St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 22

ST. LOUIS POST DISPATCH THURSDAY, JULY 21,1977 ONE OF TWO SECTIONS 1-2NW One-Woman Army Holds Off Shopping Center Development to plans already approved for a 148-unit residence for the elderly on the northwestern side of Bluff Park Drive and Charbonier Road. The petitioners, Cardinal Ritter Institute and trustees of Flamingo Oaks Subdivision, want to reduce the number of parking to 86 from 300. In addition, they want to increase the number of units to 150. John King, an attorney for the petitioners, said the changes would See CENTER, Page 2N-W rfeHEfir rt rCCMBMlliLy towns nrADtrriJ ClHssS 1J Trustees in EDMUNDSON have rehired two patrolmen dismissed last year for disciplinary reasons.

After a rehearing, the newly constituted board reinstated Harold Schumacher and Raymond Heller. Edmundson has eight police officers. The ST. JOHN City Council is seeking bids for street resurfacing and curb work on Edmundson Road between St. Charles Rock Road and Roslan Place.

A contract will be accepted Aug. 1 and the work completed by Sept. 15. The Board of Aldermen in VELDA VILLAGE has renewed its contract with the North Area Municipal Police Association. The quarterly dues for this year are $3000, up 20 per cent from last year.

The association provides police dispatching and administrative services for five St. Louis County municipalities. Em i r. 1 jg cue. The group wants Wellston to have a runoff in the mayoral race in the next city elections.

WELLSTON PICKETS: The Concerned Citizens of the Wellston Community picketing the Normandy Township Democratic Club barbe schools By LINDAS. WALLACE Of the Post-Dispatch Staff What turned Mrs. Phyllis Grumich into a marketing researcher, counting every shopping center within a two-mile radius of her north St. Louis County home? It's simple: her dislike for a proposal by Fox Lake Plaza, to build a shopping center on New Halls Ferry Road and Vaile Avenue. "We don't need any more shopping centers," Mrs.

Grumich told the St. Louis County Planning Commission at a hearing Monday. She then listed in detail the sites and vacancy rates of the 10 shopping centers in the area. Commissioner Ruth Malvern seemed to agree with Mrs. Grumich.

"I don't think that you have demonstrated a need," she told Donald R. Carmody, an attorney for the developer. The developer is requesting that tract on New Halls Ferry Road be rezoned to commercial for construction of a 52,000 square-foot shopping center about half the size of one of those cited by Mrs. Grumich. Carmody argued that the proposed shopping center would differ from the others.

"The others are regional shopping centers. The stores in this center would be based upon the needs of the neighborhood," he said. Mrs. Grumich told the commissioners that a majority of the area residents opposed the development and said: "How can a 'neighborhood store' be successful if the neighbors don't want it there?" About 50 residents of the area spoke out at the meeting against the project. They said approval would open the neighborhood to other commercial enterprises.

Other residents said they were concerned that students at Hazelwood High School would loiter in the proposed shopping center. "That parking lot would become a parking lot for the students nine months out of the year," Mrs. Grumish said. "And it would only enhance the chances of drug pushers to sell their poison to our children." Carmody discounted such objections, he told the Planning Commission that projects like the shopping center were needed in the "growing North County area." He conceded that growth had slowed recently but said commercial developments might attract homebuyers to the area. The commission took the matter under study and is expected to make on Aug.

1 a recommendation to the County Council, which makes the final decision. In other action, the commission took under study a request for a amendment Wellston Critics Want Naylor Out, The WELLSTON Board of Education is expected to consider next week a proposal to go "back to basics" in the district's high school curriculum. Business Manager Vaughn Meglan said that the proposed changes would tighten graduation requirements and eliminate some elective courses. The district carries an academic rating, the lowest given by the state to any district in metropolitan St. Louis.

Seek Run-off Election Next Year $12,000 Falls Out Of Air For Ritenour District By DAVID FINK Of the Post-Dispatch Staff group of irate Wellston residents wants to change municipal election procedures. Their aim: to give a black or at least someone other than mayor William C. Naylor a better chance to become mayor. i 'About 35 members of the Concerned Citizens of The Wellston Community 'picketed the Normandy Township Democratic Club's weekend fund-raising picnic to marshal support for a run-off election in the next mayoral election, set for next April. Lloyd Brown, a leader of the group, said that a run-off could prevent the election of someone like Naylor, whom Brown said was "unresponsive and does not have the support of a majority of the citizens." Naylor, who is white, won the past mayoral election in 1974 with only 388 of nearly 1200 votes cast.

He was opposed by seven black who split the remaining votes in the nearly all-black municipality. Under a runoff, the two top vote-getters in the election would meet in a second vote. In 1974, such a system would have had pitted Naylor against William Gardner and Brown said that Gardner would have won. "I have strong suspicions," Brown said, "that Mr. Naylor paid some of the candidates to run against him so they would split the black vote and ensure his victory.

