The Palm Beach Post du lieu suivant : West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 80

Tom Kelly ihePost On the Hot Seat at Channel 42 Daniel Mahoney, Jr Publisher I Saflofy President Thomas A KeNy Editor Samuel J. Pepper Managing Editor Clarke B. Ash Associate Editor PUBLISHED DAILY IN WEST PALM BEACH. FLORIDA SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 1983 Better Roads Ahead on eight hours longer each day. Channel 42 strategy has been to offer "alternative programming" (such as scheduling the nightly McNeil-Lehrer Report.

30 minutes earlier than its Miami rival) whenever possible, although both channels run major PBS offerings simultaneously. WPBT's annual budget is many times greater than WHRS, which is just over $1 million. Sang has some ideas on doubling that in order to provide the production talent and facilities to do the local programming he wants. He currently has a representative from the Boston fund-raising firm Haney Associates Inc. taking local soundings for potential sources of support.

Haney ran the recent St. Mary's Hospital campaign. This weekend, Channel 42 began its two-week pitch for donations as part of the national PBS March Festival. Some 50 community leaders will go before the cameras in the "windows" between programs to tell you how much they enjoy public television. Concurrently, Sang and his directors are canvassing major local businesses to solicit corporate support.

"Response has been very positive," he says. Channel 42 already has overcome one major hurdle by getting its signal carried on "basic tier" service by all the cable systems in Martin and Palm Beach counties. That removed the station's handicap of being difficult to find on the UHFband for thousands of viewers. Now that people can find WHRS, Sang wants to make sure that they will choose to watch its programs. He has many plans, but none of them includes him as a television star.

"I co-hosted an interview program with a state legislator and some high school students last fall," he says, smiling, "and after I watched the tape I became convinced that the best place for me is behind the cameras." Lewis M. (Dusty) Sang is one of those rare and fortunate individuals who manages to make his living doing something he loves. Sang is an attorney who specializes in entertainment, corporate and real estate law, writes adventure novels and runs a publishing business on the side. In his spare time, he serves as unsalaried chairman of the board of South Florida Public Telecommunications parent company of WHRS radio and television Channel 42. Sang went to Northwestern University in Ev-anston.

111., to study radio, television and film back in the late 1960s, but realized "it wasn't enough" after he had earned his degree. So he went on to law school at DePaul. Then he built a practice based on contract negotiations for entertainers, including some of his college friends who had joined Chicago's famed Second City comedy troupe. When he agreed to become chairman of the SFPT board on Jan. 12, the 34-year-old Sang placed his credentials squarely on one of the hottest seats in the county.

The board has been riddled with controversy from its beginning and the 8-month-old public TV station has undergone more than its share of life-threatening crises. In addition, Channel 42 still suffers from a local acceptance problem among the many diehard fans and contributors to Miami's established WPBT, Channel 2. So Sang has spent his first two months on the job doing low-key, behind-the-scenes work: "fact finding, reorganizing and developing a framework," in his words. He is fond of talking about building frameworks because one of his most inspiring law professors stressed the "framework approach to conflict reolutions." Here are some of the interlocking pieces of the framework, which Sang expects to take a year to complete: "The radio station FM Stereo 91 is a mature, successful classical music operation that works beautifully and ranks 15th among the 33 stations in this market. I don't see any reason to change it.

"Channel 42, on the other hand, has no highbrow image no image at all but I'd rather have no image than a terrible image. I see it as a clean slate and that enables us to do a lot of things. "I'm convinced that we have a Palm Beach County-Martin County audience that is interested in a community-serving station. This station will work because the people who live here are interested in learning about themselves and each other and we intend to become a kind of catalyst for the community. Channel 42 should be interactive, like a telephone." Sang envisions documentary-type programming on local subjects, live coverage of civic meetings and sports events, discussion programs involving local people, performances by local arts groups as well as the best national offerings from the Public Broadcasting System.

At present, Channel 42 is on the air from p.m. daily. WPBT, its regional competitor, is trucks of pounds. While farmers have had it tough during the Reagan recession, so have others and no one can reasonably argue that farm trucks don't wear away the roadbed. A much better case for relief was made by financially troubled Eastern Airlines, which at one point was faced with paying $10 million more in new gas taxes.

As adopted, the tax bill allows Florida-based airlines to deduct up to $5 million in fuel taxes from their corporate income taxes paid to the state. The new tax still represents a substantial increase for a job-rich industry which does not use state highways. For Gov. Bob Graham, who promoted the gas tax increases during his reelection campaign, enactment of the transportation package at the special session is a political victory. It undoubtedly enhanced his standing with legislators who have been somewhat contemptuous of his leadership in the past.

