HASH BASH See editorial page cl Eighty-Nine Years of Editorial Freedom 4:941Pi UNINSPIRING High-42 Low-32 See Today for details Vol. LXXXIX, No. 146 Ann Arbor, Michigan-Tuesday, April 3, 1979 Ten Cents Ten Pages plus Supplement Belcher re-elected over Kenworthy; GOP hangs on to council maj By ELISA ISAACSON Republican Mayor Louis will hold his seat for another tw edging out his opponent, D Jamie Kenworthy, 49 per c per cent, according to u results. Belcher, had confident predicting victory ever since' a,':a paign began, ... KENWORTHY TOOK the le as the first results trinkled stayed ahead of Belcher throw Sof the evening. But late lastr the final results from Rer dominated Fifth Ward precinc in, Kenworthy's lead . .:diminished. w The vote count was prolo . . . . . ,unexpected complications with f -- punchcard voting system.I . workers were forced to count the computer cards by han magnifying glasses in some cas Belcher had touted his ow during the campaign, citing his patching program and city/I T boundary agreements as tw \ ,major achievements. The ma orit served only one year at his post, since he won in a special election that was Belcher held after Belcher challenged the wo years, results of the 1977 race in which he lost emocrat by a single vote. 'ent to 48 AFTER A RECOUNT of those votes, nofficial it was discovered that 20 Ann Arbor Township members had voted illegally ly been in the city election. When a new election the cam- was held, Belcher beat then-Mayor Democrat Albert Wheeler by 179 votes. ad early At the Democratic watering hole, in, and Bacchus Gardens, Kenworthy was ad- ugh most dressed by three inquisitive youngsters night, as who asked him the meaning of the )ublican- "Kenworthy For Mayor" button on his cts came lapel. "The tag means I'm running for slowly mayor," the former Councilman ex- plained ruefully. "It doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to be nrged by mao. h the new Election "I have no bitterness," Kenworthy some of said while the results were still far from d, using tallied. "I'm glad I did this. I under- ses. stand the people who voted against me more than those who didn't vote. I won- n record der how they connect themselves with s pothole the rest of the world." township "I like the students and I think I un- o of his derstand them. I argue with their ayor has mood." Hood, Senunas, Daily photos by Andy Freeberg and Dan Oberdorfer MAYOR LOUIS BELCHER calculates election returns last night at a party defeated Democrat Jamie Kenworthy'(inset) by a slim margin. celebrating his return to office for a second term. The Republican mayor GOP WIN INDICATES CONSERVATION TREND: Be.iche r By ELISA ISAACSON A Daily News Analysis Carrying the conservative trend of .the late seventies into the next decade, Ann Arbor last night re-installed its Republican mayor, Louis Belcher. The GOP victory came as no real surprise; among other reasons, Belcher is the incumbent, Ann Arbor is traditionally a Republican town, and yesterday's drizzles were bound to keep at least a few Democrats away from the polls. But those basic premises do not tell half the story. BELCHER DISPLAYS both strong leadership abilities and a bowling- buddy image that are comforting and attractive to a good many voters. focus{ Belcher has proven his effic guiding City Council meeting evidenced by the fact that he adjourns the meetings befor unlike his predecessor, Albert M who allowed audience parti sessions to go on far beyond mid Belcher has been visibly un table at times when extensive stalled decisions at Council many voters respond positivel mayor's policy of getting a j quickly. Kenworthy, on the other always manages to make issu complex than his opponent Belcher began patching potho mediately upon his election la Kenworthy told voters that th onquick s iency in cannot be fixed right away, due to lack s - as of adequate funds, and proposed a more usually comprehensive and time:consuming e 11:30, road renovation program. Wheeler, Belcher responds to questions with cipation snappy, streamlined, and easy-to- night. understand answers. By contrast, olutions comfor- debate - and y to the ob done r hand, es more . While oles im- ist year, e streets city elections '79 Kenworthy's responses are often more belabored and detailed than those of his counterpart. The Ann Arbor that Kenworthy described to the voters was in some ways not as nice a place to live as the Ann Arbor Belcher presented, Belcher's instant answers imply that the city's problems can be solved with the signing of a paper or the raising of a hand in vote. And indeed, with his "do- it-today" style of operating, he can of- ten push those decisions through com- mittees and Council and give the citizens the results they voted to see, whether or not those results are merely short-term solutions to long-range problems. Ann Arborites like to think their city is fiscally stable and healthy, and may have felt uncomfortable listening to Kenworthy telling them that the city's problems cannot be solved painlessly, but will require careful consideration and monetary investment. Even Belcher has said that Kenwor- thy is not in tune with many of the Ann Arbor voters in this sense. In a conser- vative city - which is what Ann Arbor is apparently becoming, with the dwin- dling of the student vote and the in- creasingly right-of-center character of See CITY, Page 10 Latta. Bell Republicans will continue their over- whelm ing 7-4 domination of city council for at least another year, with the vic- tory of incumbent E. Edward Hood in the Fourth ,Ward, and the expected strong showings by GOP incumbents Louis Senunas in the Third and Gerald Bell in the Fifth Ward.