Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / April 26, 1976, edition 1 / Page 1
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t 77 .Veslher Sunny and windy. High in the 70s; low in the 40's. Chance of precipitation is 0 through Friday. Extended outlook; Highs in the 60's through Thursday, rising to the 70's Friday. r Today's ed;i:.cn is tns fa! ss-s cf Volume S3 cf the Dai'y TsrHssi Watch (or us weekly tfvis summer beginning May 25. We'll return rext fall ah a SO-page 0sn!acn issue before c'.asses feeg-n. Good luck on exams end e";cy the summf P I. I Serving the students and the University community since 1893 Chspsl Hill, North Carolina, Monday, April 25, 1976 Vclumo No. S3 Issue No. 137 I ft f1 'A i( to i i v acuity n 0 drop O f J A J. Russell Kirby, Second District congressional candidate, believes major groups in the area have not been adequately represented. Kirby campaigns for House by Art Eisenstadt Staff Writer Second District congressional candidate J. Russell Kirby discounted incumbent Rep. L.H. Fountain's claim that experience will be important in the 95th Congress and said Friday he believed Fountain has not represented his district well during his 24 years in office. "It's not unnatural for a person who's been in office for 24 years to get complacent," Kirby said in an interview during a Chapel Hill campaign stop. "There are three others running against (Fountain) this time. That should indicate some dissatisfaction with him." Kirby, a state senator from Wilson, and Fountain, a Tarboro lawyer, are two of the four candidates seeking the Democratic congressional nomination in the Second District, which includes Orange and 1 1 other north-central North Carolina counties. The other candidates in the August 17 primary are Rocky Mount businessman Henry "Hank" Thorpe and Henderson businessman Elbert G. Rudasill. There are no announced Republicans yet. Fountain, who has represented the Second District in Congress since 1952, announced for re-election Wednesday. Fountain ranks 28th in seniority in the 435 member House of Representatives. Kirby said Fountain has not adequately represented three major groups in this district the farmers, the elderly and the Possible merger meets resistance, approval by Russell Gardner and Sue Cobb Staff Writers The proximity of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, as well as the similarity of many of the towns concerns and needs, have periodically generated discussion and consideration of a merger of the two towns. Recent changeover in the elected offices of both towns, current debate on such issues as the Water and Sewer Authority situation and the proposed extension of Chapel Hill's bus system into Carrboro have again brought the question of merger into the public mind. Reactions to the idea of merger vary widely, but most of those interviewed said they fell that union of the two Orange County towns in the next several years ii highly unlikely. Even those who endorse the idea have said they feel it is unrealistic to expect a merger within the decade. THE ARGUMENTS FOR and against official merger of Carrboro and Chapel Hill are complex and concern everything from geopolitics and history to pride and personalities. Several proponents of merger say it would mutually benefit both towns to have a unified governing body and planning district. Presently, both towns maintain separate administrations and planning departments despite the fact that they are geographically adjoined. "I have not seen a situation like thii anywhere else in the state where the towns did not merge. They're not just neighbors, they actually touch," Carl Smith, former Orange County representative to the state legislature, said recently. PROPONENTS OF MERGER say that as long as the two towns remain separate, growth options for both communities are limited because resources which serve both towns are located within separate planning districts. For example, University Lake, the common water supply for Carrboro and Chapel Hill, is located in the Carrboro Planning District. Chapel Hill planning officials say that future growth in the area served by this water supply should be determined by both communities, but presently only Carrboro can control education community. "Seventy per cent of the economy in this district is directly or indirectly supported by agriculture," Kirby said. "Our man's been there 24 years but has never been a member of the Agriculture Committee. He has introduced no bills that I'm aware of that have been of interest to this group." Congress should do more to see that American farmers benefit from the worldwide food market, Kirby said, and added that he favored tobacco import quotas to protect this area's farmers. Kirby also urged support for bills affecting the elderly and for strengthening the Social Security , system. Many of the elderly residents in this district are black and poor. "Congressman Fountain's voting support on bills affecting the elderly the last three years is 17, 20 and 21 per cent. Anybody trying to represent this district has to do better than that," Kirby said. "The present congressman also has a poor record on bills supporting education, Kirby said. "I would be for increasing funding from the national level for education. Property taxes have financed about all the education in this state that they can finance." Overall, Kirby said he thought he could create a "certain aggressiveness in representing this area." Kirby urged Congress