The Press Democrat from Santa Rosa, California • 1

Fair fair in the afternoons. Southerly winds 10-20 mph. Little temperature change. REDWOOD EMPIRE Low overcast; THE PRESS DEMOCRAT FINAL Highs and lows: Santa Rosa, 76 and 53; page 2.) cents Ukiah, 90 and 52. (Weather statistics on The Redwood Empire's Leading Newspaper 10 SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA The City Designed for Living THURSDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 6, 1972 The Sonoma County Tax Rate To Drop By GEORGE MANES Sonoma County's tax rate will drop significantly this year as a result of a 13.4 per cent increase in the taxable worth of property.

According to a report submitted yesterday to Sonoma County supervisors by Assessor Ernest Comalli, the net taxable worth of property, as shown on the assessment rolls, has swollen to $2.2 billion in full cash value and $544 million in assessed value. Prior to yesterday's report, County Auditor William Fulwider had figured supervisors could reduce the county-wide tax rate as much as 10 cents per $100 of assessed value and still balance the record $61 million county budget. But his 10-cent decrease was based I on a projected four per cent increase in assessed value. The actual increase of 13.4 per cent may enable supervisors decrease the tax rate as much as 35 cents. Theoretically, if supervisors held the budget to last year's $58 million level, the tax rate could be reduced 51 cents.

The exact figure will not be known until supervisors adopt a final budget, probably in midAugust. Many taxpayers, however, should not expect their annual payments to decrease. Properties have been reappraised upwards and this would offset the drop in the tax rate. Most likely, there will be a slight increase in many tax bills this year. The 13.4 per cent jump is the largest ever to occur as a result of local re-appraisals and new construction.

In 1955, the state ordered a 19.3 per cent increase, but at the local level that largest hike was 12 per cent in 1967-68. Last year the rise was 6 cent. According to Mr. Comm a Comali, the record-breaking value increase reflects "the fact that Sonoma County is the fastest growing county in the Despite the seemingly large increase in property values, Assessor Comalli told supervisors he expects some trouble with the state Board of Equalization, which regulates all assessment practices in California. The state board requires a county's assessed value to equal (Continued on Page 6, Col.

5) I Supreme Court Gets Demo Vote Appeal WASHINGTON (UPI) The controversy over the seating of 153 California delegates pledged to Sen. George S. McGovern and 59 Illinois delegates headed by Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley at the Democratic National Convention was carried to the Supreme Court today, but Chief Justice Warren E. Burger delayed immediate action.

With the start of the convention only four days away, neys for the California and Illinois delegations filed petitions asking the Supreme Court to meet in special session to hear the appeals. Shortly before 2 p.m. EDT, Burger issued a stay of a lower-court ruling in the controversy "until further order of the an action meant to give the high court more time to consider whether to hear the appeals. If Burger had not issued his order, the U.S. Court of Appeals' ruling in McGovern's favor would have gone into effect automatically at that hour.

In appealing the California case, the Democratic National Committee said the country had been "thrown into a constitutional crisis" by court interference in the delegate process. "The courts have never intruded in this way into the quarrels of political candidates and now that the Court Appeals in the District of Columbia has done so," said John Kester, a National Committee lawyer, have no recourse but to ask the Supreme Court to restore the judiciary to its proper place in the constitutional scheme of things." The Supreme Court was in recess and it was not certain whether a special session would be convened as both parties requested. In the Illinois appeal, attorneys for Daley and the other delegates said the lower court had "totally ignored the Illinois election code and had superimposed on (the) code requirements which disenfranchised the electorate and violate the rights of officeholders." McGovern won all of California's 271 delegates in the 'winner-take-all June 5 primary. The Democratic Credentials Committee stripped 153 of them from McGovern on grounds they should have been distribut- Gravel to Run For Vice President WASHINGTON (UPI) Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska made it official today: he is running for the Democratic vice presidential nomination, hoping the choice will be left to the national convention.

Gravel, the second declared candidate for No. 2 place on the ticket, has been talking with convention delegates around the country for months. He told: news conference today he has nearly 200 delegate signatures on a petition to put his name before the convention. The other announced candidate for the post is Endicott "Chub" Peabody III, a former governor of Massachusetts who ran for vice president in the SEN. GRAVEL New Hampshire primary and SEN.

GRAVEL leading contender for the presidential nomination, has said if he wins he may let the convention decide on his running mate. And Gravel said the bulk of his petitioners probably favor McGovern. The last time a convention picked the vice presidential candidate was in 1956, when the Democrats picked Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee over Sen. John F.

Kennedy of Massachusetts to run with E. Stevenson -who lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Passengers in Bloody SF Skyjack Blame the Airline SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) Passengers In the Pacific Southwest Airlines skyjacking, in which three persons were killed and two wounded, blamed the airline Thursday for ineffective security. Airline president J.

