The Bismarck Tribune from Bismarck, North Dakota • 17

The BISMARCK TRIBUNE Saturday, June 25, 1983-Page SB School negotiators reach settlememif By LUCILLE HENDRICKSON Tribune Staff Writer Negotiators reached agreement Friday afternoon on a new two-year teaching contract for Bismarck's 546 public school teachers. Under the agreement the teachers will get a 3.5 percent salary increase in the first year of the contract, and a 4 percent Increase in the second year. The increases are tied to tax-sheltering their 6.25 percent contribution to the Teachers Fund for Retirement. To accomplish that, the 6.25 percent for teacher retirement will be taken out of the teacher's salary before taxes are applied, in the same manner that an annuity is tax sheltered. Teacher salaries cost the district $10,682,530 in this school year.

Under the settlement, they will cost $376,150 more in the first year of the contract for a total salary bill of $11,058,680. A salary schedule for the second year will be worked up cooperatively by the board and teacher negotiators, and the two sides agreed that at 4 percent the dollars for salries would amount to about $442,500, bringing total salary costs that year to about $11,501,180. Also, in the second year, a new lane will be added to the salary schedule for the teacher who holds a master's degree and has 30 additional credit hours of education. The two-year contract carries a clause that states negotiations can be reopened on the contract for the second year if the Consumer Price Index increases by 5 percent or more, or drops by 3 percent. The CPI period is for Jan.

1, 1983, to Jan. 1, 1984, using the Department of Labor's Kansas City, CPI for urban wage earners and clerical workers. The teachers also gained some improvements in fringe benefits. In the first year of the contract, the school district will pay $140 on the family medical premium, which is $20 more than this year. That will cost the district an additional $48,000.

In the second year, the medical premium, expected to be about $165 per month, will be fully covered for an additional cost to the school district of about $65,000. Also in the second year, the teachers will receive up to $75 per year In reimbursement for their vision care costs eye examinations, eyeglasses and contact lenses, estimated to cost the district $30,000. Addition of vision care represented a compromise between board and teacher negotiators. The board team had rejected it from the beginning of negotiations, saying the dollars were not there. But at Wednesday's meeting, they agreed to add it if $15 were taken off the salaries at each step of the salary schedule.

Teacher negotiators found that acceptable. The tentative contract will be presented to the Bismarck School Board at its 4:30 p.m. Monday and the Bismarck Education Association will meet to vote on the proposed contract at 8:30 p.m. Monday at Century High School. David Blackstead, chief board negotiator, said he thought the settlement was a fair one.

He observed that reaching settlement 12 meetings had taken longer than expected but that can happen when dealing with restricted amounts of money. Judy Jemtrud, chief BEA negotiator, said the salaries are adequate in view of the school district's budget constraints and that the improved fringe benefits had been a major selling point in acceptance of the salary package. This is the way in which the retirement-sheltered pay plan would work, using a teacher who has a bachelor's degree plus 15 credit hours of education and 14 years of experience in the system. Her salary by moving from the 13th step (13 years experience) to the 14th step will go from $21,050, to $21,785. Social security will take $1,459.59 of her salary, leaving $20,325.41.

Payment of the 6.25 percent retirement contribution amounts to $1,361.56, leaving her with a taxable salary of $18,963.85. At a 28 percent tax bracket, she pays taxes of $5,309.88, leaving her with take-home pay of $13,653.97. Last year, at the 13th step, her salary was $21,050 and after withholding $1,410.35, she paid taxes on $19,639.65, leaving $14,140.55. Her 6.25 percent teacher retirement amounted to $883.78, leaving her with take-home pay of $13,256.77. Her salary gain with the tax sheltering next year amounts to $397.20 ($13,653.97 minus If that teacher had to pay taxes on the retirement contribution at her new salary of $21,785, her take-home pay would be $13,272.74.

Other items of agreement included a re-evaluation of the reduction in force policy by a school committee, including teachers; a new provision in the policy on reimbursement for course work that will reimburse part-time as well as full-time teachers who take course work for professional improvement. Prohibitionists pick candidate Mr 4 Ml wt 'Hi'-, Prohibition Party's official campaign rousers is entitled, "I'd Rather Be Right than President," a reference to Henry Clay's failed quest for the presidency. DODGE IS no newcomer to politics. He has twice run as his party's nominee for vice president. The Prohibition Party, operating under the name of the National Statesmen Party, turned in one of its worst showings ever in 1980, collecting a scant 7,100 votes in eight states, including 54 in North Dakota.

Dodge says restrictive ballot laws kept the party off the ballot in most of the other states. There is no glamour- in serving as the Prohibition Party candidate for president. No Secret Service agents hover around Dodge. There are no aides whispering in his ears. When he was nominated Friday for president in a small dining room at the Lewis and Clark Hotel, there was no more ceremony and hoopla than would accompany the selection of the presiding officer for a local Rotary Club or Chamber of Commerce chapter.

WHEN DODGE is on the road he bunks with the party faithful when he can. His clothes look like they came right off the rack a few years ago at Penney's. Dodge has raised his seven children on a $16,000 salary as party chairman. Dodge left the Republican party in 1950, disillusioned with the nomination of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the "nearly identical" platforms of the major parties.

