Albany Democrat-Herald from Albany, Oregon • 1

'A mvmirr OF ORF.gpy OR 9 117th year Wednesday, August 11, 1982, Albany, Oregon 36 Pages-Price 25 cents 5n jwom i Council green light clears plaza work ficials gave final approval to the lease. And Km porium officials said they would not give that approval without the left-turn lane. Morse Bros, crews now will continue working on the project, and Lands said he expects no problems with the release of the loan money. The loan was approved some time ago, contingent upon the Emporium's final approval of the 25-year lease agreement, he said. Rohit Joshi of Los Angeles, the developer in charge of lining up retail firms, earlier this summer thought the center could be completed before the Christmas shopping season.

An Albertson's grocery store is scheduled to open In late September. Lands said the Emporium, Pay Less drugstore and about 20 small shops now won't open until next March. meeting Monday they would back out of the project unless a left turn lane is installed along Waverly at the southern end of the shopping complex. On Monday, the council, with only four members present, voted 3-1 to grant the left-turn lane. Councilman Jack Greene's negative vote killed it.

Four votes are required for approval A telephone conference meeting was called for Tuesday night. Councilman Marv Saxton, who is recovering at home from a heart attack suffered two weeks ago, added his vote along with those from Jim Conser, Carl Stephani and Jerry Maddy to approve the left-turn access. Council worn an Dala Rouse was out of town. Greene again dissented, sticking to his claim that the turning lane would create a traffic By LANCE ROBERTSON Democrat-Herald Writer A left-turn lane on Waverly Drive into the Albany Plaza shopping center was given a green light literally by the Albany City Council Tuesday night, averting shutdown on work at the $3. 4-miIlion project.

The 4-1 vote by the council also allows final approval of a lease agreement between center developer Dr. Victor Lands of Los Angeles and the Emporium department store. That lease agreement in turn allows Lands to obtain loan money to pay Morse the project's general contractor. Morse Bros, had said it would stop work unless it is paid. Emporium officials told the council in a special hazard.

To help alleviate a hazard, the council required that a signal be installed to regulate traffic at the left-turn lane. Lands would be required to pay for the traffic light. The light would coincide with a left-turn signal at 14th Avenue and Waverly 200 feet to the south. Lands, contacted today In Los Angeles, said he Is pleased with the council's decision. He said he is willing to bear the additional cost of the traffic light.

'There's nothing else I can do," he said. The developer needed rapid approval of the left-turn lane because the first payment to Morse Bros, was due Tuesday. Seattle First National Bank would not release any loan money to Lands unless Emporium of MARVSAXTON Learns vote by phone 7 WWlr.1'" Gypsy moth turns up north of Albany bodies of cars, trucks, campers and trailers. That's how the leaf-eating insects spread across the country, Valterza said. Valterza said the density of traps in Corvallis and Dever was only one per square mile but now will be increased to 16 per square mile.

In their caterpillar stage, gypsy moths will eat practically any green vegetation. They have stripped large sections of forests in the East. Oregon officials said the reason they were so insistent on going ahead with aerial spraying of Sevin to wipe out the Salem infestation was to protect the state's timber and agricultural industries. A number of Salem residents and environmentalists fought the state's aerial use of Sevin but lost. SALEM (AP) The Oregon Department of Agriculture said today that two gypsy moths were found in traps in Cor vallis, and a second moth has turned up in south Salem.

One lone moth has turned up in Dever, a community six miles north of Albany. This spring, the department sprayed the insecticide Sevin over about 5,000 acres of south Salem in hopes of wiping out an infestation of gypsy moths. Agriculture Department spokesman John Valterza said additional traps will be set in Corvallis and Dever to determine whether the moths found there are part of an infestation or just isolated travelers. In their caterpillar stage, the moths frequently attach themselves to the Freeze Dry worker dies Staff photo fey Stanford Smith A 38-year-old Albany woman died early today in an accident at Oregon Freeze Dry Foods, 770 29th Ave. S.E.

