The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 29

1 GTfte JPfiilaklpfiiaKnquirer Section Police took $3,120 from Bessie Sharpe, and she Isvahis it back. B5. The city's Day Without Art observance is scheduled for tomorrow. B3. Weather, Bll.

I News in Brief B2 Thursday, November 30, 1995 Philadelphia Online: http: www.phillynews.com era rjrv I Melissa Dribben I A I I I 1 jf i ifJ i FOP leader: Morale at a low The union president blamed city officials. They're making officers into scapegoats, he said. scrubs- a 4 Yesterday's snowfall took the area by surprise, belying predictions that ram overnight would mix with wet snow during the day. Instead, Philadelphians awoke to see streets blanketed by two inches of snow. The suburbs, where'Jane Mygatt of Wallingford took a few minutes to shovel her driveway, got as much as five inches.

Story and more pictures: B2. DRPA, short of cash, lines up The authority, which runs four Delaware River toll bridges and the PATCO High-Speed Line, collects more than $100 million a year in tolls. Two years ago, it had an $88 million surplus. That was before it spent millions on economic development projects many of questionable merit and hired consultants and scores of new As The Inquirer reported earlier this month, the DRPA has bloated its budget with political patronage and no-bid consulting contracts to publicists and lobbyists, including Infighting had held up approval for years. The $357 million sale bridges the fiscal straits.

Down the road, though, it means tolls will rise as much as 25 percent. By Nancy Phillips and Marc Duvoisin INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS The cash-strapped Delaware River Port Authority yesterday approved final terms of a $357 million bond sale to replenish its coffers and help finance major repairs, such as those under way at the Walt Whitman ts a universe of retail space ft is a pulsing mass. An energy force field. And once you breach its shning marble and glass portals, it supks you in. Your will is no longer your own.

Hours evaporate before you find your way out again. And once you do, you find yourself carrying Big Brown Bags and lots of little plastic ones. Your wallet is stuffed with receipts, little paper tombstones to mark the burial plots for departed savings. You blink. The fresh air snaps you out of your daze.

Then you stand wdndering if your car is stolen or merely misplaced in this Death Valley of a' parking lot. You feel like a wad of chewed-dry, spjt-out bubble gum. A spent casing. And like hundreds of thousands ofj holiday shoppers who have parsed this way before you, though the place only opened three weeks agb, you sigh and say, "Wow. That wds awesome." Theew, improved, King of Prus-siujmnfji- it's a universe unto itself.

Reebok. Inhale Indo-nesiafi cinnamon. Find a comfortable spot amid the 2.9 million square feet of retail space and try on a paiC)f Italian shoes priced competitively with the air fare to Milan. Surrender yourself to this labyrinth where money loses its meaning. And see objects absorb so much human karma, they take on a life of thir own.

Vast retail expanse this mall is so vast, so transcontinental, you don't need a directory yoji need AAA Triptiks. A Mobil Travel Guide. Arthur Frommer. ou also need to worry about the brain-numbing effect of this place. At 'some point I wandered, sticker-shocked, into the Pottery Barn and stqod immobilized before a wall of fatfx-rustic kitchen things.

Jmt of the ether of classical music, aguely heard a child's voice. It was a boy standing next to me. what's that?" he asked. His father turned to him and explained gently, "A wooden bowl." Outside, back in the mall, display windows passed in a blur. I noticed, though, that there were an awful lot of aromatherapy potions featured prominently.

Also books such as Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Inner Siffipficify: 100 Ways to Regain Peace and Nourish Your Soul, by the author of Simplify Your Life. i round-shouldered, middle-aged cojiple walked by, arm in arm. They carried? no packages. They looked straight ahead. And their feet were synchronized as they skated down the, highly polished marble floor.

