volume 8 Number 1 Pages 8 15c A Consolidation with the Helper Journal finances Hospital greatly improved The financial condition of Carbon Hospital has improved dramatically since the beginning of the year, hospital controller George Larson told the Board of Governors Tuesday night. Larson said the hospital lost $61,678 last year, but through October of this year, was $156,105 in the black. 'A.U.S. Forest Service plan to close Forest Service areas to off road vehicles had no opposition at a public hearing in Price Wednesday night. si Aerosol can blamed for floral fire leaking aerosol can near a stove pilot light could be the cause of Wednesdays Price Floral Shop fire, Price Fire Chief William Dent said Thursday. A Dent said early evidence indicates that fumes touched off flames in the rear of the store which destroyed the buildings Christmas inventory. He added that this is just a suspicion so far and the investigation is con- Forest Service Supervisor Ira Hatch said most of the areas were being closed to the off road vehicles because furrows and trenches which Federal Savings and Loan and Utah Wellington and Helper fire depart- tinuing. ments assisted. were constructed for water conservation have been destroyed by off road vehicles. Firemen raced to the 60 W. Main St. building at 4:30 a.m. They battled for two hours to keep the blaze from spreading to the neighboring First Damage to the buildings contents is set at $10,000. Chief Dent said structural damage estimates were not available. The areas will be closed to all off road traffic except on designated roads, Hatch said. That does not include snowmobiles, he said, in all but one area. The South Horn Liquor store. Volunteers from Mountain East Rim Wildlife Wintering areas will be closed to snowmobiles because it is prime wintering area for elk, he said. Community Christmas tree placed by citizens, businesses the efforts citizens her husband donated labor of for the tree base. and businesses, Price has its first community Christmas tree in eight years. Obtaining a community Christmas tree was the idea of Pat Barker, who recently moved to Price after her husband retired from the Air Force. Im from back East, and I just never saw a town without a community tree, she said. We got going on effort and the it, snowballed, with everybody The spruce has been erected on the corner of the Carbon County courthouse lawn in downtown Price. County commissioners gave permission to dig a permanent hole for the base of the tree on that pite, and Thelma Jones and 25-fo- ot Another area to be closed is 23,280 acres of the Price River Drainage area east of Scofield. This area is prime wildlife area and will be closed to both summer and winter snowmobile use, he said. The Pleasant Creek watershed treatment area will be closed because of the work done to keep Pleasant Creek from flooding the Mt. Pleasant area, he said. donating labor and time. The Price JayCees will decorate the tree, which was obtained with help from the Forest Service and city and county employees. Other areas Hatch said would be closed are the left fork of Huntington Canyon Mountain, Meadow Fork-Oa- k Creek watershed treatment area, Trail Mountain watershed treatment area, North Dragon-Ferro- n Canyon watershed treatment area, Singleton In years past, the tree was set in a permanent base in front of the Municipal Building. Trouble with vandals and poor visibility prompted the trees move to the courthouse. Flat watershed treatment area, Trail Ridge-Buckrid- watershed area, South Fork Willow Creek and Middle Mountain watershed areas, Tidds Canyon Watershed area, North Canyon watershed treatment area, Grove of the Aspen Giants Scenic Layoff effects small, Price merchants say By Joe Rolando Sun Journal Staff Writer The layoff of about 170 employees of Braztah and Kaiser coal mines will hurt retail sales in Price, but merchants should expect a larger share of shoppers Christmas dollars this year. This is the opinion of Helen Smith of Olivetos Furniture. She said the larger population in Carbon County than previous years may account for the sales increase. Mrs. Smith and Mike Baxter of The Red Balloon, a childrens fashion store, represent Price retail merchants. Baxter, who managed a childrens fashion store in Orem before coming to Price six months ago, has been appointed to formulate for the proposed Price Retail Merchants Association. by-la- The association, which Baxtei expects to attract more than 5t merchants, will be formed in January harm of the layoffs to businesses, however, is expected to lessen with the addition of 100 mining jobs at U.S. Fuel Company at Hiawatha. U.S. Fuel announced this week the jobs will open because of a major contract with Nevada Power The Co. Mrs. Smith was philosophical about the layoffs. She said, Weve been here in Price for so many years, and weve made it when it was rough before. So, theres no reason to think we cant make it now. Joes Valley big game mitigation area, Middle Mountain big game area, Elks Knoll natural area and the Middle Fork of Manti Canyon watershed treatment area. area, 17 Melted plastic Santa Claus is part of Price Floral debris. of 1977. Larson said statements mailed in October were the first to be mailed in more than two years. People just hadnt been billed for their stay in the hospital, he said. No opposition at ORV hearing iiSV(w Through Other reasons for the increased revenue is the change to an averaging system fo Medicare payments and a new billing system. That $156,105 accounts for revenue over expenses, he said. The margin needs to be higher to replace old equipment and buy new equipment, he added. a