St. Joseph Gazette from St. Joseph, Missouri • 23

Tempo ELISION ST. JOSEPH NEWS-PRESS ST. JOSEPH, MISSOURI, TUESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 8, 1987 TWO SECTIONS City issues back on ballot By STEVE BENNETT Staff Writer The city may ask voters to approve three revenue issues Nov. 3, but that number could drop all the way to zero. All three revenue issues were placed on the ballot today, the last day for doing so, but the City Council will discuss tonight which items will remain in the election.

This morning, the council passed an emergency ordinance that changed the landfill fee increase. The change allows, the city to increase the fee from $2.50 per ton to $5 the first year, then $7.50 the following year, and $9.75 in 1989. But most of the special meeting was spent discussing options to the election and whether the city should go with all three revenue issues. Councilman Gerry Smith urged the council to put just the 1 percent earnings and profits tax on the November ballot. That would remove both the landfill fee and the parks levy increase from consideration for now.

"I know the money is needed for the other issues, but what will pass is a different thing," Smith said. "We have to look at what will pass." Council members Ray Sisson and Glenda Kelly agreed with Smith. Mayor Blair Conley said he did not favor any items on the November ballot, but he was especially opposed to the landfill fees. The council could remove the landfill issue from the ballot and raise the fee itself. A new law gives the council authority to raise the fee without voter approval to a level that matches expenses.

City Attorney Jim Turner said the new law would be challenged in court, but he could not predict which way the decision would go. Kelly said the city should be the one to challenge the law, using the landfill fee. "The council was elected to make she said. "We have that state law at our fin- gertips. If we don't use it, we are remiss in our Councilman Jim Bonebrake agreed that the city should be the one to challenge the law, but he said the landfill fee is not the issue to use.

He felt fees such as those for the pools or softball teams should be used. "If they fail, it will not be detrimental to their operations," Bonebrake said. "The landfill is at a critical stage. It is a poor risk to take. "We were elected to make decisions.

But we were not elected to gamble unnecessarily." Without the fee increase. the city may be forced to sell or lease the landfill. It also faces the chance that the state will force the city to close the site. Conley said the city should allow the landfill fee to stay on the ballot only if the council was confident of victory at the polls. The mayor has no such confidence.

Conley said the state legisia- See ISSUES on Page 2A Ballot action will determine cost By MARK SHEEHAN Staff Writer The meter on costs for any November election starts clicking at 5 p.m., according to Buchahan County Clerk Patrick Conway. The City Council met in special session this morning to discuss which, if any of three revenue proposals, should go on the November ballot. It decided to modify a proposal for raising landfill fees. But the council decided to wait until after the 5 p.m. filing deadline for the November election to decide what should go on that ballot.

Only six council members attended the special morning meeting. and they opted to wait until this evening's meeting to discuss the ballot issue with the other three members. The cost starts climbing at 5:01 p.m., according to Conway. "I'd say it's going to cost them at least $100 no matter what," the clerk said. That's the most conservative estimate.

City Attorney Jim Turner said the council must decide which items will remain on the ballot by Friday or the cost will take a sudden jump. "If you wait until Monday, it will cost you $1,000 for expenses," Turner said. Conway said the council has about a $3,000 cushion in money left from its unsuccessful attempt to get 1 percent earnings tax, a park levy hike and a landfill increase in August. And he said his office will move as slowly as possible so that city won't incur any election cost it doesn't have to until all nine council members reach some decision on the ballot question this evening. It will mean the clerk will print up only the necessary 1,000 absentee ballots next week to give the council time to see if it can raise the $23,000 needed to hold a November election.

Turner said the city had several options for changing the ballot issues. The council could opt to pull one or two of the issues most likely the landfill fee increase and park levy hike, in that order off the ballot. Or it could decide to pull all three issues.off the ballot. If the November election is dropped, Conway said, it will take more than his office to kill the ballot. He said the city would have to ask the circuit court pull the issues off the ballot.

The filing fee for that would be $80. Notes tell of missing girl's murder By MARY H. BURROWES Staff Writer The existence of a possible witness in the eight-year-old case of a missing St. Joseph woman was revealed by police Tuesday. Detective Sgt.

Tim Schweder and Sgt. Jim Connors, police information officer, said notes directed to police have indicated someone actually saw Micki Jo West, then 19, being killed by a St. Joseph man in 1979. West, an employee at St. Joseph State Hospital, disappeared on Sept.

