Asheville Citizen-Times from Asheville, North Carolina • Page 8

State Region ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES Tuesday, Feb. 4, 1992 Page 2B Possible Mouse opponents criticize redistricting plan I it'; rntrm-'rr'TmnMMiMMBifc'Wiiniir 3 irri mr ment rejected an earlier plan In which the districts were more uniform. Linney said politics, not the Justice Department, resulted in the altered districts. Even Senate Redistricting Chairman Dennis Winner said he doesn't like the plan. He called it an example of compromise and what he called partisan meddling from the Justice Department -tljat will hurt blacks and whites.

"I hate it," said Winner, D-Buncombe, reached by phone later. Linney also criticized the Democrat-controlled legislature's plan to cut five Republican-inclined Buncombe County precincts out of the 51st state House District Under the. plan the district would also lose Transylvania and parts of Henderson and have three representatives instead of four. Winslow and Linney favor single-member districts. By Ed Brackett STAFF WRITER Two potential opponents for Asheville's state House seats agree on something: The General Assembly, they say, did a terrible job redrawing congressional districts.

New, roaming districts -which legislators have said were necessary to encourage minority representation will actually end up dividing minorities, contend Wanda Winslow and Larry Linney. Winslow, a Democrat, has already announced candidacy for the 51st House district and Linney, a Republican, unsuccessfully ran for the House two years ago. Linney -also highly critical of past and proposed boundaries for the House district said he is strongly considering another run this year. "I think everyone should be outraged," said Linney of the districts, which he says should be based on geography and not race. "The citizens of North Carolina should outraged, black or white." Winslow said in a joint interview with Linney that congressional redistricting splits up voting areas so much it is going to "reseg-regate people of this state." One narrow, snake-like district runs roughly along Interstate 85 from Gastonia to Durham, 160 miles away.

Other proposed districts discussed in the legislature Monday resemble asterisks, with long necks bisecting counties. A 50-mile swath of Buncombe, Henderson, Polk and Rutherford counties would be taken out of the existing district that has included most of Western North Carolina. Legislators have said the U.S. Justice Department, which polices -the Voting Rights Act, mandated two of the twelve districts have majority representation of blacks and other minorities. The depart THE ASSOCIATED PRESS State Sens.

Joe Raynor, D-Cumberland, left, David Parnell, D- Robinson, and R.C. Soles, D-Columbus, spent most of Monday afternoon on the Senate floor awaiting word from the U.S. Justice Department any of three redistricting plans have been approved. Retailer to expand local works DIGEST By Paul Johnson STAFF WRFTEH The national catalog clothing retailer Clifford Wills will expand its operation in Buncombe County that already provides jobs to about 500 people. Clifford Wills will reveal details on the expansion Tuesday in Asheville, said senior vice president Bob Paris at the Clifford Wills office in Lynchburg, Va.

Clifford Wills currently employs 250 people full-time and 200 to 250 part-time. Clifford Wills opened its telemarketing, warehousing and distribution center in 1989 at Asheville Commerce Center along Brevard Road in southern Buncombe County. The initial investment was $3 million. In 1989 the company was mailing 7 million catalogs annually to 700,000 customers. Clifford Wills, a sister company of the larger J.

Crew catalog clothing company, specializes in classi- cally designed clothing for women. The clothing, which can be for work or casual wear, includes sweaters, jackets, dresses and shirts. Clifford Wills is one of three employers in the 52-acre industrial park. California-based Cassette Productions Unlimited has operated an audio and video cassette plant in the park since 1989. The most recent addition to Asheville Commerce Center is Rich Mount which late last year moved into a larger plant for its production of plastic injection molded parts used in automotive braking systems.