Floyd Andrews said in San Diego that responsibility for airport securiagainst air piracy should be assumed by the federal government. For the purpose he said "substantial amounts of tax dollars must be diverted." "Airlines are not a police force a and do not have the capabilities, the knowledge or the wherewithal to act as an enforcement bureau," Andrews said. "Airline operators, like popcorn operators, are not law enforcement officers and never will be." Several passengers said they saw no metal detector checking persons or baggage. They SR Boy Drowns In River A 7-year-old Santa Rosa youngster drowned yesterday in a Russian River pool during a YMCA outing at Camp Arrow. head, near the Wohler Bridge.

John Voss, a student at Sheppard School, was pronounced dead at 2:30 p.m. at Healsburg General Hospital after resuscitation attempt failed. YMCA counselors told Sonoma County coroner's investiga-. tors no one saw the boy slip under the water. His bdy was recovered in four feet of water after another youngster summoned counselors.

YMCA officials said young Voss was swimming with 40 to 45 other youngsters in a shallow pool separated from the river by a small dam. youth is survived by his mother, Mrs. Joanne Voss, 1670 Dutton ave. A YMCA spokesman said the dead boy was participating in the group's Summer Fun Club for students at Sheppard and South Park schools. One day a week, the 78 youngsers, 6 to 12 years-old, visited the YMCA Camp to go swimming.

The spokesman said there were four counselors in the water and 11 more around it when the drowning took place. The body was taken to Eggen and Lance Mortuary. observed no spot checks either of luggage or identification at the boarding point in Sacramento. Aaron Marcus, a Sacramento seventh grader who flies about twice a month on PSA, said: "The last time I left Sacramento they looked in my suitcase. This time went right The hijackers, two Bulgarians with heavily bleached hair, boarded the PSA 737 with three pistols.

They were identified as Dmitrov Alexiev and Michael D. Azmanoff, both 28, of the Hayward, area. The FBI said they had entered the United States in November, 1968, and worked as cab drivers. Demanding $800,000, two and a flight plan for Siberia, they held 79 other passengers and five crew members hostage in San Francisco for nearly six hours. An FBI agent purporting to be an international pilot was allowed to board.

With the door open, he was followed by three other waiting agents who had sneaked below the plane. After a blaze of gunfire inside the crowded aircraft, the two hijackers were dead. Also fatally wounded was E. H. Stanley Carter, 66, a retired railway conductor from Longueuil, Quebec.

Two other passengers. like Carter believed hit by hijackers' bullets, were Leo R. Gormley, 4 46, Van Nuys, and Victor Yung, 56, who plays the cook in the television "Bonanza" series. Yung's condition was described by his hospital as good, as was Gormley's, although Gormley was in intensive care. Asked about the advisability of the FBI's opening fire in New Vote On Regional Tie? The state Council on Intergovernmental Relations (CIR) will conduct a new hearing on the question of Sonoma County's membership in a north or south planning region.

Mayor Clement R. Guggiana today told The Press Democrat he was called by a spokesman for Gov. Ronald Reagan indicat-tion ing the CIR hearing has been rescheduled for July 14, in San Francisco. Mayor Guggiana had sent a letter to the Governor's office stating dissatisfaction with a telegram-vote that bumped the county from Region Four--the Bay. -to Region One, a north area.

The new hearing will be held at the Hilton Airport Hotel at a time yet to be determined, but somewhere between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Mayor Guggiana said he does not know how the new meeting will be handled. The original protest by Santa Rosa, some CIR members and the Executive Board of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) involved other CIR members submitting advance votes favoring the county's wing to the north. "Our protest involved CIR members voting without being at the meeting, hearing the testimony or the motion," the mayor said.

"So, we don't know yet how the new hearing will be handled." It's assumed by Mayor Guggiana that the call for a new hearing by the Governor cates that only those CIR mem- at the meeting will be able to vote on issues. Mayor Guggian a also announced the mayors of seven cities in Sonoma County are in agreement the cities should remain in Region Four, with ABAG, until a new district is formed and receives certificaas a grant clearing house. Only the City of Cloverdale was absent from a meeting of city mayors this week. Also, the mayors were to seek action by each city council to remain in ABAG in hopes each city would be able to have a representative at the July 14 CIR meetnig to state their positions. "We're not saying we don't want to get out of ABAG," Mayor Guggiana stressed.

"But we feel we should remain members until a new district or organization is formed and certified. quarters crowded with passengers, FBI special agent Robert Gebhardt said: we're not pleased that three passengers were wounded, but somebody had to make a decision. We wanted to stop the hijacking, and stop it we did." Yung said he was surprised at the shooting, and "it's very difficult to say if the FBI did the right thing." William Scott, a San Mateo County coroner's investigator. complained that the FBI removed some evidence, such as identity cards and the 737, when the case involved murder, a state offense. In one hijacker's pocket.

