The News Journal from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 1

BS3.UA RVA The News Journal, Wilmington, Del. Tuesday, June 25, 1991 Section D) Dover council adopts tight 9 budget iiM iiTm 1 dents. Beginning July 1, property taxes will increase 4 percent. The change raises the rate from 63 cents per $100 assessed valuation to 65.5 cents. The increase means the owner of a property assessed at $80,000 would pay an additional $12 a year, or $314.40 in city property taxes.

City Manager R. Thomas Worley said Monday night that water and sewer fees increased 16.8 percent under the new budget. Worley added that under the increase, a typical water and sewer bill for a residential customer whb uses 21,600 gallons of water a quarter would increase by $3.64 a month, or $11 a quarter. City planning and zoning fees, such as building permits, will increase an average of 100 percent, Worley said, and would range between $25 and $250. Non-residents who use the Dover Library will pay $5 more beginning July 1, when fees increase from $35 to $40 a year.

Worley said the budget was sound. "It's a good budget," Worley said. "A very tight budget." In previous meetings, some council members had raised objections to the budget, but Monday night's council vote was unanimous. In other business, council: Approved a motion to eliminate the customer fuel adjustment rate on city electric bills. -1 i ii' I Water, sewer fees, property taxes hiked By ELLEN D.ALFORO Dover Bureau reporter DOVER City Council Monday night adopted a $75.7 million budget for fiscal 1992 that increases water and sewer fees, property taxes, planning and zoning fees, and Dover Library charges for non-resi John Mikalajczylt familiarizes himself with the ktv I The motion was made by Councilman Frederick Van Sant, who suggested that council drop the fuel adjustment rate of $0.0035 beginning July 1.

Under the proposal, a customer who uses 750 kilowatts of electricity a month will save $2.60 a month, Van Sant said. Adopted a resolution accepting the resignation of Dover police Capt. John C. Sigler. Sigler, a 20-year veteran of the force, will retire July 8 and enter private law practice.

Sigler has a law degree from the Delaware Law School of Widener University and was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1987. Just talking, gun victim's friends say Claim neighbor, 81, threw water at them By ANN STEWART Staff reporter WILMINGTON Friends of a man who was shot this weekend by his elderly neighbor said the neighbor sometimes poured water on them as they sat talking on their front steps at night. Initial police reports indicated that loud music might have started the argument that led William M. Tasco, 81, allegedly to fire a shotgun at Jonathan Wilson, 33, wounding him in the chest and face. But Wilson's girlfriend, her daughter and a neighbor in the 1000 block of North Walnut Street all denied that.

"We were just sitting outside talking," said Jackie Brice, who said she was Wilson's girlfriend and lived at the same address. "There was no music playing." Late Saturday or early Sunday, Tasco again objected to the noise, and someone threw a bottle at his second-floor window. SHARON BRICE, resident Her daughter, Sharon Brice, said Tasco had poured water on her, her friends and her mother several times during the past four or five weekends as they sat on their front stoop talking late at night. The women would not give their ages. Friday, she said, he again dumped water on them and then called police, who asked her and her friend to go inside.

Late Saturday or early Sunday, Tasco again objected to the noise, and someone threw a bottle at his second-floor window, Sharon Brice said. Just after 2 a.m. Sunday, police said, Tasco fired from his second-floor window and hit Wilson on the sidewalk outside. Sgt. Edward Hazewski, city police spokesman, said officers had received a complaint from Tasco of a broken window shortly before the shooting.

Tasco was charged with attempted first-degree murder and possessing a deadly weapon during a felony. Police said Sunday night he was taken to St. Francis Hospital for a physical evaluation because of his age. He was held in Gander Hill Prison on Monday for lack of $35,000 bail. Wilson, who had numerous pellet wounds to the face and chest, remained in serious condition Monday in Christiana Hospital.

Slice of life Area's first super scanner gives St. Francis a SALLIE K. STABLER photo technological edge The patient having the scan still has to lie quietly on a table, alone in a small room, while the ring passes around his body, but the ring is larger and the process is less oppressive, Hollander said. Images are seen by technicians almost immediately on a console screen. If a scan needs to be retaken because the patient moved at the wrong time or if something suspicious is seen, it can be done then and there.

