St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 27

TT 5 FEB ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH ST. LOUISFRIDAY FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1993 3A City Is Taking Us For A Ride, Firms Say BILL McCLELLAN ON MY OWN cept has a great deal of merit." Mayor Vincent C. Schoemehl top aide, Milton F. Svetanics, conceived the plan.

Svetan-ics hopes the charge would generate about $3 million a year for the convention center expansion and possibly other tourism business. St. Louis County dedi- fund, he said. Car-rental companies also object to the way the city told them about the new fees by incorporating them in the proposed contracts for their airport concessions. The car-rental agencies say this is illegal; they argue there's been no city ordinance mandating the new fees.

Cowhey, the official at Budget Car and Truck Rental, said: "They're penalizing us for doing business with the city." Cowhey says attorneys had advised the companies they would be unable to pass along the costs to customers because "this is not a tax, even though it walks, cates a special hotel tax to pay for the convention center expansion. But the city must finance its share with its general fund, which pays for other city services. Svetanics says the fee is "part of the cost of doing business in a city facility." The rental-car industry benefits from city tourism, Svetanics added. The airport is "the most convenient and lucrative spot for rental I'm not going to get so much as a football ticket out of this, but it's going to cost over $1 million in lost revenue. 9 9 TERRY COWHEY of Budget Car and Truck Rental.

By Margaret Gillerman Of the Post-Dispatch Staff St. Louis officials believe they've found a way to finance the city's share of a stadium and expanded convention center downtown: a charge on rental cars at Lambert Field. But companies that rent cars at the airport object vehemently to the plan. To show their displeasure, Avis, Hertz, National, Alamo, Budget and Dollar rental-car companies boycotted the city's call for bids on car-rental concessions at the airport. Some companies have threatened to move from the airport to a nearby site to avoid the new fee.

And the rental companies also alerted the city that the issue might end up in court. "I'm not going to get so much as a football ticket out of this, but it's going to cost over $1 million in lost revenue," said Terry Cowhey, board chairman of Budget Car and Truck Rental in St. Louis. Under the plan, car-rental firms at Lambert would pay $2 a day for each car they rent, or a maximum charge of $20. Aldermanic President Thomas A.

Villa said because of the opposition and likelihood of legal action, "we all need to sit down and talk. We have to see if it's legal." Villa added: "We're looking for a source of revenue the tourist pays this particular con them at a competitive disadvantage. "The fee will drive a lot of our business to off-airport competitors," he said. "I have 125 jobs at stake in my company alone. If my airport operation goes out of business, my company goes down the tubes.

We are seriously investigating a legal challenge to the bid." At Lambert this week, several people renting cars seemed resigned to the idea of yet another tourist tax. Jim Nadeau, a businessman from Chicago, didn't like the idea, but he chuckled at a controversy over airports or stadiums. "I wouldn't like it, but I can't do anything about it," he said. "If you come to town and need a car, you need a car. If you go to New York and get a hotel room, hotel taxes and charges are more than 10 percent.

What can you do?" he shrugged as he picked up his bags. Meanwhile, St. Louis Comptroller Virvus Jones is making a push to ensure that at least one of the six rental-car concessions at the airport goes to a minority-run firm. The city counselor's office has said such "set-asides" are illegal in Missouri, but Jones argues that a law professor has given him an opposite opinion. City Counselor Jim Wilson said Thursday that his office was reviewing its position on the issue at the airport's request.

Boomers Hop Toward Mantra For The '90s THE VOICE on the other end of the phone belonged to Joe Boxerman. He was calling from Iowa. We were talking Boomer to Boomer. Boxerman was excited. "These aren't Clinton's exact words, but what he said was something like this: 'We will use innovative programs and challenge every prejudice in our search to find solutions for America's critical I can see why you're excited, I said.

Boxerman works for Maharishi Ma-hesh Yogi. Boomers remember him as the father of Transcendental Meditation. It was once the rage. You sat around, chanted a mantra and achieved inner peace. Boxerman started doing it 25 years ago.