11 of that year as she walked to her bus stop on her way to work. The Police Department search for her has taken various turns through the intervening years but without success. Schweder, who is the latest in a series of officers who have undertaken the case, said Tuesday that as many as seven notes have been received from a person who claims to have witnessed West's murder. The first two were received in 1982 and 1983 but last year, close to the anniversary date of Sept. 11, there were five more notes.

"These include anonymous letters which contain information only someone close to the crime would have," Connors said. He declined to quote from the letters but said at least two of them had Barry Woodbull replaces a few sign Tuesday morning at Belt Woodhull, a St. Joseph resident, Display Corp. which has a service upkeep of the sign. Staff photo by TIMOTHY J.

JONES Time for a time change bulbs in the American Bank at 800 N. Belt. works for Sunshine Electronic contract with the bank for the Workers at Stetson Hat Co. assured management opposes sale, closure The president of the union at Stetson Hat Co: here reported this morning that management of the hat manufacturing plant in St. Joseph is opposed to any sale of the firm that might end resulting in the plant being closed.

Julie Williams, president of Local 64H of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers. said at noon today that she had been told by Jerry Davison, plant manager, that "it is not the desire of management here to sell or to close the Stetson plant." She said the management had Deputy passes polygraph test al ed A police polygraph test has cleared a sheriff deputy of allegations that he assaulted Virginia woman in an 1 East Side lounge parking lot last week. A 22-year-old Norfolk. woman complained Thursday that an off-duty Buchanan County deputy attacked her in the parking lot of the Bonnie and Clyde's Lounge at 1607 N. Belt Highway.

She told police the deputy grabbed her by the hair and shirt while she was sitting in her car. Buchanan County Sheriff Mickey Gill said the woman failed a polygraph test given to her Friday by an officer from the St. Joseph Police Department. Department investigators indicate the deputy was attempting to restrain the woman after she had ran into him with her car while leaving the lot. "The polygraph cleared my officer, and I just think it's important the community know the incident was investigated thoroughly and that there was no coverup." Gill said.

Rebuilding police cars fails to produce desired savings In adding up the cost of the rebuilt squad car, Zoubek ineluded $1,440 for 160 hours of labor, although the argument is made that such cost would be incurred in any event. "They had to do it (the work) in between their regular maintenance commented Capt. Lloyd G. Nunn, supervisor of auxiliary police services of which the garage facility is one. "Ordinarily, this car would have been traded in by now," Zoubek said.

He explained that severe budget cuts, made during the City Council's struggle to make available funds meet only the direst of needs, meant the police department got no new cars. Throat cutter gets 30 years By MARK SHEEHAN Staff Writer FDIC ed seat and carpet, speedometer, rebuilt transmission, carburetor kit, mufflers and pipes, air conditioner compressor and clutch, starter, alternator, power steering pump and numerous other items. Critics say the plan has been tried in other places, including St. Louis and Kansas City, but was not the success they had hoped for either. Alternatives such as leasing and buying used also failed to satisfy the decars partments' needs.

Present plans here include rebuilding at least one more older car, but Chief James R. Hayes is expected to take a closer look at what he had agreed to settle for in the budget crisis. Assistant Public Defender Daniel Radke again charged the prosecutor's office with railroading Dennis McGee through a grand jury Tuesday before McGee received a 30-year sentence on a felony assault conviction. A jury found McGee, 26, guilty this summer of cutting the throat of Christopher Courtin in March 1986. Circuit Judge Frank Connett sentenced McGee after the state's motion that the court consider McGee a dangerous offender.

Before the sentencing. Radke called on Connett to throw the whole case out because of what he characterized abuses of the grand jury system. The defense attorney recounted how the original charge failed to pass the test of its first preliminary hearing. And when the state returned with another assault charge, Radke told the court, the charges were withdrawn the day of the second preliminary hearing so that the case could be presented to the grand jury instead. "We think the state was sneaky in what it did." Radke told the court.

Radke and Buchanan County Prosecutor Michael Insco have never seen eye to eye when it comes to grand jury use. Radke consistently criticizes the prosecutor for using the grand jury to slip what the defender considers weak cases past preliminary hearings. Insco responds that he is only following the law. And Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Dean Shepherd countered that McGee's case passed the double test of two 12-member juries. "It's not a matter of railroading Mr.