to give , tax incentives to business to hire more employees, and. suggested that , the federal government could agree to pay a certain percentage of new workers' salaries. If that does not increase employment, he said, Congress should create federal job programs similar to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal agencies, which existed during the Depression. He also said the federal revenue sharing program "is not a long-term solution to the financial problems of local government. "The problem is that local governments are being given responsibilities they don't have the tax base to support," he said. planning in this area. In addition, the waste water treatment plant which services both towns is located in the Chapel Hill planning district. Chapel Hill officials are concerned that Carrboro may exercise planning which will strain the sewer plant's capacity. However, Smith said the planning boards should concentrate on increasing the county's tax base. "All three agencies (Chapel H ill, Carrboro and Orange County) realize that the tax base of Orange County has got to be increased. Planning boards will determine strongly whether we grow in a fashion which will generate high revenue or whether we grow in a haphazard manner and receive low revenue," Smith said. ALTHOUGH AN OVERALL Orange County Planning Board is working on developing a comprehensive plan to maximize use of water and sewer facilities, Chapel Hill and Carrboro planning officials interviewed expressed different goals for the area. Suellen Beaulieu, Carrboro planning and zoning administrator, stressed the need for a unified growth plan, but said a joint plan can be arrived at on the county level without any mention of municipalities. OFFICIALS OF both towns agree that development in the area should be planned so as to conserve the area's already depleted water and sewer resources. However, Chapel Hill officials have expressed concern that if Carrboro exercises poor planning along N.C. 54, it could strain these utilities and cause traffic problems as well. Former Carrboro Mayor Robert Wells said the town should exercise caution in building any more apartment complexes, but that it should try to find some light industry suitable for construction along N.C. 54. Such industry would cushion the town's tax base, but Carrboro cannot continue growth until adequate water and sewer facilities are developed, Wells said. CURRENTLY, CARRBORO purchases water from the University and resells it to its residents. The University and Chapel Hill jointly own the sewage treatment plant which .serves both towns and southern Orange County. The sewage treatment plant has nearly reached full capacity, and another Four week period approved for fall; pluses and minuses to he recorded by Laura Seism Staff Writer The Faculty Council voted Friday to cut the present 12-week period for dropping courses to four weeks, effective this fall, and to issue plus and minus grades with no change in quality points to undergraduates ivi a iwu-)cai irmi perioa oeginning next spring. A Student Government-backed amendment that would have established a six-week drop period was defeated despite efforts by Student Body President Billy Richardson and Campus Governing Council Speaker Pro-tern Doug Henderson to convince council members that the four week period was too short. The proposal for plus and minus grades was approved only after lengthy debate over the usefulness and desirability of the system. The adopted proposal states that professors may optionally issue grades with pluses and minuses but that these grades will carry no special quality point values. For example, grades of both B-plus and B-minus will receive three quality points. However, pluses and minuses will be recorded on a student's permanent record. An amendment proposed by Classics Department Chairman George Kennedy would have assigned quality points to the plus and minus grades, but it was also defeated by the council. Had the amendment passed, an A would have been worth 4.0 quality points; A-minus, 3.7; B-plus, 3.3; B, 3.0; and so on to D, worth 1.0. After the two-year trial period, the council will decide whether to continue the policy and whether to assign quality points to the State may . -.: by Merton Vance Staff Writer A N.C. joint legislative budget committee recommended Thursday that the state take at least $10 million of the $42 million expected to be collected from the sale of University-owned utilities. The University would be allowed to keep approximately $32 million from the sale of water, sewer, electric and telephone utilities. The money is earmarked for construction of library facilities and a continuing education center. facility must be built soon, officials say. Meanwhile, the University is attempting to sell all its utilities. A joint Water and Sewer Authority, composed of representatives from both towns and the county, was to purchase the facilities. Both towns were to turn over all the facilities they now own to the joint authority, and in turn all three governing bodies were to have equal representation on the Authority. Last month, Chapel Hill officials decided to withdraw from the Authority and submit a separate bid for the facilities. They defended their withdrawal from the A uthority saying that it would not be in their best interest to contribute the bulk of the facilities and to receive only one-third representation on the Authority. Later, both towns proposed alternate plans for the