The vibrated with bits of conversation that hummed in the ears for 'Second and then flew off. "Kim opened hers and said, 'Like I need more volumizer! With my And "Where are the bottle cab belts?" And "Do you know wtyich way Neiman Marcus is? I'm so 'confused!" And "Jim! Your favorite olives!" i Young consumer envy In F.A.O. Schwartz, a 10-year-old, holding a vampy, toddler-size plas-tid high-heeled shoe with white feathers and gold tinsel accent, admired the thing and then sighed. "I'n so jealous," she said. "I wish I w4s a little kid." Around 2 p.m., I collapsed on a bepch next to Maryann Luczkowski from Palmyra.

She'd been going strong since 9:30 a.m. and didn't plan to stop until the sun went down. (Those skylights. A real architectural blessing.) tuczkowski had taken the day off work to do the mall. She underestimated.

'You cannot do this place in one day," she said. "You need a whole weekend." would have liked to hang with her, but someone was playing steel drtiras inside my head, so I set out in seirch calm: Nature's Elements. j.ava lamps. Ant farms. Glow-in- 1 1 iJftrf -y-r- -rf The Philadelphia Inquirer MICHAEL BRYANT bond deal firms with connections to its former board members.

Behind closed doors yesterday, as the commissioners struggled to find savings, there was talk of shedding at least one of those contracts next year, and of trimming the payroll. Such costs strained the authority's finances and hastened the need for borrowing. The bond deal, in the works for several years, was stalled several times by political squabbling among the authority's 16 commissioners. See DRPA on B2 She said doctors were "overburdened" and didn't have the time to report every AIDS case. In some instances, she said, the reports have come in two years late.

Gollub said the problem intensified in 1993 when the federal gov-See AIDS on B6 Criticism delays plan to boost AIDS funding Saying an undercount shortchanged the city, officials want to use lab tests to nudge doctors to report AIDS patients. They held off after foes cited privacy rights. By Peter Nicholas INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Police officers are so demoralized that some may choose to sit quietly in their patrol cars rather than get out and take aggressive action that could expose them to criticism, their union leader said yesterday. Fraternal Order of Police President Richard Costello said police morale had sunk to an alarming low. Battered by complaints from the city's top elected officials, officers working a beat are nearing the point at which they may decide that the safest practice is to avert their eyes rather than risk second-guessing, he said.

"A cop motivates himself," Costello said. "If they're not motivated, if they're not willing to get out of that car and take action, if they think no matter what they do they'll be condemned for it, then the safe thing is, didn't see it. It didn't A malaise taking root in the police force is the fault of the city's top elected officials, who persist in making police officers scapegoats, he said. Costello was especially incensed by an article published in yesterday's Inquirer in which City Council President John F. Street said young black males lived in constant fear of police abuse.

Street also called for an independent commis-' sion to examine systemic police misconduct a move the FOP has steadfastly opposed. Police officers' despair is the product of "the absolute, complete, total lack of support from anyone in city government from the mayor, the police commissioner and now the Council president," Costello said. Street could not be reached for comment, but his spokesman, Bruce Crawley, said the councilman's remarks should not worry honest police officers. "He defended policemen who did a good job and have favorable reputations to defend, and nothing in his statement demeaned policemen who are honest, hardworking policemen," Crawley said. As for the warning that police officers may become increasingly idle, Crawley said: "I really don't believe policemen who take their responsibilities seriously will do that." Police Commissioner Richard Neal could not be reached for comment last night.

Costello said that a young police officer recently came into his office and asked why he should respond to a call. "I said: 'Because you're a Costello said. "He said: 'That no longer works. Because if I do go out, I may no longer be November has proved to be a See COSTELLO on B2 League and, for years, handled promotions for the All-Star games. With never so much as an oral reprimand on his record, Sullivan says, the last thing he expected Jan.

31, 1994, was to be called and told that, at age 63, it was time for him to go. He was given the news by Bill Giles and David Montgomery, the two partners who own and control the team. So Sullivan, now 65, unemployed and recovering from a Thanksgiving Day emergency liver transplant, did what the ballplayers did: He See PHILLIES on B3 iiMiiiiiiiii I mini The Philadelphia Inquirer MICHAEL S. WIRTZ Health Commissioner Estelle Richman (left) answers a question at a meeting with community representatives. With her yesterday were city health officials Jesse Milan Jr.

and Erica Gollub. By Huntly Collins INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Philadelphia has lost an estimated $2.7 million in federal funding over the last two years because it under-counted the number of AIDS cases here by as much as 28 percent, city health officials said yesterday. But a Health Department plan to prevent such undercounts in the future ran into opposition from community groups yesterday, who contend the plan would jeopardize the privacy rights of people with AIDS. "More money might not be the top said Joe Cronauer, education director of We the People Living with HIVAIDS, an advocacy group. He spoke at what was billed by Bridge.