At the age of 20, he first entered into Prohibition Party activities. Five years later he was executive secretary of the party. The party's national headquarters eventually moved to Colorado, where Dodge has resided since 1971. Last year, he garnered about 3,500 votes in a By SCOTT ST APF Tribune Staff Writer For a high school dropout whose jobs outside of politics were in cemetery plot sales and factory assembly line work, Earl Dodge is doing better than might be expected. The 50-year-old Lakewood, man accepted Friday the anti-liquor Prohibition Party's nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Wrapping up their 1984 national nominating convention in Mandan, the 45 delegates from 11 states picked Warren Martin, of Junction City, as the party's vice-presidential nominee. For Dodge, the presidential nod is the climax of 25 years of work inside the tiny Prohibition Party, which has tabs on just 1,000 supporters nationwide. For the last several years, Dodge has served as the party's full-time national chairman, working out of a two-story condominium in Denver. EVEN THOUGH his formal education ended in the ninth grade, Dodge is a polished and witty speaker whose voice betrays just a hint of boyhood roots in Massachusetts. For a quarter of a century, Dodge has been taking the Prohibition message to high schools, colleges and "anybody and everybody" in the news media who will give him the time of day.

Unlike Republicans and Democrats, Prohibitionists can't be choosy when it comes to meeting the press, Dodge says. National news organizations have all but "blacked out" the anti-liquor party, he claims. Dodge says one Prohibition presidential candidate invited to appear on a public television show was "sandwiched in" between the U.S. Communist Party candidate and a California man who ordains dogs as ministers for $10 and was campaigning on a platform of equal rights for extraterrestrials visiting the earth. IN AN effort to broaden member ship.

Dodge, who was born a few months before tne rroniDiuon amendment to the U.S. Constitution was renealed in 1933. has been edging the 114-year-old party to ward a Droaa piauorm or rigiaiy conservative views, steering awav from its one-dimensional image as a magnet tor tne spiritual aescena-ants of saloon-wrecker Carrie Nation. It is not a job for someone who measures himself in terms of success, Dodge concedes. "Prohibitionists have to live by the motto: 'There's no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't mind who gets the credit, "he says.

Not surprisingly, one or me N.D. jobs program suggested By JOHN PEARSON Tribune Staff Writer An employment policy for North Dakota might largely involve coordinating the education, training and jobs programs that already exist. And such a policy might be able to depend more on private industry than government. These were just two of many ideas to emerge in group discussions Friday as some 450 businessmen, educators and government officials worked up proposed goals for a state employment policy. They were participating in the Governor's Conference on Education, Training and Employment for New and Emerging Technologies, a two-day conference at the Holiday Inn, Bismarck.

ON THURSDAY, they listened to a number of state, federal and business speakers talk on the new technologies, especially in electronics such as computers, that already are causing big changes in the job market and the ways that people conduct business. Friday, they dispersed into groups to talk about potential goals for North Dakota. Here are some of the ideas summarized at the day's end. The conference participants would like to see: More education and training in sophisticated technology, in North Dakota's schools and vocational institutions. Schools giving more help to teen-agers in finding jobs, and playing a bigger role in instilling good work values.

More emphasis on achievement in academics, and less on their social relevance. More help for small, rural schools in providing career information and counseling. More education for U.S. citizens in understanding science. However, they don't think that lack of sophisticated training equipment is a real problem in North Dakota schools.

More leadership by industry in job training, employment program coordination and job placement programs. THE CONFERENCE participants also think that complaints of slippage in science and technology education around the U.S. are somewhat true, but they don't feel that these changes are visible in North Dakota. Kent G. Aim, conference manager, termed the conference a success, although, he added, not enough businessmen were able to attend.

He recommended local conferences on employment and technology, to help cut down the time and cost of traveling. The governor had convened the conference, Aim said, so that state officials could find out what was being done in new technology education and training, get a feel of how well young people are being prepared for jobs and explore some goals that might be incorporated into a state employment policy and new technology. THE WORD "policy" was bothersome for members of one group. "That means more government," said one man. "An employment policy wouldn't mean much without improvement in the economy," said Howard Snortland, former superintendent of schools.

However, the group members did learn, in discussion, about various state agencies and programs, ranging from special school counseling to Job Service, that are helping people with training and employment. They could be expanded and developed, the group members said. ANOTHER GROUP suggested that North Dakoka follow North Carolina's example, and attract small industrial plants to provide jobs for farmers who can't survive on farming alone. They also advised that Job Service North Dakota needs more flexible programs to handle the large number of construction workers who will be let go as construction finishes at the Great Plains coal gasification plant near Beulah. i get on the ballot, the Prohibitionists are working to keep the process open to all political viewpoints, Dodge says.

"What they (the Republicans and Democrats) are sayng is that the voters are such ignoramuses that if there are more than two choices on the ballot, they'll be confused," he explains. "And our obligation isn't to win an election, it's to vote our convictions," Dodge says. Court said. As to the offer of partial payment, "Generally, an offer of part of an amount due is insufficient tender that a creditor may accept or reject," the high court said. Midwest Federal foreclosed in June 1982, and Kouba went to District Court in Minot to request a jury trial.