In those days, Boomers were going to change the world. At the very least, we weren't going to get haircuts. talks and smells like one." He added: "The city says it needs money for the stadium I can understand that. What I can't understand is why they're going in the back door to do this. They hired some high-price legal advisers to get around doing it the right way and taking it to a referendum." Cowhey said also that because the fee affects only rental-car companies at the airport, it puts cars.

Villa said the Federal Aviation Administration might object to the plan. The FAA is expected to inform the city soon that it can no longer use money from the airport for city purposes. But Svetanics said the money from this new fee was "not going to the airport." It would go directly to the city's convention and tourism Then things changed. By the late '70s, most of us had real jobs and, consequently, short hair. Still, we were sympathetic to those who had not joined the Establishment.

I was working on a newspaper in Phoenix Maharishi during those i ati i Yjt.n 1 Larry WilliamsPost-Dispatch LEFT: Sheriff's Deputy Donald R. Van Jr. lurking outside the St. Charles County Courthouse on Thursday to nab traffic violators who drive away from the courthouse without a drivers license. ABOVE: Van steps out from behind the car and makes an arrest.

The suspect, Janet Boenker, 33, of St. Charles, was caught driving away with a revoked license. No License, No Driving" And Deputy Is Watching St. Charles County Stalks Violators had his wife and children in the car with him. While Runyon watched from a distance, he recalled: "He opens the door for her a gentleman and goes around and gets in the driver's seat." Judge Cunningham says he regards charges of driving with a suspended or revoked license as serious.

"It may not be the most heinous crime, he said. "Clearly, it takes as much intent to do that as anything else When they walk away and drive away, I'm not amused." He says he averages one case a week in which he sends someone to jail after the person has been nabbed by a deputy outside the courthouse. As for Van and other sheriff's deputies who bird-dog the offenders, Cunningham says, "It's good police work." Sometimes the violator outruns Van. Never mind. "If they stop for me, I arrest them," he says.

"If they don't stop for me, the ticket's in the mail." By Nordeka English Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Sure, it's a dirty job and Donald R. Van Jr. loves doing it. Van, a St. Charles County sheriff's deputy, stalks people he knows are driving without licenses.

Each Tuesday and Thursday, when the traffic docket is called in associate circuit court, Van lurks in front of the County Courthouse. He watches people walk out of the courthouse, down the steps and toward their cars. When they get in and try to drive away, they find Van blocking their way. He writes out a ticket, slaps on handcuffs and hauls the would-be driver back before the same judge. Often, driving without a license is the reason the person had been hauled into court in the first place.

Van says of his job, "I enjoy it. I enjoy the heck out of it." Van, 35, said he has been doing this since last May. At first, he just mailed the tickets. Now, he hides behind posts, cars, other people, to see if the person whose license has been revoked will leave the driving to someone else. He says he's surprised how few turn over the wheel to a spouse or friend with a legal drivers license.

A few days ago, Van was bird-dogging a woman in a tan trenchcoat. He hunkered down behind a parked van as she walked out of the courthouse and across the street. Van followed as the woman opened her car door, got behind the wheel and turned the key. Van knocked on the car window and motioned for her to get out. She did and he snapped handcuffs on her wrist and marched her back to the courthouse.

The woman, Janet Boenker, 33, of St. Charles, had been' caught driving away from the courthouse with a revoked drivers license. Upstairs in the courthouse holding cell, she said, "I'm disappointed in myself. The only reason I drove was because of court." And then she broke into tears. Van wrote up her ticket and submitted it to Associate Circuit Court Judge Jon A.

Cunningham, who set a $250 bond and will later set a court date for Boenker. She faces a minimum penalty of two days in jail. The maximum is one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. The tradition of cracking down on people with revoked licenses goes back a long way in St. Charles County.

When Sheriff Ray Runyon was a court bailiff, he handled the job that Van has now. He remembers snagging a guy who days. I remember getting a call from a guy like Boxerman, a follower of the Maharishi. I knew this fellow slightly. "We have achieved a breakthrough," the guy told me.