With older machines, Hollander said, the patient was usually back upstairs in bed before the need for a retake was apparent. The quick succession of images enables doctors to see how the dye, which is given the patient before the scan, circulates through the blood vessels in various organs. "We can often pick up dye passing through the blood vessels and see anatomy we never saw before it's revolutionary," Hollander said. "When I look at the kidney, I now see the cortex, the medulla, and watch it take up dye. It's like an arteriogram, without the risk Hollander said it has the potential to eliminate much exploratory abdominal surgery.

Another plus is that the new scanner can accommodate extremely heavy patients. Older ones couldn't handle anyone weighing much more than 250 pounds. The new one can bear a patient who weighs as much as 450. RALPH MOYED More cars mean faster delivery to graveyards Nearly 5,000 new homes are proposed for a band of rural New Castle County below the Canal, said a weekend news report. How many additional cars does that mean? How much more land will the state have to gobble up and how many new roads will the state have to build to speed those thousands of people in their thousands of cars to the super highways already knifing through a once-bucolic farm region? For a moment, forget the cost in dollars, and ask: What does this or other helter- skelter development mean in the context of the EPA report that accompanied the new Clean Air Act? The report said 56 percent of all "cancer risk from outdoor exposure to air toxics" can be attributed to motor vehicles.

How much toxic material will be added to the atmosphere by the thousands of additional cars that soon will be spewing exhaust in the Middletown-Odessa area? How many additional cancer cases, how many more dollars for medical care, how many additional deaths will we endure before we end our love affair with the little or big fellow in the driveway? When will we have state transportation planners who can see beyond their irritated noses or transportation officials who do more than talk about mass transit. Who in authority will challenge the suburban ethic that holds that all citizens over the age of 15 have a divine right to their own personal transportation systems? Is there any hope in the move by New Castle County Executive Dennis Greenhouse to use his new regional planning position to press for development of a light-rail transportation system in Delaware? Will other political leaders ever acquire enough vision and the gumption to lead us out of the carcinogenic valley of death? And when will the rest of us take some responsibility instead of waiting for Detroit to discover a magical potion that allows us to drive powerful cars without killing each other with carcinogens? And where in this effort are the Nags Nannies, Gov. Castle's lifestyle mentors, his health vigilantes, those well-intentioned neighbors of ours who tell us if we stop smoking and drinking and run until we drop, death and disease will shrink from our doors? Why aren't the Nags Nannies, the members of the Governor's Commission on Lifestyles and Health, bucking the auto and petroleum industries and promoting mass transit as an alternative to the costly and lethal system we now enjoy? Perhaps all the anti-smoking busybodies are busy trying to suppress a report from Great Britain suggesting that smokers are less likely to come down with Alzheimer's disease and that smoking may slow the advance of the disease. I would not encourage smoking, but the report on smoking and Alzheimer's strengthens the contention that individuals have a right to pick their poison. Asides aside, the word from the county executive's office may be the best piece of news on the transportation front since six years ago when one of Castle's study commissions proposed that the state establish a regional commuter rail service.

The report, of course, was ignored. There is reason to believe that the study Dennis Greenhouse has commissioned will receive serious attention. Greenhouse now is chairman of Wilmapco, the regional planning commission for northern Delaware area. He has appointed Leonard So-phrin, an architect and rail-transit enthusiast from Wilmington, as chairman of a committee that will look into setting up a light-rail system at least in upstate Delaware. With Sophrin as chairman, the outcome in favor of light rail is predictable.

And if Greenhouse and Wilmapco persist, something could happen. Wilmapco has a say in the allocation of federal transportation money. Perhaps there is a chance we will see an overdue change before automobile exhausts blot out the sun below the canal. Ralph Moyed's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. FOR CUSTOMER new scanner as a technician plays "patient." bread.

The scanner has a ring that moves around the body, passing X-ray beams from all angles to take each slice of the picture. The data from the X-ray beams is analyzed and converted into an image by computer. According to Dr. Bentley A. Hollander, director of radiology at St.

Francis, on older scanners, the ring traveled around the patient once, taking the picture of a slice. It then had to "We can often pick up dye passing through the blood vessels and see anatomy we never saw before it's revolutionary," DR. BENTLEY A. HOLLANDER Director of radiology reverse direction and roll back again before taking a picture of the next section. The new scanners have a "slip ring" that goes around, taking its picture and continuing around again in the same direction, taking the picture of the next slice.

