North Carolina Newspapers

9 jj Be sure to pick up both sections Be sure to pick up both sections t 5 Si Vci. 84, flo. 2 ? ,, 1 ' J - J . 9 f - it - r s I - - - by Johnny Oliver I r I , ? 4 staff writer A. U.S. Army helicopter Icncted yesterday on the new North Beginning next week helicopters will be ebSa to transport Carolina Memorial Hospital helipad as it took part in a dry run accident victims to the hospital directly from the accident of the Military Assistance to Safety and Traffic program. scene. 'Tar Heel' will publish O'Neal, Bailey agree on finance by Art Eisenstadt Staff Writer Student Body Treasurer Mike O'Neal and Daily Tar Heel Business Manager Reynolds Bailey reached an agreement Wednesday evening on how to handle an apparent financial crisis involving the DTH. O'Neal guaranteed the newspaper enough Student Government funds to publish today's and Friday's issues, ending a three day communications breakdown between himself and Bailey. At one time, it appeared the D TH might not have been able to publish today or Friday for lack of funds. The crisis started after O'Neal refused to release 513,000 in student fees requested by Bailey as capital for the first few DTH issues of the semester. The $13,000 was part of a 529,500 appropriation of Student Government funds to the DTH made by the Campus Governing Council (CGC) last April. O'Neal decided last week to release the DTH appropriation once a month in seven installments of $3,900, because of his concern over the paper's long-term stability. Bailey said he requested the large sum appropriation in order to finance layout and printing costs of the paper's first three issues, which are scheduled to be considerably larger than most of the semester's remaining issues. When anticipated advertising revenues were totaled. Bailey said he expected the DTH to make a profit on the first three issues. But, he said, most of the advertisers' payments are not expected to come in for several weeks. Late last week, O'Neal told Bailey he thought the DTH's uncollected revenue, known as accounts receivable, had reached a dangerously high level. "O'Neal said we should have made arrangements to get more of this money," Bailey said Wednesday. "He said the merchants (who advertise in the DTH) had no reason not to go ahead and give it to us." O'Neal said Wednesday, "The Tar Heel printed a (Monday) newspaper for which it had no funds. It had been living a hand-to-mouth existence all summer. This didn't happen overnight." -Dick Hope, a graduate business student and CGC member, acted as an intermediary in the dispute between Bailey and O'Neal. Pope said the DTH's accounts receivable equaled 13 per cent of the newspaper's revenue. According to sources in the School of Business Administration, Pope said, this rate was normal for a college daily newspaper. "Mike (O'Neal) thinks that rate is outrageous," Pope said. "I think it is a perfectly acceptable business practice. Mike is doing an acceptable job of monitoring the treasury, but this is one area where he didn't have the business expertise to immediately see what the accounts receivable meant." "I want to see the Tar Heel's situation stabilized," O'Neal, a graduate journalism student, said. "I don't want to see the Tar Heel go under." Bailey said the DTH accounts receivable rate had been about half of its current level several years ago, but the paper had been receiving about twice as much of its budget through student fees than it does now. "With student fees, when you need cash, you just grab out and get it " Bailey said. "The bigger the advertising business you have, though, the more money you have tied up in accounts receivable." The $29,500 Student Government appropriation represents only about 14 per cent of the 1975-76 DTH budget, with the remainer of the paper's revenues coming from advertising and subscription payments. Any student organization receiving Student Government funds is required to comply with the Student Government treasury laws. Among other stipulations, -,-x Treasurer Mike O'Neal in the closing days of the spring semester, the Student Supreme Court confirmed the nomination of Mike O'Neal as student body treasurer. The decision arose from an appeal of a Campus Governing Council (CGC) vote which denied his nomination. The nomination reached the CGC floor April 22, after Student Body President Bill Bates selected O'Neal for treasurer earlier in the week. Debate broke out over O'Neal's qualifications and over the parliamentary procedure used in counting the council's votes. Question arose over the actual number of votes needed to confirm O'Neal's nomination. According to the Student Constitution, ". . . the treasurer of the Student Body shall be appointed by the President of the Student Body with the approval of two-thirds of the CGC." Bates and O'Neal contended this meant two-thirds of the members present and these laws forbid