He claimed the request was granted but that Judge Jon Kerian later reversed himself and denied the jury trial. Another district judge, Bert L. Wilson, granted Midwest Federal summary judgment at a later hearing. The Supreme Court rejected Kouba's contention that he had been denied due process because there was no trial. "The Koubas do not have a right to trial by jury in this action," Paulson wrote.

He noted that the trial judge mistakenly used a form containing the words "order setting date of jury trial," which led the Koubas to believe he was granting their request for a jury trial when in fact, he was notifying them only of the dates for the pretrial Tribune Photo by Tea Quanrua discusses the Prohibition Party's philosophy Earl Dodge monial" speech to the convention, Dodge said that he thinks "God is a prohibitionist." "THE THINGS we advocate, I'm convinced, are the things He wants," Dodge told the small audience. "We are pleasing to Him." In addition to advocating an end to the production, distribution and consumption of alcohol, the Prohibition Party platform is a grab bag of conservative proposals a return to the gold standard, a bal North Dakota Digest Court upholds foreclosure run for the governorship of that state. Dodge smiles when he is asked why anyone even bothers to run on the party's ticket. THE PROHIBITION Party is needed, he says, because no other major political organization is working to put an end to the alcohol problem. The party cites studies indicating there are about 26 million alcoholics and "problem drink ers in the U.S.

Dodge is fond of noting that while 400,000 Americans die each year, either "directly or indirectly" as the result of alcohol-related disease, auto accidents, crime and other problems, fewer than one-seventh as many Americans died in 12 years of the war in Vietnam. Dodge also explains that Prohibitionists are the type who do not give up easily. There is a strong religious undercurrent in the small party. In a revival tent-style "testi- 1 anced federal budget, limits on welfare, constitutional amendments outlawing abortion and a return to Bible reading and voluntary prayers in public schools. DODGE ALSO defends the Prohibition Party as an organization fighting to keep third parties alive in the U.S., giving voters a choice outside of the Republican and Democratic parties, Dodge says.

While the major parties work to make it tougher for independents to told the court the institution does not accept partial payments once a loan is delinquent by more than a month. Kouba said he believed Midwest Federal refused to accept the check "because of personal animosity of the plaintiffs toward the defendant." The Supreme Court held that Midwest Federal had a right to reject the two-party check and the partial payment. "Neither the offer of the two-party check nor the offer of the partial payment in money had any legal effect upon these foreclosure proceedings," wrote Justice William Paulson. Before refusing to cash the check, Midwest Federal called the South Dakota bank and was told that payment would not be guaranteed. "Because the Koubas offered a two-party check for $5,000 that was not guaranteed by the bank upon which it was drawn, in order to pay a $906 debt, we agree with the trial court that Midwest Federal had the right to refuse the check and require payment from the Koubas in money in the amount of the delinquency," the Supreme Moisture a problem in some areas By The Associated Press It's wet or dry and no in-between for some crop fields in northwestern Minnesota and parts of eastern North Dakota.

Ken Pazternik, agricultural extension agent for Norman County in northwestern Minnesota, says fields are flooded and washed after a foot of rain in the past two weeks. But Allen Olson, extension agent for Sargent County in southeastern North Dakota, says "his county will suffer drought soon if the temperature goes up before the rain comes down. Federal land sale postponed WASHINGTON The sale of 238,000 acres' of federal land in North Dakota by the federal government has been delayed for at least two months, according to Congressman Byron Dorgan, The Reagan Administration was planning to submit a bill to Congress asking for the Authority to sell the land. Now however, according to Dorcan "the administration probably won't ask for legislation for several 'months. And even if It does, the prospects for passage look bleak," U.S.

pilots' remains verified WASHINGTON (AP The Pentagon announced Friday it has verified thai a dos ttfi and Identification documents turned over by the North Vletnuinpstf government early this month belonged to three U.S. pilots shot down in the mid 1960s. One pilot was Air Force-Maj. Martin Stoon of Grand Forks. By LENIWANSKI Associated Press Writer The North Dakota Supreme Court has upheld a foreclosure action against former Minot Alderman Albert "Rusty" Kouba and his wife, Sharon.

The court in a memorandum decision Friday affirmed a district court ruling denying Kouba a jury trial and granting Midwest Federal Savings and Loan Association of Minot summary judgment. The decision was unanimous. Kouba took out a $31,400 mort-gate on his Minot property in December 1975. Midwest Federal contended he did not make any payments in 1982. Midwest Federal refused to honor a $5,000 two-party check drawn on a South Dakota bank, which Kouba offered in March 1982.

Kouba wanted to pay off $906 in three months' delinquent payments and to keep about $4,000 in change, he told the Supreme Court in oral arguments last Month. Kouba later returned to the savings and loan with $302 in cash for the April 1982 payment. Midwest Federal attorney Collin Dobrovolny i iftui tuifcj. inJM VifciJto.