In the short term, the borrowed money will alleviate a financial crunch that developed as spending at the DRPA outpaced revenue in the last several years. In the long term, it means that four years from now, bridge tolls will go up as much as 25 percent. health officials as a "community advisory meeting" to let people in the AIDS community know about the department's new plan, which was to take effect yesterday. But following the 90-minute meeting, Health Commissioner Estelle Richman said she would postpone implementing it. "I need to digest all you've told me," she said to about two dozen community representatives.

The plan, outlined by Erica Gol-lub, the city's AIDS epidemiologist, is aimed at correcting the under-reporting of AIDS cases by doctors. It would use lab reports to serve as a red flag for nudging doctors to report the cases. Under state law, doctors must re- endangering the welfare of a child and dealing in infants for selling her son to buy drugs. If convicted, Vanderhorst could receive a maximum sentence of three to seven years in prison on the endangerment charge and 2V2 to five years on the charge of dealing in infants. Vanderhorst, who was dressed in a gray sweatsuit and black sneakers, dabbed at her eyes throughout yesterday's proceedings in Family Court and cried when a color photograph of her missing child, Ke-Shaun, was introduced.

Woman accused of selling son, 2, for $500 faces trial Official cut by Phils brings age-bias suit "It is time for you to retire." That's what Frank Sullivan said the club owners told him, at age 63. port to local health officials the name of any person diagnosed with fully developed AIDS. But city officials say the reporting is often spotty or late. "We are dependent on the physicians and hospitals to report and, in many cases, that doesn't happen," said Gollub. Although Vanderhorst has offered various explanations to account for Ke-Shaun's disappearance, in her statement to homicide detectives Oct.

19, Vanderhorst said she sold her son to a 'well-dressed woman stranger who appeared at the door of her first-floor apartment Sept. 25 between 3 and 4 p.m. The woman, Vanderhorst has told police, identified herself as Virginia Graham and said she was married, lived in Philadelphia and had two children of her own. The woman said she had been sent by "somebody" who had heard that Vanderhorst was having difficulties caring for her son. She had come, the woman said, to "take Ke-Shaun off See TODDLER on B2 The reason for the sale? "Getting high," she said in a police statement.

The search for the boy continues. By Joseph A. Slobodzian INQUIRER STAFF WRITER If the Phillies are a Philadelphia institution, then Frank Sullivan had to have been a Phillies institution. The team's longtime director of promotions started working in the Phillies ticket office in February 1944, when he was just 14. A quarter-century later, he became director of promotions.

He was one of the principals behind the creation of the Philly Phanatic and, for better or worse, the opening-day spectacles featuring Kiteman and Rocketman. He won awards from the National By Martha Woodall INQUIRER STAFF WRITER The night Tina Vanderhorst was arrested, a police detective asked her what was going through her mind when she sold her 2-year-old son to a stranger for $500. "Getting high," she replied. Yesterday, after listening to Van-derhorst's statement to police and the testimony of relatives and neighbors during a preliminary hearing, Common Pleas Court Judge Tama Myers Clark ordered the 31-year-old North Philadelphia woman held for trial on charges of opened package of the quiz game Brain Teasers. The card was like a Grant Wood portrait.

The new American Gothic, A girl, planted in her turf. Holding, instead of pitchfork, a plastic tray of Chinese food. Printed beneath, was the question straight from the heartland. Question: Kimberly headed to the mall with $60. If she spends lA of her money on clothes, $30 on CDs and 10 percent of her original money pigging out at the food court, how much cash will she have left? Answer Not enough.

A.