organizations to make transactions before formally requisitioning funds sufficient to cover purchases and contracts. Although the paper had submitted a requisition for $13,500 to cover layout and printing costs, O'Neal had authorized only $3,900 for the newspaper's use at the time the request was made. After Monday's orientation issue was published, Bailey said the DTH owed the Tar Heel's printer, Hinton Press, of Mebane, $3,500, and would owe Student Graphics, Inc., which handles the paper's offset layout, $2,200 for today's issue. The original $3,900 Student Government by Lynn Medford Assistant News Editor A Department of Transportation engineer denied Tuesday that the Horace Williams House lies in the right-of-way of the proposed extension of Rosemary Street, as town officials announced two weeks ago. "The right-of-way may come fairly close to the house, but as far as the actual physical area, nothing will be touched," state engineer Larry McPherson said. The Horace Williams House, 610 E. Rosemary St., was built prior to the Civil War and was recently restored by the Chapel Hill Historic Preservation Society. Owned by the National Park Service, the house was occupied from 1850 to 1940 by Horace Williams, a classical scholar and philosophy professor. The Rosemary Street extension, provided for in the 1969 revised Chapel Hill-Carrboro thoroughfare plan, will loop across Park Place to connect with Cameron Avenue at Country Club Road. Town officials announced Aug. 13 the revised plan routes the Rosemary Street extension through the house. The thoroughfare plan is currently being revised by the state Department of Transportation as a result of criticisms made in 1974. The revised plan must be approved by the transportation department and the Chapel Hill and Carrboro boards of aldermen before the plan is placed in the state highway improvement plan. Under this improvement plan, the towns pay for the acquisition of right-of-way, and the state pays for actual construction of the road. ill iiffiinff i fe Hl Serving the students and University community since 1893 Chrpcl H'H, North Csrclina, I 1 , , ;:::;:;:::::;:'x';'v::'::;: voting at a meeting are required to pass a resolution. CGC speaker Dan Besse ruled, however, that the clause meant two thirds of the entire 20-member governing council. The original CGC vote turned down the O'Neal nomination 10-6, with three abstentions. Bates called a recount later in the meeting which brought a 12-5-2 split. The student court upheld Bates' and O'Neal'.s.. interpretations of the constitution, ruling that the 12-5-2 Vote was enough to confirm the nomination, since this was two-thirds of the members present at the meeting. The court cited, as a precedent, a 197 1 vote of the 55-member Student Legislature (CGC's predecessor) which approved a student treasurer by a 28-5 margin, well over two-thirds of those' attending. appropriation was used to meet previous costs. O'Neal had guaranteed Bailey a $2,500 advance on the Tar Heel's September appropriation in order to print today's issue. But it was unclear Wednesday afternoon whether the paper would have enough funds to print Friday's profitable issue. The DTH business staff eventually raised nearly $6,000 from advertisers in order to meet this past week's costs, and O'Neal agreed to apply the $2,500 to Friday's paper. In the future, O'Neal said, he and Bailey will meet monthly in order to review the paper's anticipated cash flow for the coming month. The paper's monthly appropriation from Student Government would then be adjusted accordingly. In the original 1969 thoroughway plan, Rosemary Street was to be extended to meet Franklin Street at Howell Lane, but town citizens objected to the extension's cutting through a ravine and stream bed in the area, Mike Jennings, Chapel Hill Planning Board director, explained Tuesday. He said state engineer McPherson brought the revised plan with him when he came to the Planning Office in J une on other business. "We borrowed it and copied it though he didn't really want us to." This revised plan called for Rosemary Street to be extended through the Horace Williams House, Jennings said, adding, "That's just typical of the (transportation) department's lack of sensitivity of local desires and plans. He (the engineer) came in here and said, 'The extension will just take a house here and some old philosopher's house over here.' " y - McPherson, however, said the revised thoroughfare plan calls for the Rosemary extension to run close to the Williams House but not through it. "There will be a sharp degree of curve at the house," he said. "We would infringe on other areas before the Horace Williams House." Although Jennings said the latest plan he had seen included an extension running through the house, McPherson said he did not recall any previous plan that had provided for the destruction of the house. "In recent years," McPherson