Des Moines Tribune from Des Moines, Iowa • 3

The IPsoge DES MOINES SUBURBS NEIGHBORHOODS IOWA DES MOINES TRIBUNE Wednesday, September 5, 1979 Supervisor watches appeals IFlifOl Jltt Slow By Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart By Jerry Perkins Polk County Supervisor Murray Drake says he doesn't think the county can expect to recover the $395,000 it already has paid to Cole-Layer-Trumble Co. for its controversial reappraisal of property. Drake made the remark Tuesday to Robert Metier, a professional property appraiser, who told Drake the county didn't get its money's worth out of its $485,000 contract with Cole-Layer-Trumble, of Dayton, Ohio, to reappraise all property in the county outside Des Moines. The new valuations set by the firm have drawn thousands of protests, i WEST DES MOINES muni -Mil Ed Weiss at work at WOI radio in Ames. WOI radio's Ed Weiss: Sophisticate among rustics angry West Des Moines residents who think their properties were reappraised inaccurately, causing him to look into the firm's work.

Drake asked Metier if he thought the county got its money's worth from Cole-Layer-Trumble. When Metier said no, Drake shook his head in agreement and said, "We didn't get our money's worth. What we got was the low bidder." Drake said he favors bargaining with Cole-Layer-Trumble officials over reducing the property reappraisals. Regarding the appraisal of his own house, Drake said his wife asked a young man who identified himself as an employee of Cole-Layer- Trumble if he wanted to enter the house and look at it, but that he told her. 'It wouldn't make a difference anyway." About 70 West Des Moines residents had appointments Tuesday to appeal their reappraisals.

Frank Sisko, project director for Cole-Layer-Trumble, said the residents he talked to were "civil" "They know you don't get anythii by screaming," Sisko said. Sisko said mistakes in reappraisals may have been made, and "if they're wrong, we're going to try to make them right." Property owners will be notified in December or January if any changes in their valuations are made, Sisko said. If they are still not satisfied, the property owners then can appeal to the Polk County Board of Review in May, 1980. The new reappraisal figures will not affect property taxes until the 1981-82 fiscal year. The informal hearings for West Des Moines residents will continue through Monday.

Appeals for Clive and Windsor Heights residents start Tuesday at the Windsor Heights City Hall, 1133 Sixty-sixth St Cole-Layer-Trumble officials asked property owners to make appointments to appear at the hearings by telephoning 278-4579. and some local officials have been calling for the cancellation of the contract and recovery of all money paid to the company. Drake, however, told Metier he doesn't think the county can recover the amount paid because the contract "was a good contract" Metier disagreed, saying the firm's appraisers apparently did not make three attempts to go through bouses whose occupants were not borne. The conversation between Drake and Metier took place in in a second-floor ballroom at 217 Fifth St. in West Des Moines, where five employees of Cole-Layer-Trumble listened to Wfst Des Moines residents complain about their new property valuations.

Drake, who lives in West Des Moines, said he was sitting in on the informal hearings to show his concern and gather evidence for a meeting Wednesday night of the Polk County Conference Board, which is to review the contract with the reappraisal firm. Drake said his wife, Ruby, has scheduled an appeal session with the reappraisal firm, although Drake said he thought the new valuation of their house at 1222 Sixteenth St. was "not too far off." But Drake said he has received a large number of complaints from DOT hears plan to cut 1980 budget LIVING in Chapel Hill while Dr. John Karon takes an advanced degree in biological statistics at the University of North Carolina, a man-and-wife doctor team Dr. Karon and Des Moines-born radiologist Dr.

Kate Killebrew just had their second baby, another daughter. They had bad no trouble choosing Amy as their first girl's name, three years ago; but this time the two came up with so many favorite name combinations that they couldn't decide among them. Finally, Dr. Karon fed all of them into the computer, which narrowed the list to 12. These, the parents winnowed to four, and the four combinations were fed back for a final opinion.

The doctors' month-old baby girl has been computerized as Sarah (Mother of Princes) Rachel (Little Lamb). Sarah Rachel's parents call ber Moffin. WHEN automobiles had running boards, why were they called "running boards," I asked recently. And Jim Harrington, Society of Automotive Engineers, has an idea which he writes to us from Fifty-fifth street "Until the French word chassis came into use, the wagon, the carriage and the early automobile business called the board along the side of the vehicle the 'running A board attached parallel to this for passenger's or workman's convenience might thus have become the running board." Jim Harrington goes on to talk about William Morrison, recently mentioned here as having built an electric automobile in Des Moines in 1889. "He loaned or sold this early electric to Harold Sturgis of the American Battery Company where it was used for publicity before and after the 1895 race sponsored by the Chicago Times.