Albany Police Lt. Lee Roy Sims said that Benita Perez Ramon, 910 18th Ave. S.E., was cleaning beneath a packing machine when the accident occurred on the graveyard shift, about 4 a.m. Sims said her left arm was caught in the moving machinery, severing the limb and causing neck injuries. The Albany Fire Department ambulance was called, but Mrs.

Ramon was pronounced dead at the scene. Survivors include her husband. Ramiro E. Ramon and four children, at least one of whom is married. Funeral is pending at the Fisher Funeral Home.

All questions concerning the accident were referred to Oregon Freeze Dry President Herbert Aschkenasy. He said that Mrs. Ramon had worked for the firm eight years. "This is the first fatal accident we have ever experienced. It is incomprehensible that it happened," Aschkenasy said.

He added that the firm has formed a committee to investigate the mishap. The committee is to report its findings to him at the end of the day Thursday. North Albany Park gets improvements Al Kitzman, left, Benton County park planner, helps park ranger Martin Zollner spread gravel Tuesday at North Albany Park. The park, located on the south side of Valley View Drive, is undergoing major remodeling work this month. The picnic shelter in the background and the park's restrooms were reconstructed.

A child's play area was moved closer to the picnic area to make room for a parking lot that will handle overflow parking. The park will be closed to public use all month. Vote by mail causes failures? Not for Denny district Virginia slayer gets wish, dies in electric chair estimated $250 cost of opening a polling place somewhere In the district. People also were asked to pay their own postage when ailing back their ballots. Two nther elections were held in Linn County Tuesday.

Staytcn Union High School won approval of a $1,271,427 tax levy by a 621-603 vote in both Linn and Marion counties. The levy In Linn County, 143-123, but passed in Marion County by a 498-460 margin. About 20 percent of the district's Linn County voters cast ballots, while 22 percent voted in Marion County. A one-year, $7,938 operating levy for the city of Adair Village in Benton County ended in a tie vote. The 22-22 vote will undergo a recount sometime within the next week.

Only 19.7 percent of the city's 223 eligible voters cast ballots. voters casting ballots. The 92.5 percent vote "is a fantastic turnout," Riley said today. "It's the highest of any in Linn County history' Riley said Tuesday's vote, when compared to the two previous elections in the Denny district, "kind of allays the fears of people who fear a big turnout will hurt chances of passage." He said the vote percentage "certainly attests to fact that people like it. they are confident in the method itself." Voting by mail was approved on an experimental basis by the 1981 Oregon Legislature.

Linn County held the state's first such election last fall. Riley said the Denny election cost $25, compared to the By LANCE ROBERTSON Democrat-Herald Writer Linn County Clerk Del Riley says Tuesday's Denny School District election should allay fears that vote-by-mail elections encourage levy failures. In a whopping turnout of 92.5 percent in the state's second vote-by-mail election, Denny voters approved a 129,413 tax levy to help finance the district's 1982-83 operating budget. The vote was 58-39. Besides the high turnout, what also surprised Riley is failure of the same levy in two previous elections this year.

The $29,413 levy failed in March with a 51 percent turnout and iigain in May with 69 percent of the small district's Vets agency inventories homes RICHMOND, Va. (AP) Convicted murderer Frank J. Coppola, a former policeman who once studied to be a Roman Catholic priest, went to his death without hesitancy and without defiance, a witness said today. Copolla, 38, asked a minister to "look after my family," embraced him and strode off coolly and willingly to the electric chair Tuesday night. He was pronounced dead at 11:27 p.m., 61 minutes after the U.S.

Supreme Court acceded to his hand-written plea for a speedy execution. Coppola insisted he was innocent of slaying Muriel Hat-chell, 45, whose skull was crushed during a robbery at her home in Newport News in 1978. Testimony said he repeatedly pounded her head into the floor because she refused te say where she kept her money. Others involved in the crime said he was the killer. But Coppola, who said he was ready to die to maintain his dignity and spare his family agony of further appeals, resisted attempts to have his execution stayed.

