Friday, May 28, 1976
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Page Three
Frda, a 2, 7&TH ICIGNDALY-geThe
Council OK's 1976 budget
By MIKE NORTON
After weeks of tooth-and-nail political infighting, the
Ann Arbor City Council calmly and quietly passed an
amended 1976 city budget yesterday.
The lean budget proposed last month by City Ad-
misistrator Sylvester Murray was amended after a
final four and a half hour working session Wednesday
night. Mayor Pro Tem Robert Henry (R-3rd Ward),
head of the six-man Republican majority, formally
proposed the amendment during yesterday's meeting.
HENRY'S AMENDMENT deleted the funds set aside
for Council pay in the budget, as well as money for-
merly allocated to city vehicles and data processing
expenses. In addition, it gave approval of funds for
two new fire engines, an extra housing inspector, and
$20,001 for the city's Parks and Recreation Department.
The Council pay appropriation became superfluous
when a District Court judge ruled earlier this month
that pay for Council members was illegal.
Both political factions seemed proud at having been
able to reach a compromise on the budget. "I'm very
satisfied," said Henry. "We had a situation where
neither side could get everything it wanted, and there
had to be some give and take."
DURING THE past week, the compromise between
Republicans (whose budget priorities stressed a need
for improved city services) and Democrat supporters
of social and housing programs was slowly hammered
out.
The only sour note of the day was struck by Council
member Liz Keogh (D-1st Ward), who called the whole
idea of drawing up a budget "an exercise in futility"
because department heads who wanted to exceed the
budget would always find ways to do so.
"There's lots of funny little ways to hide lots of
fanny little things," said Keogh. "I'm a little dis-
couraged about this whole business."
MAYOR ALBERT Wheeler agreed with Keogh, say-
ing that at some points the process "becomes almost
a game." But, Wheeler added, the problems involved
in budgetary loopholes are inherent in the City Charter
and require extensive change to be corrected.
In other business, Council approved an application
for federal funds to renovate Chabad House, a Jewish
student center in the central caipus area. Arguments
over the application centered around the question of
using public funds for an establishment of an obviously
religious nature.
The majority of Council members, however, agreed
that the importance of a private organization being
able to renovate and maintain one of the large old
buildings in the campus area outweighed other con-
siderations.
A proposal to approve a site for a possible multi-
purpose recreation center was withdrawn from the
Council agenda. Mayor Wheeler said that a "bipartisan
agreement had been reached" to let the proposal drop
because of a lack of city funds.
Syria adds approval to
peace force agreement
DAMASCUS (A') - Syria joined Israel yesterday in approving
a six-month extension of the United Nations peacekeeping force
separating their opposing forces on the Golan Heights.
U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim announced after
meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad that "Syria has now
given its consent to te prolongation . . . without attaching any
stiical conditions."
ISRAEL announced last week it would agree to continuing
the 1,194-man U.N.. Disengagement Observer Force beyond its
scheduled expiration Monday provided no new political conditions
were demanded.
Waldheim left Damascus for New York where a Security
(Csncil meeting was scheduled for today to approve extending
the UNDOF mandate.
Waldheim told newsmen at Damascus airport that Assad "is
sery keen to progress in the way of peace." He said his talks with
Assad, which began Wednesday, were "very cordial and con-
strctise." lIe added that Assad asked for "clarifications" on the
Mideast situation, and wanted "intensification of negotiations."
FINNISH Lt. Gen. Ensio Siilasvuo, chief coordinator of U.N.
torces in the Middle East, drove from Damascus through the
buffer zone and into Israel to deliver an official note from Wald-
heim to Foreign Minister Yigal Allon informing Israel of Syria's
decision.S
See PEACE, Page S
Where's King Kong?
A 1926 Swallow biplane, piloted by E. E. "Buck" Hilbert of United Air lines, flies past Chi-
cago's Sears Tower Wednesday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of commercial aviation.
it CMSE K CALL cY
An open and shut case
Faced with a bandit's gun, California
restaurant m a n a g e r Robert Quan
couldn't get his hands to stop shaking
long enough to open the cash register.
When the gunman told him to quit stall-
ing, Quan shouted in desperation, "I
can't get it to work. Why don't you take
the whole thing with you?" The gunman
obligingly picked up the cash register
and ran out the door.
Happenings
- . . Youth liberation will show the
film Campamento today at 8:00 in Rm.
126 E. Quad . . . There will be Inter-
national Folk Dancing at 8:30 under-
neath the Dental School . . . Tyagi -Ji,
a cosmic transmitter, will hold a session
tonight at 7:00 at Friends Meeting House,
1420 Hill. Admission is free,
Weather or not
Today skies will be cloudy and tem-
Ieratures pleasant as the mercury should
't 70. Rain is likely by early evening,
and lows will be in the low 50's. Tomor-
rag will be sunny with highs in the
mid 70's
Are leaders obsolete?
WASHINGTON W) - Efforts to stop
the explosive growth of government
agencies probably will be doomed to fail-
ure no matter who is elected president,
according to a study published yester-
day by the Brookings Institution.
The study also questioned whether
any good would result from effort to
streamline the federal bureaucracy, a
step such hopefuls as President Ford,
Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter have
proposed.
"AT''EMPTING to cram the com-
plexity and diversity of political institu-
tions into a preconceived and rather ar-
bitrary pattern of symmetry and sim-
plicity and neatness, it could be argued,
would do more violence to the system
and generate more disorder than allow-
ing it to establish its own untidy for-
mat," it said.
The Brookings Institution, which was
founded in 1927, describes itself as a non-
partisan economic and political research
Local Motion allots funds
By GEORGE LOBSENZ
Local Motion, the city's alternative
fund - raising and educational co-opera-
tive, held its second annual disburse-
ment meeting last month, moving to dis-
tribute the lion's share of its nearly
$2000 in funds for local service organiz-
ations to the Community Center Pro-
ject.
The two-year-old group allocated $750
to the Community Center for two salari-
ed positions and toward the purchase of
a freezer for its free food program; and
financed a $200 loan to the center.
THE REMAINING funds were dis-
tributed thus:
-4325 to the Women's Crisis Center
organization,
The study, by Brookings econom+st
Hlerbert Kaufman, said more executive
branch agencies and units, 53, were cre-
ated during the first term of President
Nixon than in any other presidential
term in the nation's history.
ANOTHER 23 were created in 1973,
the first year of the second Nixon term.
The numbers include agencies and
units created by presidential order, by
congressional legislation, by department-
al orders and by government reorganiz-
ation plans.
Kaufman analyzed 175 agencies that
existed in 1923, and found that 148 of
them - 85 per cent - were still func-
tioning 50 years later in 1973. Only 27
had disappeared, while 240 new ones
were created, for a 1973 total of 394, he
said.
He did not include the Defense De-
partment, defense agencies or the U.S.
Postal Service in the study, in order to
keep it manageable, he said.
Kaufman said that in many cases the
names of agencies were changed, but
not the agencies themselves.
He said in an interview that a major
conclusion of his study is that the crea-
tion of agencies "is not necessarily link-
ed to the partisan affiliation of an in-
cumbent president or either, apparently,
to his ideology."
to provide partial funding for a Crisis
Center coordinator;
-$300 to be used as bail money for
indigent defendants;
-$285 to the Free People's Clinic for
a film projector;
-4210 to Herself, the women's news-
paper.
LOCAL MOTION still has $130 in loan
money available to local non-profit hu-
man service organizations.
The organization came into existence
some two years ago when several non-
profit service groups got together to talk
about the drying up of federal funds-
money essential to the functioning of
See LOCAL, Page 6