McGee." Shepherd said. McGee was convicted of a class felony of beating Courtin and then cutting his throat. He stood quietly as the judge pronounced sentence. Radke was unsuccessful in his effort to thwart the state's motion to have McGee sentenced as a dangerous and prior offender. The defense argued a series of amendments in the state law on such offenders made the state's request unconstitutional.

Connett. however. ruled the amendments did not damage the state's request. He approved the state's motion, which upgraded the charge against McGee from a class to a class A felony. Connett also denied Radke's motion for a new trial, but Radke predicted the conviction will be appealed.

The judge set $100.000 bond in case an appeal is filed. been very cooperative in attempting to "put a halt in rumors" of a sale. She said she was to meet with management representatives prior to a 4p.m. meetof union members this afternoon to be held at Callison Hall, 10th Street and Mitchell. Avenue.

been found here and others turned up in the Kansas City area. The notes were not mailed but were merely left in public places, such as a shopping mall, and were addressed to police. Those found out of town contained information which referred to the St. Joseph connection. Police have long been convinced that West was killed shortly after her disappearance.

She had left an unclaimed paycheck at the hospital and her family said she had no reason to leave voluntarily. The only clue police had at that time was that she may have been accidentally involved in another woman's domestic dispute but they were never able to prove that. When the influx of notes increased last year, Schweder sought some assistance from the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit which produced a psychological profile of the letter writer. That information led to a number of interviews over a three-state area but those produced no concrete evidence. Schweder hopes the writer will continue communications, particularly this week as the anniversary comes around again.

Ironically, the case is similar to one reported over the weekend in Cass County where the body of It previously was reported that a Texas competitor, Resistol Hat was attempting to buy the Stetson business and close the plant. There are 200 union workers at the plant and 50 management personnel. Micki. Jo West Missing since 1979 a woman missing for six years was recovered in a cistern. "That proves there is always hope and we can still solve this case, even this many years Connors said.

West's father, Arden Locke of Kansas City, has a standing offer of a $10,000 reward in the case and Schweder recently confirmed that the offer is still good. He said information would be appreciated from anyone else who knows anything about the crime. The council did, however, come up with a certain amount of money for the renovation of two or three squad cars. The question. officials now agree, is whether the savings is worth it.

Zoubek noted that the total cost of rebuilding the car, $6,838.10, was only slightly lower than the cost of the last new cars minus their trade-ins. The police department purchased three new squad cars for a total price of $21,000 in cash, plus the tradeins. "Basically, we have replaced the power train, the brakes and the suspension," Zoubek said. The list of new parts includes two cylinder heads, oil pump, valve lifters, gaskets, motor mount, It will be clear to partly cloudy and pleasant Wednesday. Tonight's low will be in the mid-50s to low 60s, the high tomorrow in the mid-70s to low 80s.

Page 3A. Missouri's tourism industry, which was hurt last year by sluggish economic conditions, may have rebounded slightly this year, officials say. Page 7A. On Monday night. Gene Michael said that he may resign as manager of the Chicago Cubs.

He did just that Tuesday morning and the Cubs named Frank Lucchesi, former manager of the Texas Rangers and Philadelphia Phillies, their interim skipper. Page 1 B. As a measure of just how much Americans take their freedoms for granted, don't miss "The Constitution: We Live It Every Day," airing tonight at 9 on ABC. David Hartman explores four stories that offer great insight into the meaning and usefulness of the Constitution. whose bicentenary is being celebrated this year.

Page 6A. A woman uses Ann Landers' column to write a message to the anonymous person who called to inform her that her husband is running around with a tramp. Page 2B. Deaths Page 2A Midlands. Page 7A Weather.

Page 3A Sports. Pages 1-2B Editoria Page 4A Tempo. 2B National. Page 5A Business. 3B Personalities Page 6A Page 6A Classified Pages 3-6B By MARY H.

BURROWES Staff Writer A three-year-old police car, rebuilt because funds were not available for new ones, does not appear to have achieved the savings officials hoped it would. Ron Zoubek, chief mechanic for the police department, says the 1984 Ford with 109,000 miles on it was virtually rebuilt because no city funds were allocated for replacing it, as has been the custom in recent years. Zoubek completed a list of more than 65 parts he and his staff have replaced in the patrol car for a total of $5,398.10. They included items which ranged from an engine short block, at $1,611.59, to a rotor for $1.18..