"The more advanced among us have learned to levitate." If this is true, I thought, I'll quit my job. It was great fun being a reporter and hanging around with cops, but if it was possible to learn how to levitate, well, that would be even better. I grabbed my notebook and went to the local TM headquarters. Unfortunately, none of the locals had learned to levitate. The fellow who had called me showed me some photographs from Europe.

The photos were fuzzy, and it didn't look like the people were really floating on air. they're hopping," the fellow explained. "It's the final phase before levitation." to quit my job to learn to hop, I wrote a story about TM, and then forgot all about it. All through the Reagan years and all through the Bush years, I forgot about TM. Then Clinton got elected, and my phone rang.

Joe Boxerman wanted to know if I had seen the advertisement in the Post-Dispatch. I said I had not. "The Maharishi has a plan to end crime in St. Louis," Boxerman said. Boxerman sent me a copy of the ad.

Sure enough. The Maharishi will bring a group of experts in Transcendental Meditation to our city. These experts will meditate twice a day. This "technology of consciousness" will create good vibrations, which in turn will dramatically reduce crime. It will cost $90.3 million a year.

"Sounds too expensive for us," I told Boxerman. Actually, it's cost-effective, he said. Figuring that the population of the metropolitan region is 2,475,000, it comes out to a dime a day for each resident, he explained. "That's another problem," I said. "Unless the Maharishi is talking about a football stadium, he's not going to be able to get regional cooperation." You should mention this to the Maharishi, Boxerman said.

He would be interested in whatever conflict exists between the city and the suburbs. I'm sure he would be. And who can deny that we need better vibes around here? Still, I had to tell Boxerman the sad truth. None of our political leaders are enlightened enough to cough up $90.3 million a year to the Maharishi, especially when the Maharishi wants a five-year contract. "Part of the offer includes a two-month trial," Boxerman said.

"That would be only about $15 million." Incidentally, the good vibrations won't stop crime immediately. Boxerman figures we'd see about a 10 percent reduction in crime the first year. I suggested that the Maharishi give us a free trial run. If it worked here, he'd soon have all the business he could handle. "We're thinking of doing just that in Washington, D.C." Boxerman said.

Let us know how it goes, I said. Before hanging up, though, I had to ask Boxerman one more question. Can he levitate? "I practice a technology whose goal is to produce levitation," he said. "I experience the nascent form of levitation. It involves brain wave coherence accompanied by an inner physical sensation which lifts you off your feet" If it's not levitation, exactly what is "It's bopping," he said.

I think I'll keep my day job. And as far as the Maharishi's plan is concerned, I suspect the city will keep its policy department County Officer's Killer Innocent In Rape Case Jail Bond Issue To Go Before Voters In April if 4 By William C. Lhotka Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Dennis A. Blackman was acquitted of rape Thursday in a case that prosecutors say may have established the motive for the murder of St. Louis County police officer JoAnn Liscombe two years ago.

Blackman was accused in St. Louis County Circuit Court of raping a 16-year-old girl at his home on Jan. 31, 1990. The jury also acquitted Blackman of the companion charges of kidnapping and sexual assault. Blackman, 24, the son of a St.

Louis police captain, was free in the rape case on a cash and property bond posted by his parents when Liscombe was shot about seven-tenths of a mile from Blackman's home in North County. Blackman was convicted in June of second-degree murder for the shooting of Liscombe on Jan. 11, 1991. He was sentenced to life in prison. Prosecuting Attorney Robert P.

McCulloch contends that Blackman murdered Liscombe because he knew he would go to jail if Liscombe found out he was violating terms of his bond. One of the bond conditions, McCulloch said, was that Blackman never leave his parents' house. McCulloch argued the going-to-jail motive in his closing remarks in the murder trial. Liscombe had played a minor role in Blackman's arrest in the rape case. The state never could prove that Liscombe had recognized Blackman or that Blackman had recognized Liscombe the night she was shot on Old Halls Ferry Road, McCulloch said.