Passage of the gas tax also clears the way for the Legislature to give its full attention during the upcoming regular session to funding the state's education system. Public schools, too, have critical unmet needs. Florida legislators acted responsibly to meet the state's long neglected road needs. After three days of nervous debate and flaring tempers, lawmakers enacted a $237 million package of tax increases which will add $15.60 to the typical motorist's tax bill about $13.60 in additional gas taxes and $2 in increased license tag taxes. That is not much but it provides the state Transportation Department with sufficient new revenue to implement its five-year rehabilitation program to alleviate the congestion choking 48 percent of the state's urban roadways, and to repave the 21 percent of the state's highways pitted with potholes.

Key to the package was the indexing of state gas taxes to price instead of gallonage. Realistically, the change should have been made 10 years ago. State officials are gambling now that even as the OPEC cartel falls apart, gas prices will never drop to 1970 levels. Legislators wisely reduced that risk by decreeing that the new sales tax be computed on a "minimum price" which will be adjusted only annually. Legislators buckled under pressure from farmers and reduced license tag increases for midsize 1953 1965 THWAttG Vote for Dreher Park SOUTHERN ft rroposea 29.1 AcrV Expansion of Dreher Park i rc 1933 I Substation Pgp: West Palm Beach voters have an unparalleled opportunity to expand their park facilities.

To do so, The Post recommends they approve on Tuesday an $8 million bond issue for acquisition of 29.1 acres on the north side of Dreher Park. An important effect of the purchase would be to preclude a high-intensity development that would be incompatible with the neighborhood, but there is more to it than that. West Palm Beach has made no major park acquisitions in a long time and there are not many suitable tracts left. Dreher Park already serves the area with a combination of active and passive facilities, including a zoo and the Science Museum and Planetarium, and the acquisition will enable the city to offer even more. Further, the city commission has pledged that only as many bonds as actually are needed will be sold in the event the price is less than $8 million.

It's a good deal both for today and for tomorrow. IWEJte HERE WTKBia SUMMIT BLVD. Letters to the Editor- Jobs With a Legacy EPA Can't Go Easy When Lives Are Involved The U.S. House has sent to the Senate a carefully targeted $60 Imillion measure to provide jobs in national parks and jforests for unemployed youths. 1 Youth unemployment is scandalously high 24 percent among Jail teenagers and higher among jblack youth and the conservation corps bill is the first in many lyears to attack the problem directly.

Regrettably, the program is be-ting attacked by House Republicans as "a symbol of the 1930s," ith the implication that Franklin Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps was less than successful. In fact, the CCC provided hope, dignity and wages for a large number of the unemployed. Moreover, the trails, lodges and roads that were built and the caverns that were lighted have subsequently been enjoyed by millions. The job corps of the 1970s left similar symbols of success the reconstruction of Fort Caroline at the mouth of the St. Johns River, for instance, and the reconstruction of hiking trails through Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

To be sure, the jobs to be created are only temporary, but officials of the Forest and Park Services have long pleaded with Congress for such labor to upgrade facilities. Many of the youths to be employed will be earning their first paychecks. They will also be learning something about the skills and personal discipline it takes to hold a job and gaining the self-confidence that comes from successfully completing a task. Most importantly, when the corpsmen have completed their work, they will have left a legacy to be enjoyed by future generations just as previous corps have. That's a sound base for any federal job program.

Action is needed now because weapons development has reached a critical stage. Cruise missiles are not verifiable. Positioning Pershing II missiles only six minutes from Soviet targets will place the Russians on hair-trigger alert. Thus our fate and the survival of civilization itself may rest with a faulty computer chip, like the one that touched off 147 false alerts of our own recently. Common Cause, following a poll of its 230,000 members, has committed itself to the campaign for an immediate freeze followed by negotiated reductions to end the nuclear arms race.

Its chairman, Archibald Cox, has stated: "This is the transcendent issue of our time. Unless people can make their will felt on this, there is not likely to be any future in this world, certainly not any civilization as we know the term." Common Cause has set up a nationwide Nuclear Arms Alert Network and invited the public to join its congressional lobbying effort. A resolution introduced by Reps. Markey and Conte (HJ2) calls for a bilateral verifiable freeze on the testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Among the 160 representatives co-sponsoring the resolution are Florida's Lehman, Pepper, Smith and Fascell.

Sidney Aberman West Palm Beach Growth Means War The American and Russian arms negotiators walk in the Geneva woods and come up with a solution. Washington and Moscow promptly disavow them. Which calls to mind the words of President Eisenhower: "People want peace so much that governments had better get out of the way and let them have it." No such luck! Governments everywhere take maximum care of themselves and minimum care of their people. An intelligent and realistic approach to arms control and peace would be for nations to say to each other, "Look, if we both do what we decently can to stop expanding our populations, we won't have to expand our economies. This will eliminate the principal cause of war." Without this basis for agreement, we would be as foolish to trust the Russians as the Russians would be to trust us or the Chinese.