Scott said, he found a paper with notations suggesting that the two Bulgarians intended to go to Canada, not Siberia, where possibly a confederate was waiting to help them Then we can take a look at whatever it is and decide. "We don't know what's being discussed for the north or Region One, whether a one-county thing, two counties, five or whatever. No one knows." Mayor Guggiana said Santa Rosa Councilman John H. Downey Jr. has been appointed a fact finder, liaison and spokesman for the next 90 days for all cities.

Mr. Downey is charged with working and meeting with members of the County Board of Supervisors "to find out what's going on there and to keep the cities informed." Meanwhile, Mayor Guggiana said he received a letter from the State Attorney General's office saying it is not proper to react to a request for a legal ruling in a matter such as the (Continued on Page 6, Col. 3) Chess Hassle Appears Ended Senate OK of Marijuana Penalty Bill Unlikely SACRAMENTO (UPI) -An Assembly-passed bill easing penalties for possession of marijuana today faced a bleak future in the Senate, which has rejected similar but weaker legislation. The measure by Assemblyman Alan Sieroty, D-Beverly Hills, narrowly won Assembly approval Wednesday after another lawmaker said 2 million Californians, including middleaged persons, smoked marijuana. During the lengthy debate, Sieroty told his colleagues, "The penalty for possession of marijuana does not fit the crime.

"Nowhere else in our law is private behavior SO severely punished. Smoking cancer-priducing cigarettes is not even a crime," he declared. Assemblyman Leo Ryan, D- -UP! Facsimile ACTOR VICTOR YUNG He Tumbled from Seat When Shooting Began escape. an abandoned airport in the The paper bore the latitude. Puntzi Mountains of British longitude and runway length of Columbia.

TV's Hop Sing Wounded In SF Skyjacking proportionately among the candidates along the line of the party's reform rules. But the Court of Appeals restored all of them to McGovern Wednesday. The Credentials Committee also refused to recommend seating Daley's "uncommitted" delegates land the Court of Appeals sustained it. Lawyers for the delegates pledged to McGovern and the successful anti-Daley Illinois challengers urged the Supreme Court not to hear the appeals. Joseph L.

Rauh attorney for the McGovern delegates, said it was important for the (delegate-selection process to "conform to the dictates of due process, equal protection and the First Amendment," and the appeals court decision was correct." South Viet Take Control Of Quang Tri SAIGON (UPI)-South Vietnamese paratroopers took control of Quang Tri city's shellpocked airstrip and its badly damaged power station today in the government's slow drive to recapture the Communist held provincial capital. A South Vietnamese force recaptured the southern part of the Wednesday but South Vietnamese officers said they would not consider the town theirs until the occupy the 19th century walled citadel in the center of town. So far, the Communists have offered little resistance to the South Vietnamese force driving northward to recapture Quang Tri province. The province, captured by an estimated 48,000 North Vietnamese on May 1, is the only one ever taken by the Communists. In the air war, American jet fighter-bombers flew a recordtying 340 strikes over North Vietnam, knocking out a railroad bridge near Hanoi and bombing a MIG airfield.

South of Quang Tri, Communist gunners fired more than 100 shells into Hue, the former imperial capital and South Vietnam's third largest city. It was the heaviest shellingg of Hue since the Communist Tet offensive in 1968. Initial reports said one person was wounded. In Quang Tri city, paratroopers slipped into the power station which is only 500 yards from the city center. They radioed back that the facility was badly damaged but still operable.

at BURLINGAME, Calif. (UPI) me to move and I moved BURLINGAME, Calif. (UPI) -Veteran actor Victor Yung, 56, wounded in the Pacific Southwest Airlines hijack attempt, said Wednesday night that he escaped death by tumbling out of his seat when the shooting started. "Luckily I rolled -I was hit in the back and the man who was killed stood up," Yung told newsmen shortly after surgeons removed a slug from his left side at Peninsula Hospital. "They pulled the bullet out and showed it to me," he said, "I couldn't believe it." Yung once played the "No.

2 son" in the "Charlie Chan movie series. He currently has been portraying "Hop Sing" in the television "Bonanza" series. His other roles have included the master of ceremonies in the movie "Flower Drum Song." The chunky actor, who had been in Sacramento for television interviews, said that at one point the passengers had been told over the jetliner's intercom "we would be able to leave the plane in about 20 minutes. And a big cheer went up from the passengers." He added that not long after the FBI agents came aboard and the gunbattle erupted. The actor was seated close to lone of the hijackers when the plane took off from Sacramen-32-piece to.