Rich Mount had originally opened in a smaller plant off Sweeten Creek Road near Asheville. Economic developers say industrial parks such as Asheville Commerce Center are critical in recruiting new industry to Western North Carolina because the parks provide prepared sites. The lack of adequate, affordable sites for businesses has been blamed for hurting WNC in the competitive industrial recruitment market, economic developers say. Growth calls for redirecting education, educator says THE ASSOCIATED PRESS In hasty effort to keep history from being overrun In the changing Southern landscape, the National Park Sendee Is gauging the dangers of development to sites such as the Battle of Bentonville In Johnston County. John Goode, manager of the Bentonville Battleground State Historic Site, studies a trench on the grounds Friday.

Agency works to save battle sites County rejects Norplant donation THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SALISBURY -An anonymous $10,000 donation to provide poor women with Norplant was rejected Monday by the Rowan County commissioners. Commissioners debated the donation about 30 minutes and heard from about five speakers before voting 3-2 to reject the donation. The money was to be used to buy the birth control device for 55 low-income health department clients if the county matched it Commissioner Tom Webb, who voted against accepting the donation, Baid he was bothered that welfare clients would be given Norplant while working people who couldn't afford it would have to do without He said he had been contacted by several people who wanted Norplant but couldn't afford it and weren't eligible for it through the health department Webb also said he thought providing Norplant for free would send the wrong message. Commissioner Jamima DeMarcus, who voted to accept the donation, said advocates also favor morality, meaning that "there (isn't) anything but safe sex except in a loving relationship between man and wife." BATTLEFIELDS Here's a list of Civil War sites In North Carolina Included In the National Park Service's Inventory of the most crucial encounters occurred. 1.

Hatteras Inlet Batteries 2. Roanoke Island 3. New Bern 4. Fort Macon 5. South Mills 6.

Tranters Creek 7. Klnston 8. White Hall Ferry 9. Goldsboro Bridge 10. Fort Anderson 11.

Washington 12. Plymouth 13. Fort Fisher 14. Wilmington occupation 15. Klnston or Wise's Crossroads 16.

Monroe's Crossroads 17. Averasboro 18. Bentonville Doctor tests HIV-positive DURHAM Duke Medical Center officials have mailed nearly 1,600 letters to patients after learning that an ophthal- mic surgeon who treated them tested positive for the HIV virus six years ago. Although medical experts are convinced that there should be no risk to the ophthalmologist's patients of HIV infection, the center said Monday that it has written each of the doctor's patients to offer counseling and HIV testing if requested. "We believe that no action on your part is needed now and that blood testing is not necessary," Snyderman said.

"Even so, we appreciate that given public concern about the transmission of HIV, you may have some questions." Snyderman said Duke Medical Center would offer counseling and testing at no cost to the patients. He said medical judgment indicates there should be no risk of con- tracting the virus. Old schoolhouses EDEN Leaksville Intermediate School, one of the state's oldest schools in continuous use, is an Eden landmark marked for destruction. The local Board of Education has voted to build an elementary school on the site. Communities across North Carolina must decide in the next decade whether they decide what to do with the state's approximately BOO remaining pre-1941 buildings.

President Jackson WAXHAW President Andrew Jackson was born in Lancaster County in South Carolina, says a researcher who had insisted for 40 years that the president had born in the Tar Heel State. What convinced Wylie Neal was a copy of an 1820 map -eight years before the dispute between the Carolinas started -that clearly shows Jackson's birthplace was Lancaster County in north-central South Carolina. He always insisted Jackson was born March 15, 1767, in a cabin near Mineral Springs in Union County, N.C. Neal recently wrote to a Florida map company for a series of historical maps that he hoped would show him Gen. Charles Cornwallis' route through the Carolinas.

Among the maps was the one of the Lancaster District, surveyed by J. Boykin in 1820 and revised five years later. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS RALEIGH The growing complexity of North Carolina businesses is increasing the demand for workers who can go beyond the basic educational skills being taught for more than a decade, a top educator says. While working steadily to improve scores in reading, writing and arithmetic, educators have done little to make sure students can analyze information and apply what they know to solving real-world problems. And the California Achievement Test that monitored basic skills needs to be traded in for something better, said Suzanne Triplet, assistant superintendent of research and development at the Department of Public Instruction.