"Morrison went on as an inventor and was granted at least 88 patents, most for electrical battery application. "Curiously he never became enthusiastic over the future of the automobile. As late as 1907 he was quoted as saying, 7 wouldn't give 10 cents for an automobile for my own AN AMBITIOUS teacher in a nearby town hoped for a national spelling champion, and she drilled her youngsters until they couldn't take it anymore. "No, no!" cried one little girl when another word was barked at her. "Tm spellbound'." ONE-LINE PORTRAITS: James Thurber's Uncle Mahlon Taylor "washed his hair with Dutch Cleanser and read every night until dawn." Louise Noun, past-president of the Des Moines League of Women Voters, was introduced to the National Council of Municipal Leagues as "the gentlest person who ever threw a brick." Robert Brand said, "George Clemenceau was born with one day's good nature inside him, and he used it up pretty quickly." And one of the best is Max Beerbohm's question, put to a friend: "Have you ever noticed how Henry VIII looked like a hot water bottle?" HOIST THE FLAG, Royal Dowry, Canadian Bound, Nijinsky II, Bold Forbes, My Charmer and Goofed when yearlings were recently sold at auction in Kentucky, these were a few of the sires and dams that were remembered.

Country Parson "Even ibe person who ar-t gues most vigorously against you may some day be influenced by what yon By industry standards, WOI's audience is almost minuscule. With such a small audience, Forsling readily concedes, "It's not a commercially viable proposition." (But then few classical stations are. In the United States only 22 classical stations are commercial, and they are all in large metropolitan areas with the population to support them, Forsling notes. Most of the rest are connected with non-profit institutions such as colleges and universities.) WOI's audience tends to be "upscale," meaning listeners have relatively high incomes and advanced education. But, Forsling says, the audience also tends to be much older than commercial radio's audiences.

He says he is concerned that listeners are dying off. "Occasionally it worries me about what will happen in 10 or 15 years. We have few new listeners," says Forsling, who does the daily 7 a.m. news broadcast in addition to bis administrative duties. WOI, like most classical music stations, caters to urban areas, such as Des Moines, and the station draws on its university audience in Ames.

But the station always has had a small, but faithful, audience on the farm. Doug Brown, the station's programming director and host of The Book Club, explains why: "WOI-AM is a very old station (dating to 1921) and has bad a kind of populist connection with the people. For years farmers would get their farm and market news from us. Mixed in with that was the classical music, the home economics and the conversation." The thought of a farmer plowing the back 40 while listening to a Beethoven sonata on his tractor radio is not at all farfetched. But Brown and Forsling do concede it is probably more the exception than the rule.

The thought was almost too outrageous for Weiss, who admits he came to Iowa from Chicago reluctantly. "Golly, I didn't want to move out to the, lib, cornfields," he says with mock seriousness. Weiss had had an eccentric childhood in Chicago. As a boy, he was a puppeteer and used to put on puppet shows for his relatives. One day, sometime before he became a teen-ager, as he recalls it, he suddenly "discovered" opera and began putting on operatic puppet shows.

The relatives were "forced to be bored," Weiss says with a strange sense of satisfaction. Spear bearer Opera became a joy of his life and he was fortunate to get part-time college jobs as a supernumerary at the old Chicago Opera Company. "Supers," as they are called, are the guys who carry the spears. He received a degree in speech and radio drama from Chicago's Columbia College in the early 1940s. After World War II he earned a masters degree in television.

Weiss was drawn to Iowa in 1950 to work on one of the first television stations in the country, WOI-TV. It was so new it was the only one in the state for about four years that it broadcast all TRIBUNE PHOTO BY GEORGE CEOLLA four networks of the time, ABC, CBS, NBC and now-defunct DuMont Weiss served behind the scenes as a producer and director, but his acting side led him in the late 1950s to star as Malcolm the Butler on "Gravesend Manor," WOI's horror movie show. "I taaaaalked wiss a Bela Le-goooosssiii acccennnnt," he says, "and I wore an old moldy cutaway and dirty wing collar. "I remember this one show we did at Christmastime. Malcolm had an assistant named Claude.