- Democratic incumbent Ken Latta won handily in the student-dominated First Ward, and Councilwoman Leslie Morris was unopposed in her reelection bid. THE TOP-HEAVY Republican 7-4 majority is significant, since it takes seven council votes to alter the city's budget. And once again, the unpredictable Fourth Ward proved to be a predictor of the citywide voting patterns for mayor. Hood narrowly beat challenger LeRoy Cappaert in that ward, while Mayor Louis Belcher was beating Democrat Jamie Kenworthy in late night unof- ficial results. The Republican incumbents, Louis Senunas and Gerald Bell, captured the traditionally Republican provinces in the Third and Fifth Ward, respectively. Senunas resisted a vigorous campaign by 27-year-old Democrat Halley Faust, 2,838-1,831. Senunas' 1,000-vote margin was narrower than expected for this staunchly Republican ward. Never- victorious theless, the Third Ward maintains its distinction of never having elected a Democrat since the ward system was revised in 1973. Two years ago, Senunas defeated his Democrat opponent by a solid 2-1 count. sGerald Bell's Fifth Ward victory over 31-year-old Democrat Carol Wallace by 1,312-1,249, signals the start of his third consecutive council term, making Bell City Council's senior representative.. Wallace, however, had attacked Bell' for initiating few measures of his own during his terms and for merely mimicking Republican Mayor Louis Belcher's positions. Bell, joined other Republican candidates in emphasizing the centrality of the citizen agner over rising taxes, recently inspired by greatly increased property tax assessments for many Ann Arbor homeowners. Bell stressed the tax bur- den for senior citizens particularly: "They have worked all their lives and (now) have been taxed out of their See CITY, Page 10 This story was written by Jeffrev Wolff from files from Judy Rako wsky and A lison Hirschel at Democratic headquarters and from Adrienne Lyons and Tom Mirga at Republican headquarters. Crisis eases at nuclear plant; engineers shrink gas bubble HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Engineers achieved a "dramatic decrease" yesterday in a gas bubble that has held a stranglehold on efforts to cool down the disabled Three Mile Island nuclear reactor. Plant and federal officials said the hydrogen bubble had shrunk to a much safer size and the reactor's tem- perature had dropped significantly. "I AM CERTAIN it is cause for op- timism," said Harold Denton, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) operations chief. He said the bubble was showing "a dramatic decrease in size." "I didn't expect such a rapid change," Denton said of the bubble. "I think it is safer than yesterday." Local Civil Defense officials, hopeful that the changes meant that the five- day crisis here had passed, never- theless maintained efforts to prepare for a precautionary evacuation of 25,000 residents still within a five-mile radius of the plant. BUT THE signals were clear. The situation had improved substantially. Yesterday, technicians continued ef- fort to eliminate the bubble com- pletely, chiefly by the method they have been using all along - letting the gas dissolve in the constantly circulating cooling water and then allowing it to escape from the water outside the reac- tor. Technicians also studied options on exactly how to achieve the "cold shut- down" which would go a long way to ending the crisis. George Troffer, an official with Metropolitan Edison, which operates- the facility, said radioactive releases had been halted at the site. AND NRC'S Denton said that radiation beaming from the plant was a low levels in a confined area. The latest developments gave of- ficials more time to cool down the reac- tor. The critical time for a possible ex- plosion from a chemical reaction within the reactor "has moved considerably out" from the five days Denton had predicted on Sunday, he said. It was the most encouraging statement to date from the NRC since Wednesday's accident, which had led the governor to urge pre-school children and pregnant women to stay See CRISIS, Page 5 Tuesd1ay " The nation faces the possibility of severe economic disruptions as a lockout of over 300,000 Teamsters spread across the country. See story, page 2. " Noted economist John Ken- neth Galbraith is calling on the Carter administration to institute mandatory wage and price con- trols. And in a speech Sunday in Ann Arbor, Galbraith told a crowd ut it 1Auditoriuum that the 2,000 party Although most University students boycotted the event, over two thousand people. celebrated the eighth annual Hash Bash on the Diag Sunday after- noon. Despite cold winds and a steady driz- zle, the crowd swelled throughout the afternoon. Roads were jammed around campus, and local food and liquor stores were unusually busy for a Sun- day afternoon. LIEUTENANT William Hoover of the Ann Arbor Police Department reported over a hundred "code violation" citations issued by the more than 40 of- ficers at the scene. These included marijuana possession and drinking- related offenses. In addition, Hoover said that more than 80 illegally parked cars were towed. "It was a crowd of people, many of whom were breaking laws," Hoover said yesterday. "And we were there to see what we could do to enforce (the ra)" In contrast to the more relaxed at- mospheres of past years, tension and hostility prevailed throughout the Bash. The crowd, packed tightly on the Diag and Graduate Library steps, chanted occasional pro-marijuana slogans, and cheered when signs were displayed supporting the cause of legalized pot. Between these-times, they cheered for at Hash Bash LSA faculty abolis hes its quorum rule. By LEONARD BERNSTEIN and JOHN SINKEVICS After recessing to "corral" ad- ditional professors into coming to its meeting, the Literary College (LSA) faculty narrowly passed a resolution esterday defining "quorum" as the mber of members present at any meeting. However, some student ob- taking action on various issues," said Willis in introducing his proposal. "It has wasted our time intolerably." When the meeting was first brought to order by Speech Professor William Colburn - presiding in place of Dean Billy Frye - the faculty had not reached a quorum. They reviewed non- voting items and rejected by one vote a -~ wm~~~w