Authority. Chapel Hill is seeking fifty per cent representation, but Carrboro officials maintain that no one governing body should have majority rule. SOME CARRBORO OFFICIALS say that the strain in community relations, which has surfaced during the Water and Sewer Authority dispute, is actually a result of the changeover which took place last December in the administrations of both towns. "Of all the things that were accomplished during my administration, 1 am proudest of the joint effort between Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County to prove there was a working relationship between the three governing bodies. Since the new administration in Chapel Hill took office, there has been a great step backward in community co-operation," Wells said. FORMER CHAPEL HILL MAYOR Howard N. Lee feels that the existing inefficiencies of the Carrboro and Chapel Hill administrations stem not from any sort of planning difficulties, but from the towns' failure to cooperate on the consolidation of such internal services as fire and police protection. "The planning isn't so inefficient. The Orange County Planning Board is working closely with city officials. The inefficiency is due to a lack of cooperation between the inner cities (of Carrborb and Chapel Hill), Lee said. However, Lee added that "it is not necessary to have a merger to resolve these deficiencies." pluses and minuses. Both sets of recommendations were contained in a report from the Special Committee on Grading, established by the Faculty Council last November to study grading and grade inflation. The report cited the 12-week drop period as one cause of grade inflation. Committee member Diane Leonard said the four-week drop period was designed to prevent students from dropping courses to salvage their grades. "Many professors will not have given an exam in that period, and that is precisely our point," she said. But Henderson noted that students drop courses for reasons other than to maintain high grades. He said the proposal did not allow leeway for the student who encounters personal problems later in the semester. But according to the committee's written recommendation, a course may be dropped "under extraordinary circumstances" after the official four-week drop period is over. However, the report does not define those circumstances. Henderson also said the three student committee members did not represent the student body. He referred to a Daily Tar Heel poll of 173 undergraduates last week in which three out of every four 'students opposed the four-week drop period. Student committee member Lisa Bradley said students would support the shorter drop period if they understood the ramifications of the present policy. She said professors must create an artificial curve out of A-, B and C-studcnts when D- and F-students drop a course. get $10 million from utilties sale The budget committee approved the recommendation with little debate, or opposition. The proposal was a compromise worked out after the committee rejected a proposal made Wednesday that would have taken 50 per cent of the money collected from the sale and placed it in the state's general fund. UNC officials who had requested that the University be allowed to keep all the money earned from the utilities sale appeared ready to accept the compromise. Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor said in a from both sides Lee said he began his tenure as mayor favoring the idea of merger, but that soon after he took office, he realized merger was not advantageous for either town and that it would not be for some time. THE INTERNAL PROBLEMS of both towns especially the financial problems make merger a less attractive idea, Lee said. He added that Chapel Hill could not afford to absorb Carrboro's economic problems now and that it would not be as beneficial to Carrboro to merge now as it might in the future. For these reasons, Lee said, during his term he chose as mayor to concentrate on inner city cooperation between the two towns with an eye toward consolidating such public services such as water and sewer facilities and police and fire protection. "Merger of the towns would be less painful after some of the services are merged," Lee S3 id CARRBORO INTERIM TOWN MANAGER Phillip Whitaker also acknowledged that there is a great potential for saving money if the two towns merged, but he questioned, "Would there really be those savings?" Whitaker said that if the two towns were to merge smoothly, Carrboro officials would probably have to be given positions in the Chapel Hill administration. He said that it might be possible to dissolve some of these positions after the incumbents retired, but that in the meantime there would be little administrative cost savings, because there would still be as many administrative positions in the merged towns as there are now in the two towns combined. To just lay off Carrboro officials in the event of a merger would create a lot of ill will between the two towns, and there would probably have to be some prior agreement between the two towns that Carrboro's public officials would not lose their jobs if the towns merged, Whitaker said. IN ADDITION, Whitaker said that once the two towns merged, Chapel Hill voters might not endorse the expenditures necessary to bring Carrboro's public facilities up to Chapel Hill's standards. "There would be a larger tax base and a larger debt limitation which we could make use of (if the towns merged), Whitaker said, "but