Now Claude was this guy who walked around all stooped and hunched over. He was not very bright and so he took things too literally. On the Christmas show, I told Claude: 'Clawwwwwd liiiiight the Chrrrrissssstinas And he did he torched it! Oh, it was wonderful!" Other passion Gradually, Weiss got involved in the radio station. He started doing "Opera Stage," a weekly broadcast, and then a half-hour show on his other passion, medieval and Renaissance music. About five years ago he took over "Musicale," the morning drive time show of short classical pieces.

Then he took over "Master-works," an afternoon show which presents longer pieces. That's where he usually can be found Monday through Friday from 2 to 5 p.m. (as well as on Saturdays when be and Karen Bryan co-host the pre-recorded opera show). Weiss' passion for music leads to some passionate and pointed comments on music. He disdains much contemporary music or, as he calls it, "Something for Violin and Tape Recorder." "The problem with so much contemporary music," be says, "is that modern composers write music only they and a few friends can understand.

Mozart and Beethoven knew who they were writing for people." Associates at the radio station rib him about bis love for early music. "Some people here think my mind stopped in the 17th century," Weiss chuckles. As Weiss describes it, his adolescent discovery of opera was more the result of whimsy than anything else. His passion for early music, however, was the result of fate. He contracted polio when he was 29.

He had been an accomplished pianist, but the illness made it impossible for him to play. "I bought a recorder for therapy. Much of the music available is from the Renaissance and that introduced me to early music." Later, Weiss took up the lute and has mastered that instrument He performs with the Musica Antiqua, an amateur university-related group that specializes in Renaissance music. For relaxation, Weiss, who is single, raises orchids; be has 30 or 40 growing indoors under lights, be says. And acquaintances claim be is Iowa's first gourmet microwave chef.

Surprisingly, he rarely attends concerts. And he never listens to the radio at home. "At the end of a day," he says simply, "I don't want to listen to any more music." from his pocket and demanded money. Lotfi and Mirshamsi turned over their wallets, containing $10 and $5 respectively. Safai had no wallet, officials said.

Police were notified and stopped two suspects a block away the narking lot By Evan Roth TrlOum Staff Writer AMES, IA. Eight years ago WOI, one of Iowa's first radio stations, had some publicity photographs taken to promote its 50th anniversary. The photos showed announcer Ed Weiss sitting in a chair, dressed in a tuxedo and strumming a lute. The odd thing about these photographs was that Weiss, an accomplished lutist, was sitting in the middle of a pig pen and his audience was a half-dozen of Iowa's finest. The incongruity is more than simply funny.

It suggests WOI's role in central Iowa life: A sophisticated, perhaps a little pretentious, performer amid a rustic and wholesome, if not wholly appreciative, audience. WOI serves a small circle of long hairs (the old kind), but to that group WOI's fare of classical music, literary talk and public affairs (with a pinch of agri-business news) is a godsend welcome relief from the annoying electronic omnipresence of rock 'n roll, "beautifu!" music and noisy, nattering disc jockeys. If there is one person who symbolizes the radio station it is EM Weiss. At 56, he is an effusive elf of a man with a bald head, a white beard and a pair of large black-rimmed glasses. His voice his most pronounced feature is a melodic counter-tenor, as crisp as a saltine cracker and as clear as an unpolluted mountain stream.

Lilting tones Classical radio announcers (never called disc jockeys) tend to blend into their music. But not Weiss. His lilting tones, precise pronunciation of foreign names and titles, and his short ad-libbed anecdotes reach out from the loudspeaker. He doesn't announce so much as converse. He keeps you company.

He is not everyone's snifter of brandy, however. Some listeners find him annoyingly loquacious and wish he would shut up and just play the music. Others wish he'd stop playing some of that opera and Renaissance stuff, particular predilections of his. A Des Moines playwright is said to have found Weiss so cloying in his manner that he wrote a rather unflattering portrait of Weiss into a recent play; the playwright denies that, however. Despite his love for opera and early music, Weiss conforms to the station's format that highlights the more popular composers while trying to avoid repetition.

He reflects the character of the station: a trifle eccentric, but with a sensiblity that balances idealism, practicality and good taste. Staff members realize that but for the grace of Iowa State University, of which it is a part, WOI probably would not exist. According to Don Forsling, the station manager, ISU contributes more than $400,000 of the station's annual budget of $550,000. The remainder comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other grants. 70,000 listeners Each week about 70,000 persons in central Iowa tune in WOI-AM (640 on the dial) and 20,000 listen to the FM side (90.1 on the dial).