I don't think more than two of the other candidates seriously wanted to become mayor." The others, Brown said, were "strong Naylor supporters. I find it hard to believe that they would try to defeat the mayor." Brown conceded, however, that he lacked proof for his suspicions. Naylor replied that "Brown's suspicions have nothing to do with the facts. I didn't pay anyone to run against me." When Naylor was asked whether he would favor a run-off election in future years, he said, "I would be amenable to anything the people in this community would vote for." Wellston City Attorney Raymond T. Harris said that a run-off election could be arranged by changing the form of city government.

Petitions signed by at least 25 per cent of the voters in the last election would be enough to put the proposed change on the ballot. Brown said, "A run-off would give a black a better chance to become mayor and I think a black would be more responsive. It's hard to conceive how a white could be sensitive to a population that is nearly all black." Louis. Ozark contended that the rent it pays on property that it leases at the airport also should be tax-exempt. But the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that the value of tax-exempt property to the lessee is taxable.

So Ozark agreed this year to an out-of-court settlement that required the airline to pay $12,000 in lieu of back taxes. At that time, all parties involved thought that the parcel was in the old Berkeley School District. But officials later determined that it was in the Ritenour School District. So the Ritenour School Board became a willing recipient of the $12,000 check. The district will continue to receive taxes on the parcel from Ozark Air Lines.

It wasn't exactly as if Michael Anthony, from the old "Millionaire" television series, had just given the' Ritenour Board of Education a check for $1,000,000. But for a school district that had to dip into its reserves to cover a $1,200,000 gap this year, the $12,000 payment that it received from Ozark Air Lines last week was a pleasant surprise. Ozark's check resulted from an out-of-court settlement of a tax dispute between the airline and the old Berkeley School District, which was incorporated in 1975 into the reorganized Ferguson-Florissant School District. The dispute centered on property at Lambert Field, which is tax-exempt because it is owned by the City of St. Howell School District Keeps Growing nn 0 El gill Further divisions are expected by 1992 and 1998, with an "educational park" in each.

Each 100-acre park would contain a high school, a junior high school and an elementary school. Each of the four districts would have its own board and control its own schools. The Board of Education has approved the growth plan. And although Henderson says that it remains highly tentative, he says that it helps to calm him after those bad dreams. year-round classes in all but the high school.

"This gives us the" equivalent of 25 additional classrooms every year, but we're still crowded," Henderson says. Henderson and Russell say that if the projection of 32,000 pupils by the year 2000 is accurate, the district itself will have to be subdivided. "By 1985, the present district may be divided in two," Russell said. Each would have 5000 students but could expand to 9000. Commission will purchase the 8000-acre University of Missouri Extension Center property.

"We have terrible visions of the Missouri Extension Center being turned into subdivisions," said Russell. "That would be devastating, so we're working for zoning to avoid residential growth." Indicative of the district's growth are the 14 school bond issues that its voters have passed in the last 14 years. Another sign shows in the MM IMF Si Lib fe that figure. The enrollment has jumped to 6700 from 2900 only 10 years ago. And that sort of growth presents plenty of short-term problems.

One is the tax base. Although the district has developed rapidly in recent years, most of the growth has been residential. That means relatively stiff assessments on housing to make up for the lack of business and industry in the tax base. "New homes currently provide tax revenues that are high enough butall the new homes have new kids," he said. "Light industry and commerce are the only things that are going to save us." Russell and other district officials hope that businesses and industries will join the housing boom along Highway 94, a main artery for growth in the area.

Another hope is that the Missouri Conservation I'Gene Henderson says that he suffers from two recurring nightmares. In (ine, faceless school children wait hours for buses that never come. In the other, hungry students wait in a lunch line that has no fyod. 1 1 Henderson is superintendent in St. Charles County's Francis Howell (School District smack in the middle of the fastest-growing area of Missouri's 'fastest-growing county.

i The 6700-student district ajready has exceeded this year's projected growth rate of 5.5 per cent and is finding its services and facilities overloaded, That's why officials have drawn up a proposal to barry the district through jthe turn of the century by splitting off new districts, much as a growing body Splits off new cells, Under the plan, devised by assistant superintendent iRoger Russell, the district gradually would become four districts of about 8000 (Students each, ji The present district already is nudging toward i iu II BbsmM 4th Annual 03 "3 (jj) Mm MM A INSULATION Mill rwt. uraviiiA i Chamber Listings .75 NOT WATER Maiiooxes in norm m. SOUUt WINDOWS Louis County are bulging With 45,612 copies of the SON CONTROL FILM SOLAR HEATING Florissant Valley Chamber bf Commerce's 1977-78 JULY 22-23 SUN mniltfllN SALE! thm m.i-m off I Business ana roiessionai cau wow 558-3111 MM" 4ii pirectory. Additional copies are available at the fchamber office, 1060 Rue fjt. Catherine in Florissant.

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