having it and using it are two different Richardson told the council that the four week drop period was too short for the average student to determine whether a course was valuable or whether he had the time to devote to it, and added that most students maintain the required course load and most graduate within four years. Noting that the council usually proceeded at a slower pace in making its decisions, Richardson said, "I'm just saying that you should proceed at a more cautious speed." He asked a council member to propose a six-week drop period. English professor Joseph Flora made the proposal, but it received only 1 1 votes. During the discussion on the new grading system, African Studies Director Roberta Dunbar, who tried to have the proposal re referred to the grading committee, said that without specific quality point values, "We will only know what the faculty behavior is (in assigning plus and minus grades), not what the effect of plus and minus grades is." Gillian Cell of the history department said giving plus and minus grades only frustrated students. "It seems that all we're doing is institutionalizing that frustration," she said. Henry Boren, secretary of the faculty and a history professor, said the proposal's main purpose was to be fair to the student. "The difference between a student getting a B-plus and a B-minus is an enormous difference," he said. "Between a C-plus and a B-minus, there is not that big a difference." History professor James Leutze agreed with Boren. "If we can make one distinction between an A and a B, then we should be able to make the distinction between a plus and a minus," he said. statement released after Thursday's actions tEat the"money thXTniversity would" receive" would be enough to make essential improvements to library facilities. "Thus under the arrangement approved today (Thursday) by the budget committee, the sale of the University utilities would serve the state in two important ways. "First, it would help meet the state's pressing budget needs for 1976-77. "Second, it would enable UNC to enlarge significantly its contribution to the cultural, intellectual and professional life in our state," he said. 1 1 I JL, The differing lifestyles of Chapel Hill and discussion of a merger between the two things." Lee cited considerable resistance to merger on the part of older residents of both towns as something that would have to be resolved before the towns could unite. This resistance is voiced not just by senior members in both communities, but by adults of varying ages and occupations. Even those Chapel Hill administrators who favor merger say that it would be such an expensive proposition for Chapel Hill that it would be difficult to convince its citizens to approve it. As Lee implied, if the towns merged. Chapel Hill would be burdened with the financial responsibility of improving those services in the Carrboro area which are currently of a lower quality than the corresponding services in Chapel Hill. THE MAJOR ADVANTAGE of merger to Chapel Hill would be a role in the planning and development of the united , U Uu - ? f 'i . ; merit ;r U.S. J. William : v. ,11 czWur the UNC-CH r:r?.:7,:zr,v;r.l address at. 2 . ' M:v 9, in Carmiebae 23-year ' senatorial FcTv.-zn Relations :r than any senator 1 also .headed the .'.rrr.cv Committee!, aduated from the La r.i:.z in 1925, was a : ad. r; reived B.AV :: from Oxford i:r i.i'disd law at iinton University ;t:d with distinction f I - t , J . . 1.- ccnTC-ssnin and l. . . .i i . . i . -, v t e , his pu:"i-'ic::; ::;:h:ds CU Myths end New R!!:ijs (lv54), Arrogance of Power (l-i'tj) zr.i Ttie ' Pentagon ' Prcpo-:zr.Jj S:;:ck;r:s (1970). '.v'Fu!bri::.t was selected. to give the graduation day address by Chancellor N. F'cretre Taylor: and Senior Class President . Steve Thcrnburg from a rrcup of five UNC V- . a-- a f ; ,. -: - ifftC ' ". The budget committee's proposal will be -Ij-eviewe'd" by ""the "JomT Appropriations Conference Committee when it meets Monday to. draft a final budget bill to be presented to the legislative session which begins May 3. The budget committee is composed of members of the House Base Budget Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee. The committee has recommended $49 million in possible budget cuts, not counting the $ 10 million that w ould be available from the utilities sale, subject to approval of the entire General Assembly. I i j I i i is i 18 f IS the Carrboro residents Is a main Issue in communities. towns. To Carrboro. the benefits of merger would be overwhelming according to several administrators from both towns. However, both groups acknowledge that resistance in Carrboro is prohibitively strong in spite of these potential benefits. And there are no indications that it will diminish in the near future. What is it, wonder many observers, that prevents Carrboro from seeing the light? From taking advantage of all it stands to gain from merger with such a comparatively affluent town as Chapel Hill? What it is, reply both young and old in Carrboro, is a deeply-rooted fear of losing identity as a town, of becoming West Chapel Hill instead of Carrboro. Chapel Hill is the home of the University and Memorial Hospital and has maintained an image of a liberal, educated community. Please turn to page . i t.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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April 26, 1976, edition 1
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