local Larson said the change is due to the accounting procedures introduced by Hospital Corporation of America which now manages the hospital. said more people from Carbon County than ever before are also Many shoppers Baxter said, shop along the Wasatch Front because some Price merchants are insensitive to customers. For example, Baxter told about the Price man who waited for two years for area stores to fill his special order. In desperation the shopper went to a Wasatch Front store for the item. using their trips to doctor appointments along the Wasatch Front as a chance to shop. But these people, he said, would benefit by shopping in Carbon County because of better service merchants give customers. For example, if customers buy something with which they are not satisfied from a store in Salt Lake City or Provo they must spend twice as much as they spent on their first trip to return it, Baxter said. She said her father Louis Oliveto, who opend Olivetos in 1935, firmly believed in the clientele of Carbon County despite the occasional poor economic periods which the closing of the coal mines brought. Furthermore, spending money in Carbon County benefits the community by increasing tax revenue and profits to improve local government and businesses, he added. Added to the merchants problems caused by poor economic periods is the appeal of Wasatch Front shopping to Carbon County residents. Baxter, who has served on the merchants board at the University Mall in Orem, But the job of keeping shoppers home is not only the responsibility of local consumers. Baxter said merchants should attract local shoppers by offering better service and stock and prices comparable to stores along the Wasatch Front. Baxter said he prevents similiar incidents by keeping a list of people who special order an item. The list allows him to let the customer know whether an item can be ordered. ' The responsibility for providing customers better service should not rest only with a handful of businesses. The job should be shared by all of them, Baxter said. The Price Retail Merchants Association, he said, will unify the merchants so they can hold sales at the same time. This will help both businesses by bringing more shoppers into the city and customers who would be able to do all their shopping in one trip. 1 Public hearings are now going on to gather citizen comments on . the proposed closings, Hatch said. The final decision to close the areas will be made about the I irs t of the year, he noted but the actual closing of the roads may not be done until March. The hospital will now bill former patients twice and send a letter stating that the account is over due. After that, the account will be turned over to a collection agency, he emphasized. Although the bad debts are tax deductable, they just hurt the hospital and community, he said. Those bad debts could keep the hospital from buying needed equipment, he noted. Along with the accounts being turned over to a collection agency, the hospital is now charging a 1.5 percent service charge on accounts not paid in 30 days. Larsen also presented a budget plan for the next year. The plan estimates the revenue to increase only one percent in the next year. The loss of one physician, or a new physician moving in could throw the projected budget off completely, he said. One physician means about $300,000 in revenue for the hospital, he said. Hospital administrator Bob Quist said Dr. Dan Madsen, a former Price resident, could begin practice in Price next June. He is scheduled to finish his residency at the University of Utah then. -- . Quist also said a medical school acquaintance of Madsens has expressed interest in locating in Price also. ' Price to D.C., a bad trip for Braztah plan By John Serfustini Sun Journal Editor After a odyssey through federal offices in Utah, Braztah Coal Corporations mining plan is on its way to federal offices in Denver, Reston, Va., and six-mon- th Washington, D.C. The U.S. Geologic Survey in Salt Lake City sent the plan to the Surveys Conservation Office in Denver Wednesday. Wednesday was the day Braztahs layoff of 75 workers went into effect. The firm claims it had to reduce its work force because it ran out of coal in its No. 5 mine near Castle Gate. It needs Interior Department approval of its mining plan to expand into federal coal leases. Public hearings on this plan were held in Helper in May. No one objected. The USGS in Salt Lake then drafted a rough environmental impact statement, attached it to Braztahs to Moab. proposal, and the jlan was on its way ... The USGS needed comments from the Bureau of Land Management office in Moab. The BLM in Moab made its changes, attached them to the plan, and the plan on its to Price. way ... The Price BLM added its comments and sent them back to Moab. Moab sent them to the USGS in Salt Lake. The USGS made some revisions and sent the package to Moab. Then Moab sent it to Price. Then Price to Moab. The Salt Lake USGS office got the plan back Wednesday morning. Assistant area mining supervisor Jim Travis said the USGS made two very minor changes and passed the mining plan to Denver that afternoon. From Denver the plan moves to USGS headquarters in Reston, Va. After a layover in Reston, it will go to the Secretary of the Interior in Washington. Carbon County legislators and the Sun Journal have notified Sen. Jake Gam and Rep. Gunn McKay that the plan is on the way. McKays office reported Wednesday that the congressman will try to push the plan through, not hard enough to create bad feelings, but hard enough to expedite the matter. No one could say how long . that will take. |