said, "the department has become more conscious of historical and environmental areas, and we take care to avoid them." Jennings said yesterday the transportation department had apparently revised the plans Thursday, August 28, 1975 The Orange County tax supervisor said yesterday the tax department plans to intensify efforts to assess and to collect county taxes from UNC students. . Many University Housing residents have I escaped paying taxes in the past, since their 0 names were not listed in the tax assessment list, Orange County Tax Supervisor William tT. Laws said. Tax officials obtain the names of county 1 residents through house and property deeds, apartment lists and automobile registration lists. Therefore, University Housing residents who do not own automobiles may not be listed. "1 am not out to get students," Laws pointed out. "I amjust trying to carry out the law. Generally, I can't economically go after dorm students, because their tax bills would not justify the clerical cost of assessment. But the law requires them to list their tax. "Most people don't mind paying taxes which are fair and equitable with everybody else's. Students should remember that they contribute to the congestion of the county, (the amount of) garbage and they benefit from police protection." Laws said he requested. last April from the Department of University Housing a list of those students living on-campus. Laws said he did not receive a list but did receive a letter from University Housing Director James Condie, indicating that Condie felt the release of a residents' list may involve an invasion of privacy, Laws said. Condie told him the matter had been referred to vice-chancellor of administration Douglass Hunt. When contacted Wednesday, Hunt said the list still had not been sent to Laws, and the matter had not been pursued by the county since its original request in April. As to the legality of the county's request for the housing list, Hunt said he does not believe the taxpayer has the right to conceal information about his taxes, because of a . state law which gives the tax supervisor the power to subpoena information for tax purposes. Laws said recently he will obtain the names from the student directory to determine who will be eligible for 1976 taxes. But he has not decided if he will bill students for back taxes, if he discovers their county taxes had not been listed. Chapel Hill tax collector Dave Roberts said Tuesday that if University Housing students are assessed, they will be billed for municipal taxes as well as county taxes. Chapel Hill and Carrboro tax officials said they hope to have their bills in the mail within the next few weeks, and Orange County tax officials said they are currently mailing their bills. North Carolina is one of approximatley 20 states that require payment of county taxes, . Laws said. He said the major problem in collecting county taxes is the people's ignorance of them. 5 s i. Ji I I i ,. I Sts(f photo toy feterttM Stawm Ths Horses YVHSiams House crestsd a dispute between town and Department of Transportation officials, who at one time routed a Rosemary Street extension through the house. since June, although he had not been informed of any new revisions. Aside from destruction of the Horace Williams House by the Rosemary Street extension, the town also opposes the state's plans to make one-way pairings of several streets in Chapel Hill's central business district, Jennings said. Jennings said one-way pairing of streets encourages high-speed express traffic "They just somehow escape all the advertisements and aren't aware of their responsibility to pay," he said. Residency for tax purposes is determined by w here the resident lived during the greater portion of the preceding tax year, Laws explained. This means that if a student lived in Orange County on January 1, 1975, he is required to list his 1975 taxes during the month of January. Failure to list taxes in January adds a 10 per cent penalty to the individual's tax bill, Laws said. Tax assessment, the determination of the amount of taxes to be paid, is done by the county, while the collection of municipal taxes in Carrboro and Chapel Hill is done by those respective towns. The county tax officials said a student's tax bill often averages between $2 and $25. Personal property tax must be paid on items such as furniture, appliances, jewelry, dogs and automobiles. When a resident lists his taxes, he generally has two ways to assess the worth of his belongings. One way is to simply accept an assessment More women enroll than men in 1975 by Nancy Mattox Staff Writer For the first time in the 180-year history of the University, freshwomen outnumber freshmen by a slight margin. Projected figures for the 1 975 fall semester estimate the enrollment of 1,500 women, 80 more than .their male counterparts. Director of Admissions Richard Cashw ell attributed the dominating figure to coincidence. "The University faculty and administration made a conscious decision to review applicants on the quality of applications, not sex, prior to the passage of Title IX," he said. "It just so happens that both the number and quality of applications by females increased." Title IX, included in the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibits discrimination against any person, regardless of sex, enrolled in or working for an educational program receiving federal financial assistance. The provisions in Title IX were to be implemented byJan. 