"The needs of industries changed and, in North Carolina especially, the industries themselves changed," she said. "Our vehicle, the CAT, had in fact become more important to teachers and to parents than the target. It had, in fact, become the target" Legislators in the 1970s were concerned by the lack of basic skills among students and focused funding there, Triplett told the Education Oversight Committee recently. Those skills were considered vital to the manufacturing Indus "The needs of industries changed and, in North Carolina especially, the industries themselves changed. SUZANNE TRIPLETT DEPT.

OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION tries that dominated the state economy. North Carolina began using the California Achievement Test in grades 3, 6 and 8 to measure progress. More than a decade later, CAT scores are improving, Triplett said. But businesses driven by technological improvements are begging for people who can think, not recite multiplication tables. The department plans to initiate its own end-of-grade tests this year.

The tests will ask students to apply knowledge and solve higher-order problems instead of repeating memorized lessons. The new tests will make teachers focus on thinking skills and give them the feedback, they need to hone lesson plans, Triplett said. "For our students to perform well on this test or the test that's coming down the road in the national assessments they really need to be able to perform the way this test lays it out," Bhe said. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BENTONVILLE New conflicts are arising on Civil War battlefields, and the National Park Service is working on a plan to ride to the rescue. In an effort to keep history from being overrun in the changing Southern landscape, the park service is gauging the dangers of development to such sites as the Battle of Bentonville in Johnston County, the bloodiest battle ever fought on North Carolina soil.

"Ifs going to be a snapshot picture of Civil War battlefields as they appear in 1992," Paul Hawke of the service's Atlanta office said in an interview with The News Observer of Raleigh. "We're going to see what condition they're in, what development there has been, whether they're still there." The first report is due in April. Only a few Civil War sites are owned and protected by state or federal governments. The bulk of battlefield lands are privately owned. The program began in 1990 by Congress after it was drawn into a messy tussle to prevent a mall from being built on part of the Manassas battlefield in northern Virginia.

The official Army history of the Civil War lists 10,456 battles, sieges, skirmishes, engagements, assaults and conflicts in its four-year course. The park service and numerous Civil War scholars narrowed the list for its inventory to 380 places where the most crucial encounters occurred nationwide. SBI chief describes fire report, not what it says But he won't describe what the report si District attorney to decide whether to file criminal charges says. When asked Monday, Dunn replied: "It says the SBI has done another damn good job." The SBI planned to spend Monday, and possibly Tuesday, putting together the report for Richmond County District Attorney Carroll Lowder, Dunn said. depending on his court schedule.

The report will be used to determine, whether any criminal charges should be filed in connection with the Sept 8 fire at Imperial Food Products Inc. Twenty-five people were killed and 66 injured in the fire at the chicken-processing plant. Employees have said that blocked and locked exits prevented some from escaping. Lowder will determine whether criminal charges should be filed. The state Department of Labor has announced a fine of $808,150 in civil penalties.

Imperial owner Emmett Roe has said that the company cannot pay the fine. The Hamlet plant did not reopen after the fire, and Imperial's plant in Cummlng, closed in October. SBI agents "have been meeting off an on with him (Lowder) and some of his assistants," Dunn said. "They will sit down and talk with him and give him an overview. The report Includes the work of 14 agents, who spent more than 1,800 hours in-.

vestlgating it, he said. The agents checked out 665 leads, Dunn said. "That doesn't mean they interviewed that many different people," he said. They have gone back and talked to the same person more than one time." THE ASSOCIATED PRES9 RALEIGH It's 2,500 pages long and 8 inches thick. Those are some of the details that Charles Dunn, head of the State Bureau of Investigation, can reel off about the report on a fatal plant fire in Hamlet.

Agents planned to dls- Charles Dunn cuss the report with Lowder later this week, 1.