Without this basis, war is as inevitable as ever, look at history. In decades of disarmament talks has this sine qua non ever been discussed or even mentioned? Michael Grogan Lake Park Mismanaging Florida Water As victims of the South Florida Water Management District and the Corps of Engineers during the past five years, we certainly appreciated your editorial "Drowning the Park!" It pointed out the cozy relationship between the Corps and Water Management District and the arrogant attitude of their officials. As property-owning residents along C-23 Canal in Martin County, we have seen both agencies create more water problems and destroy our property values in the process. However, it seems as taxpayers, we have no say as to how our taxpaying dollars are being spent. -Mr.

and Mrs. Jack Follrath Palm City Time for FPL To Cut Price One of our problems is exorbitant Florida Power Light bills. How many times in the last five to six years have we heard, "Arab oil costs have gone up so we have to raise prices. Get the Arabs to reduce costs and we will do likewise." Well Arab oil costs have gone down when I will get a reduction in my fuel bill. If we had an elected Public Service Commission, consumers would have some voice and some ceiling would be placed on greed.

Jim O'Meara Boynton Beach Pope Pleads for Rights Now we know what "getting the government off our backs" is really all about. In the light of recent EPA developments, it means going easy on polluters and allowing them to evade full responsibility for prompt and effective cleanup of toxic wastes in contaminated sites and dumps in many parts of the country. Coincidentally, mine union officials report violations of the Mine Safety Act in the nation's mines. They include explosive concentrations of methane gas and emissions of respirable dust twice the level determined to cause black lung, conditions which, oddly enough, are considered "not serious" by federal enforcement officers. Self-serving bureaucrats and unnecessary red tape notwithstanding, federal intervention in protecting the public interest and ameliorating poverty, oppression and exploitation of the young, old and defenseless is consonant with the Constitution's commitment in the Preamble "to promote the general welfare." Irving Gold Jupiter Standing Up to Bad Guys Thoughts of James Watt, Ann Burford and the South Florida Water Management District remind me of an old western movie were the bad guys ride into town and take over.

Just like those old Hollywood movies, unless the townsfolk unite, these and other government agencies that lack environmental concern well continue to take advantage of us all. Envrionmental groups like the Sierra Club and Audubon Society are out there and need your active support. Let us not fall victim to the problems of our neighbors in Dade and Broward because of apathy. Stephen A. Giunta Jupiter Helping the Animals Thank you so much for trying to help the animals (in the Everglades) with your editorial, "Drowning the Park." No matter what happens, they always come out on the short end.

Thank you for speaking out for those who have no voice. Marian Penhorwood Stuart To Assure a Future Congress this month will consider legislation calling on the administration to negotiate a mutual verifiable nuclear weapons freeze with the Soviet Union. A similar bill would have passed last year had one representative changed his vote. Mean and hundreds of local government resolutions show that most Americans favor a nuclear freeze as a constructive NATlOMAL EOPHEMISKX CLEARINGHOUSE Pope John Paul H's visit to Central America is a disappointment to those who hoped he would make human rights the exclusive province of either the left or the right. "The promotion and defense of human rights," he told the Intera-merican Court of Human Rights, "is not a mere ideal, however noble and elevated, but in practice abstract and without organisms of 'effective control, but rather something that should have available effective instruments of verification and if need be appropriate Sanctions." By choosing the San Jose-based court for this address, he averted the appearance of having any particular government in mind, be it leftist regime in Nicaragua or rightist governments in El -vador and Guatemala.

He also no comfort to those who would give lip service to human 'rights and thjnk that is enough. He expressed "profound sad-nejs" over the execution of six Supposed terror in Guatemala Upon his arrival in Nicaragua, however, the cool manner in which he greeted members of the Sandi-nista government contrasted with the warm embraces he had for the nation's bishops, who often have been at odds with that government recently. Some have felt that because he is a Pole, the pope would see repression as coming only from the left, that he wouild divide the world into Marxists and good guys. Others have wanted to use the visit in support of the "theology of liberation" by which priests even have become guerrillas in some cases. The pope satisfied neither camp.

He is steadfast in his belief that the church must stand up against all forms of repression but that it must do so from outside the political system. His words can only strengthen the cause of genuine peace and freedom in a very JJroubled corner of the world. Letters should be brief and include the writer's signature, address and daytime telephone number for verification. All letters are subject to condensation. Letters will not be considered if the writer has had a letter published in the previous 60 days.

Letters should be typed (double-spaced) or printed. Send letters to: Letters to the Editor, ine rost, Drawer west Falm Beach, Fla. 33402 alternative to the nrojected nuclear buildup. 4.