1, 1975. Had the University not made sufficient steps toward sex equalization, Cashwell said, the Office of Admissions would have had to answer to the University's Title IX committee, w hich serves to advocate the end of sex discrimination practices in the Chapel Hill business and academic community. 7 ' it- t f . 4 I 4 i-4 through the business district, resulting in decreased business for town merchants. "Many towns have dried up and blown away because of one-way pairing," he said. "Lots of times merchants think more traffic flowing by will mean more business, but it's through traffic that doesn't stop." Jennings complained that the state based its plans on projected traffic estimates that ignored increased use of bicycles and the bus Section A value of six times his monthly rent (including dorm rent) or five per cent of his house value. Additional tax would be due if an automobile is owned. Another method of listing taxes may be necessary if the tax clerk thinks an individual's personal property is worth more than six times his monthly rent. This second method involves itemizing an individual's personal property. The tax clerk would ask the resident for a fair market value of each taxable item in his possession. The county tax rate is 90.5 cents per $100 valuation, with all individuals getting a $300 exemption. 1 wenty-five and one-half cents per $100 valuation goes to the county school budget. Students living in University housing would also have to pay Chapel Hill municipal tax at a rate of 96.5 cents per S 100 valuation. Seven and a half cents of the municipal tax rate is used for the bus system and the remainder goes into the town's General Fund. The Carrboro tax rate is 95 cents per S 1 00 valuation, and all of it goes into the General Fund. Title IX committee spokesperson Susan Ehringhaus said she was assured by the Admissions Office that applications were no longer separated on the basis of sex. "Director Cashwell has done everything he can to comply with the proposed regulations of Title IX," she said. While the numer of admitted women has increased, males have shown a decrease in enrollment over the past three years. Between 1973 and 1974. first-year enrollment of males dropped by 321. In the same time period, enrollment of first-year women increased by seven. UNC has become more popular lately among college applicants. Cashwell said, because "the economic crunch has made state-supported institutions more popular than in years past." Attraction to the University may also be due to personal friendships, location of the institution, or "because the student is attracted by, or identifies with, some alumnus of the college." Cashwell noted. The majority of Chapel Hill's students come from the Chapel Hill. Raleigh. Durham and Greensboro areas, a pattern that has existed in past years. In surveys taken on educational goals, increases are noted in the areas of law. medicine and dentistry. Elementary education is among those majors decreasing in popularity among entering classes. 1 1 system, which would substantially reduce the traffic volume. Thoroughfare plans also provide for the extension of Pittsboro Street across Franklin and Rosemary streets to intersect Airport Road at North Street. Kappa Alpha fraternity house, located in the little fraternity court, and Walker Funeral Home lie in the right-of-way of the Pittsboro extension, Jennings said. "The University has voiced strong opposition to this plan." Jennings said. "It would rathergiveuppart oftheCarolina Inn property to have Columbia Street four-lane two-way" than to funnel high-speed traffic through the street. Other major items in the thoroughfare plan include: Cameron Avenue to be extended at both ends, east to Park Place and southwest to Rand Road; Franklin Street to be extended into Carrboro's Main Street at Eighth Street; Umstead Drive to be extended along Tanbark Branch and the city limits to Merritt Mill Road; McCauley Street to be widened to five lanes to the N.C. 54 by-pass and extended to Merritt Mill Road; And an outer loop to be constructed from Greensboro Street past Chapel Hill High School to N.C. 86 at Weaver Dairy Road and then to U.S. 15-50 1 at old Durham Road, finally looping around the southeast side of town to inteisect N.C. 54 South. See related story on Horace Williams on page l-B.