In the rape trial this week, the woman, now 19, said Blackman had picked her up at a bus stop and offered her a Dennis A. Blackman Serving life sentence ride to school. Instead, he took her to his home nearby and raped her, she said. Defense attorney Scott Rosen-blum said that Blackman had been dating the girl. Rosenblum suggested the girl had made up the allegations.

Jurors in the rape case were unaware that Blackman has been sentenced to life in prison for a police officer's murder. By Virgil Tipton Of the Post-Dispatch Staff The St. Louis County Council signed off Thursday on the new county jail and turned the matter over to its bosses county voters. By a 6-0 vote, the council put a $100 million bond issue to pay for the jail on the April 6 ballot. On another vote, the council endorsed building a new jail in Clayton, the site favored by County Executive George R.

"Buzz" Westfall. Westfall, the main proponent of a new jail, said he was happy with the council's action. "But the hard part lies ahead," Westfall said. "We have to persuade the voter to do what's right." Westfall said promoters, including police officers, would help to organize a committee to push for the jail measure. The measure needs a four-sevenths majority to pass.

Because of the vagaries of state election laws, a tougher two-thirds majority would have been required if the council had put the measure on ballots later this year. Westfall's administration wants to build a 12-story building that would include three courtrooms, office space for prosecutors and public defenders and a jail of up to 960 cells that could hold up to 1,216 inmates. It would be built on half a city block in Clayton, just east of the courthouse and would be connected to the courthouse with a walkway or a tunnel. The existing jail in Clayton and the county's Adult Correctional Institution in Chesterfield would be closed. In voting to put the measure on the ballot, Councilwoman Geri Rothman-Serot of Frontenac, D-3rd District, Iff this weren't built in Clayton, eventually, the city would be a shadow of what it is today, GERI ROTHMAN-SEROT, 3rd District Councilwoman said that moving the jail to another community, as had been proposed, would have damaged Clayton.

"If this weren't built in Clayton, eventually, the city would be a shadow of what it is today," she said. Councilman Kurt S. Odenwald of Shrewsbury, R-5th District, warned -Westfall's staffers that the council would be keeping an eye on the project "We as a council need to hold your feet to the fire so that $100 million will do in building the kind of jail we need," Odenwald said. In other action, the council: Agreed to put on the April 6 ballot a property tax to pay for mental health services in St. Louis County.

The tax would be nine cents for every $100 of assessed valuation. Approved a zoning change that will allow the county's Department of Parks and Recreation to open a compost operation in Fort Bellefontaine Park. Some people who live in subdivisions nearby had opposed the move, saying they thought the operation would create odors and would draw pests. Man Gets Life For Fatal Crowbar Attack Funke tried to cover up the death by telling friends and police he had killed a dog in the blood-stained basement of the Funke By William C. Lhotka Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Matthew Funke was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole for beating a man to death with a crowbar and a hammer in October 1990 in St.

John. A jury in St Louis County Circuit Court convicted Funke last month of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. He was accused of beating George Sammons 30, of Wellston. Judge James R. Hartenbach sentenced Funke, 28, to consecutive life terms for murder and armed criminal action.

Funke continued to insist at the sentencing Thursday that he had known nothing about a killing but bad confessed to please police officers. Funke is awaiting trial on another murder charge the death of 12-year-old Che Sims in Breckenridge Hills. She was killed 17 days before Sammons. The state is seeking the death penalty. At his trial for Sammons' killing, Funke recanted oral, written and videotaped confessions he had made.

In the statements, Funke claimed he had beaten Sammons in self-defense after Sammons made homosexual advances toward him. house in St John. After Overland Police Detective Michael J. O'Brien told Funke the blood was human, Funke admitted beating Sammons in St. John, waiting for darkness and then taking Sammons' body to an alley in Overland.

There, Funke said, he "tossed him outike a bag of apples." rr.