Two charged with Two men were arrested on robbery charges early Wednesday after they allegedly befriended and then robbed three persons, police said. They said the suspects, Thomas Law, 19, no address listed, and Robert W. Edwards 19, of 658 Fourteenth Place allegedly stopped to help three men who were locked out of their car in the parking lot of a convenience people together if there is no market for a year," Henely said of employees of paving companies. He said money for road building in other states, is equally scarce. Commissioner William McGrath of Melrose suggested that the DOT ask the Iowa Legislature for a "gift" of $10 million from the state's general fund to maintain some of the doomed projects.

He said trying to get the money "fooling around with different taxes probably wouldn't do it." The projects suggested for elimination are paving and grading work, mostly reconstructions of existing roads, in all areas of the state. They include postponement of construction of Freeway 520 from Intie- -pendence to Waterloo, a "key project" in earlier DOT calculations. Nahas mulls entering mayoral race By Rox Laird City Councilman George Nahas said Tuesday he will decide in the next two weeks whether he will announce as a candidate for Des Moines mayor. Nahas said he has considered becoming a candidate for several months and has been urged by a "wide range of people" from downtown business leaders to "southeast-side bottoms" residents to run. Sept 27 is the last day candidates can file nomination petitions.

Mayor Richard Olson repeatedly has said be will not be a candidate. On Tuesday, John F. Eller, a Brody Junior High School English teacher, announced that he was withdrawing from the contest "for personal and professional reasons." Eller handed copies of a prepared statement to reporters at Tuesday night's City Council meeting and said he would support one of the remaining candidates at a later date. Plan and Zoning Commission Chairman and Des Moines advertising man Richard Gerdes scheduled a Wednesday afternoon press conference to announce whether he will join the mayoral race. With the withdrawal of black activist Kalonji Saadiq last month, the field was narrowed on Wednesday morning to Councilwoman Elaine Szymoniak, Councilman Russell LaVine, former City Manager Peter Crivaro and attorney Karla Fultz.

By Tom Carney Tribune Stiff Writer AMES, IA. Applying a pocket knife to colored tape on a state map, Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) staff member G. W. Anderson elicited oohs and ahs from DOT commission members Wednesday by slicing around $55-million worth of projects from 1980 road-building plans. Anderson, director of the DOT'S Office of Program Management, tore off the tape marking around 25 projects to be eliminated or postponed, four of them in Polk County as part of a presentation on bow state agency could live within its means for the remainder of the fiscal year.

It was only a presentation, though. Commission members will decide within the next few weeks which of the projects to eliminate or postpone and, judging from past battles, there could be some horse trading before road-building plans are finalized. The commissioners were told at a meeting two weeks ago that the project eliminations, all in Iowa's primary road system, must be made because of sharply increased costs and reduced income. Anderson said the costs of highway improvements have risen 2.8 percent a month for the past 18 months while DOT projections of income from the state's road use tax fund have fallen short "What we thought we could do as recently as April and May, we find we aren't going to be able to accomplish," Anderson said. Included in the projects considered for elimination are four in Polk County: a $129,000 reconstruction of the intersection of S.W.

Ninth Street and Army Post Road; the reconstruction of the intersection of E. Fourteenth Street and Euclid Avenue; the reconstruction of the intersection of East University Avenue (U.S. 163) and SJL Thirtieth Street (Iowa Highway 46); and a $281,000 reconstruction of S.E. Fourteenth Street from Park Avenue to King Avenue. Commission Chairman Robert Rigler of New Hampton worried aloud that the elimination of so many projects over half of those planned on the state's primary roads would barm Iowa's paving industry.

Even if funds are restored in future years, Rigler said, "half the pavers in this state could be out of business." Ray Henely of Des Moines, executive manager of Associated General Contractors of Iowa, a trade association of road pavers and graders, agreed with Riglers assessment "You can't keep highly trained robbing men they aided store in the 1100 block of Sixth Avenue. Authorities said the suspects eventually opened the door with a coat hanger for Fariborz Lotfi, 19, of 1805 Arlington bo lam Ali Safai of 1306 Thirty-fourth St, and Mohamad Mirshamsi of 1000 School St. One of the suspects, police said, turned on the men and pulled a knife.