One of the six witnesses to the execution was state legislator J. Samuel Glasscock of Suffolk. Coppola, clad in traditional prison garb of blue denim, was led into the narrow chamber by two guards as the witnesses watched from behind a glass partition, Glasscock said. "There was no hesitancy," he said. "There was no look of defiance on his face." He was the fifth person to be executed in this country since 1976, when the U.S.

Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty after nearly 10 years of debate. He was the first since Steven Judy was electrocuted in Indiana in March 1981 and the first to die in Virginia's electric chair in 20 years. His death left 1,005 men and 13 women on death rows in the 35 states that have capital punishment laws. Gov. Charles Robb declined to use his authority to issue a last-minute stay of execution.

He said it was "the most difficult and emotionally draining" decision he has had to make as governor. interest rates that were fixed prior to Feb. 3. The ruling does not affect veterans loans that are being assumed for the first time. It also does not affect new loans made after Feb.

3 of this year. Ball said the department now will determine how many of the 1,600 transfers since Feb. 3 are affected, then readjust rates. He said homeowners won't get cash rebates, but any extra money they have paid will be applied to the loan principle. Here's an example of how the ruling affects loan transfers: Say a Vietnam War veteran got a 7 percent loan in 1972 to buy a house.

In 1977, he sold the house to a non-veteran, who assumed the loan. The department adjusted the rate to 9 percent. That 9 percent rate, since it is an initial transfer, is "fixed" and cannot be raised, according to the opinion, no matter how many times the home is sold and the loan assumed. The Department of Veterans Affairs has about 150.000 borrowers. Earlier estimates placed the number of homes affected by the ruling at more than 20 000 Estimates indicate that about 600 of the homes are located in Linn County.

Ball said the department is working on a plan to roll back interest rates for many of the 1,600 loans transferred after Feb. 3, when state law was changed in a special session of the Oregon Legislature. State law had prevented rate adjustments after the initial loan assumption. But the Legislature eliminated that practice and the department since Feb. 3 has made about 1.600 loan transfers, adjusting nearly all the interest rates.

Albany real-estate broker Don Thompson challenged the department's actions, Thompson got help from area legislators, and the agency in June asked for an attorney general's opinion. When the opinion was issued Aug. 2, it supported Thompson's challenge. It said that the department could not readjust By LANCE ROBERTSON Democrat-Herald Writer Thousands of homes in Oregon now can be sold at interest rates below 11 percent as the result of an Oregon Department of Justice opinion, a Department of Veterans Affairs official said Tuesday. Bob Ball, state veterans affairs deputy director, said his agency is making an inventory of homes that are affected by the Aug.

2 opinion that struck down certain loan-transfer practices. The opinion by chief counsel Donald Arnold also is expected to roll back interest rates for hundreds of Department of Veterans Affairs loans transferred since Feb. 3 of this year. Arnold's ruling the result of an Albany man's efforts means up to 16,000 homes can be sold with veterans loans assumed at their present interest rates. Many of those loans were made when interest rates were between 4 and 11 percent.

I' A DON THOMPSON Challenged actions 1 i 111,1 Erma Bombeck 25 Horoscope 24 Juit Think 29 Movies 8 2 People ..11 Sports 19 21 Sylvia Porter 18 TV Schedule 24 2 i Two environmental groups are stepping up their efforst to block a sludge-storage plan at Wah Chang. See page 3 Today's 'Back to School' section has information about registration, fashions and fads for students. See pages 11-18 A Willamette Industries experiment using straw as fuel could mean less smoke from field burning. See page 5 Business-Markets. 9 Classifieds 29-32 Comics.

24 Crossword 31 DearAbby 24 Editorial. 4.