This substantially shortens the time to do the entire scan. "It's the equivalent of an automatic camera with motor drive," Hollander By JANE HARRIMAN Staff reporter WILMINGTON The fourth generation of CT scanners can give doctors a clear picture of cysts on a patient's kidney, show them how well blood circulates through his liver, and more importantly, reveal an unsuspected weak spot on a major artery that needs prompt surgery before it bursts and kills him. And the scanners can do a typical scan in 15 minutes, rather than 40 a process that's easier on the patient and less likely to give him claustrophobia. The PQ 2000 scanner, made by Picker, recently was installed at St. Francis Hospital in Wilmington.

While other hospitals in the area have fourth generation scanners, only 11 or so other hospitals in the country have the PQ 2000. The closest will be at Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, which is about to acquire one. It can be programmed to speak in foreign languages, giving patients instructions like, "Hold your breath" in Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Chinese, French, German and several Middle Eastern languages, as well as English. The new scanner and renovations to the area that houses it cost $1.2 million. In a CT scan, the patient's body is imaged slice by slice, like a loaf of Del.

budget no laughing matter Fiscal '92 proposal lacks meat, no bones about it By WILLIAM D.ZAFEROS Dover Bureau reporter DOVER An old cartoon passed among Joint Finance Committee members last week provided an accurate analogy for the panel's dilemma in writing the fiscal 1992 budget. In the cartoon, five cave men stand over a carcass as one says: "This meeting was called in Harrington woman's slaying investigated By ANN STEWART Staff reporter HARRINGTON Police and the state medical examiner's office are continuing to investigate the slaying of a 70-year-old woman whose body was found in her home early Sunday. Police are also seeking a man for questioning. The man was reportedly seen near the home of the victim, Dorothy Donovan. State police said Donovan was found dead in the bedroom of her two-story home on Kent 384 about three miles east of Harrington.

Her body was found at 1:19 a.m., when her son and a trooper went to the houBe. The son, Charles W. Holden, 41, lived in a trailer next door to Donovan, said Cpl. Rick Chamberlin, a state police spokesman. Chamberlin said he believed Donovan lived alone.

Police also asked Monday for information about a man reported seen near the Hardee's restaurant at U.S. 13 and Delaware 14, and near Donovan's house. He is described as black, in his 30s, between 5 feet 8 and 5 feet 9 inches tall, thin and with a ruddy complexion. He was wearing brown dress pants, a brown plaid shirt and plastic-framed glasses with oversize lenses. Anyone with information is asked to call the state police homicide unit, 739-5997.

The state medical examiner's office in Seaford, where Donovan's body was taken, had not completed its investigation Monday. Chamberlin declined to give details about the possible cause of death or whether Donovan's home showed signs of forced entry. in a cutting frenzy spurred by the recession. As a result, the state has been in a virtual holding pattern on spending since the winter of 1990, leaving the committee hard-pressed to make its mark on Castle budgets. Among its most difficult task was overseeing the restructuring of state government caused by the early retirement option.

More than 2,500 employees took retirement, and the committee was left to decide which of those employees would be replaced. In the end, roughly 600 positions were removed from the budget as a result of ERO. Another 600 Department of Transportation salaries previously paid for through the General Fund, which funds the state's operating budget were transferred to the Transportation Trust Fund. Castle had proposed that all DelDOT salaries be moved to the trust fund, which generally funds road projects. If anyone notices the effects of the budget approved by the committee, it will be the state's 10,000 employees.

Castle did not include a pay increase in his budget proposal, and the committee went along with him. "Sticking with no pay increase for state employees was really hard to do," said Rep. G. Robert Quillen, R-Harrington. "They have to pay for a loaf of bread like everyone else.

But I've talked to a lot of state employees who weren't upset. They weren't happy, but they know that the money wasn't there." Likewise, teachers will get no pay hike this See BUDGET B2 Bill to curb water firms up for vote B2 JFC approves grants-in-aid bill B3 order to discuss the meat. It has been pointed out there is no more meat. A motion has been made to fight over the bones." When legislators get a look at the budget bill expected to be introduced today, they will note that although there is some meat on this year's state budget, there isn't much to fight over. The 12-member panel has produced a budget that, although nearly skeletal in its bareness of funding for new initiatives, leaves the state with enough to keep existing programs and services intact.

The bottom-line spending figure for fiscal 1992, which begins July 1, is $1.23 billion. That was the same figure proposed by Gov. Castle in January 1990 for the fiscal 1991 budget a spending plan that was eventually slashed to $1.18 billion SERVICE CALL: (CENT COUNTY, SUSSEX COUNTY, 8564500.