He said he could hear one of them talking to the stewardess and "I could see his gun." Yung, in an aisle seat, said the gunman told him, "Move over, move "I acted like I didn't hear him. The stewardess then told me to move and I moved out of the aisle seat." Asked whether he noticed any accent in the hijackers' speech, he said, "It sounded like a Southern accent, from Arkansas or someplace like that." Reporters asked him as an experienced actor whether he would recognize a Slavic accent and he said, "I can tell you I'd be able to recognize a foreign Yung said he was feeling "fine" and expected to be released from the hospital "soon." Yung has played the Chinese cook on the Ponderosa ranch since the "Bonanza" TV series began in 1959. He was returning from taking part in a Charlie Chan film festival when he was shot. OUR HOMETOWN County Band To Perform At Howarth REYKJAVIK, Iceland (UPI) American chess challenger Bobby Fischer apologized in writing to the Soviet's Boris Spassky today for delaying the start of their scheduled 24-game world championship match and suggested they get on with the twice-postponed tournament without delay. The action apparently cleared the way for the match to begin Sunday, one week behind schedule.

misdemeanor or a felony. Subsequent convictions are mandatory felonies. Under the present laws, the misdemeanor convictions can be punished by up to one year in jail and felonies by one to 10 years in prison. Debate on the bill was dominated by its supporters, but Assemblyman Robert E. Badham, R-Newport Beach, labeled as "specious" arguments that the penalty should be reduced because many persons use the drug.

He said the question was whether the people of California condone its use. Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, D-San Jose, who estimated that 2 million Californians use the weed, said the stiff penalties against it have been "gross failures" in stopping its use. "I am still waiting for a telephone call from Spassky's camp, that all their conditions have been met, but I am quite sure the match will now start Sunday," said match referee ar Schmid. Earlier reports that Fischer hand-delivered the note to Spassky were incorrect. "Fischer and Spassky have not yet met person." said a Fischer aide.

"Please accept my sincerest apology for my disrespectful behavior in not attending opening ceremony. I have offended you and your country, the Soviet Union, where chess has a prestigeous position," Fischer's note said. Fischer also asked Spassy get the Soviet chess federation to drop its demand that forfeit the first game Spassky because he was present for a meeting to draw lots to see who would get first move. The move apparently cleared the way for the twice-postponed match to begin Sunday, week behind schedule. INDEX ASTROGUIDE 17 BRIDGE 16 CLASSIFIED 25-31 COMICS 18 CROSSWORD 16 EDITORIAL PAGE 4 FARM 20 OBITUARIES 6 SPORTS 22-25 THE WOMEN 19 TV PAGE .15 VITAL STATISTICS 6 115TH YEAR--NO 221 A free concert will be performed from 1 to 3:30 p.m.

Sunday at Howarth Park by the Sonoma County Concert Band. Robert Norman will direct. Santa Rosa's Recreation and Park Department is sponsoring, aided by a grant from the Music Performance Trust Fund through Santa Rosa Local 292, American Federation of Musicians. Sonoma County Supervisors Approve 'Affirmitive Hiring' got 85 per cent of the vote. Gravel, formally announcing his bid, said: "Many of the me they will not sit back dutifully, until the as in presiden- the el past, waiting tial nominee magnanimously and at the last minute either makes his choice known or throws open the convention for the selection of a vice presidential nominee.

"No, these delegates want to assert all of their prerogatives rather than rubber stamp the presidential nominee's choice." Sen. George S. McGovern, Burlingame, who disclosed of his sons had been convicted of marijuana possession, said it was a "mythological concept" that "if you keep the penalty heavy enough you will do some good." With five Republicans voting for the Sieroty bill, the Assembly sent it to the Senate on a 41-35 vote, the bare minimum required. Last month the upper house defeated a milder measure that would have reduced penalties only for first-time marijuana violators. The Sieroty measure, supported by the state bar, would make possession of marijuana a misdemeanor punishable by six months in jail or a fine of $500 or both.

Currently a judge has the discretion to make the first conviction for possession a An "affirmative action program" to avoid discrimination in hiring has been adopted by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. On a 4-0 vote yesterday, the board approved the program designed to eliminate "inadverant" discrimination through improvements in recruiting. testing and other things. Spokesmen for California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) asked for a postponement of the decision so they could review the document, but supervisors denied the request, citing a July 1 deadline for adoption. The "affirmative action gram" is required by the al government for employment of all workers in federallyfunded positions.

It is directed largely to the welfare, mental health, public health and civil (defense departments, which employ about 500 persons in the county. According to county personnel department officials who drafted the document, the action program" has severgoals, including: -Achievement of equal opportunity employment practices. -Review of recruitment practices to insure they are not criminatory. -Review of examination procedures to make sure no "inadvertant" discrimination occurs. -Removal of all "artificial" barriers to employment which may needlessly restrict minority group members from employment.

-Review of job descriptions to insure they reflect the actual duties required by the employee. The personnel department spokesman also announced an intention to apply for federal funds to finance a complete review of the county's hiring tices. A.