The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 64

THE PANTAGRAPH, SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 1981 F5 Eastern Colorado NJ. city struggles to survive WEEHAWKEN, N.J. (AP) In ington Bridge. German firm boosts town February 1980 that it would locate its of an $80,000 home already pays about $5,000 in taxes each year, a tab that could have risen to $7,000 under the proposed new rate. Gallo said he was sure the referendum would have lost "by at least a 10-1 margin" and the referendum was canceled.

But he's also said the township needs at least a $24 increase, and even then, layoffs "are 99.9 percent sure." Uniformed employees are currently locked in contract negotiations with the township. They are asking for a 10 percent wage increase. Officials have made no offer: "There's no money," said Riepe. Weehawken recently received $103,000 in state urban aid funds and hopes for more. "We pray every night something is coming from the state," Gallo said.

If the community can pull through the next 18 months, it stands to collect on a financial bonanza. The foreclosure action on Seatrain, expected to be settled by July 1982, would pump $19 million into Weehawken's coffers six times the back taxes Seatrain would owe by then. And the waterfront, overlooking the Manhattan skyline, is attracting developers who consider it a prime site for condominiums. But so far, it remains a maze of junkyards and abandoned railroad tracks with only one access road. When Seatrain collapsed, Weehawken lost more than $2 million in taxes, or 40 percent of the 1981 budget.

Seatrain now owes a bit less than $100,000 in 1979 taxes, $861,000 in 1980 taxes and an anticipated $1.2 million for 1981, Riepe said. The closing of the Seatrain container shipping facility the last business on the once bustling waterfront threw 500 people out of work. On top of those job losses, Lindsley last month sent layoff notices to 47 of the township's 150 employees, including 11 police officers from a force of 22 and 12 of the city's 40 firefighters. "This town is going to be Dodge City. It'll be wide open," said Cosmo Del Rosso, president of the Weehawken Policemen's Benevolent Association.

Plans, as yet unimplemented, call for cutting two of the five daily shifts. "You can't take away from something you don't have," Sgt. John Nahrwold protested, explaining that officers already answer an average of 33 calls per shift. He noted that the local crime rate has climbed 25 percent in two years. Township officials had planned a referendum this month to ask residents to approve raising the property tax rate $26 per $1,000 of assessed valuation.

But Weehawken's current rate of about $66 per $1,000 means the owner In 1968, New York Central's financial problems proved insurmountable. When its merger with the Pennsylvania Railroad failed two years later, it signaled financial doom for Weehawken. "Weehawken has had a champagne appetite for years because of the railroads," Mayor Wally Lindsley said recently. "That appetite is no longer appetizing." United Fruit Co. and its banana warehouse left town in 1973.

Two major piers burned to the water line in the last few years, cutting an additional $15 million from tax ratables. And Seatrain Lines which owns a third of the now-deserted riverfront, filed for reorganization under federal bankruptcy laws in February. For years, the township literally banked on the huge tax base from Seatrain, United Fruit and the railroad, habitually borrowing from still uncollected taxes. Each October, the township found itself short and took emergency allocations from the next year's budget, said John Riepe, the mayor's press secretary. In 1980, the township already had borrowed $700,000 from its $5 million 1981 tax total, said Township Finance Chairman Jack Gallo.

Not unusual, except that Seatrain ran into trouble at the same time. 1804, in a duel on a bluff here, Vice President Aaron Burr stepped off his paces, whirled and squeezed off a shot that fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton. In 1981, this township is dueling a similarly formidable opponent the flagging American economy. Weehawken today is a community of 13,500 people but no major taxpayers, facing layoffs of half the police and firefighting force or a major tax increase or both. Located just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, Weehawken once served as the terminus for the then-mighty New York Central Railroad and as the home of the biggest banana warehouse in the world.

For almost a century, the railroad paid most of the municipal taxes, and the township thrived. Bootleggers and silent movie actors built magnificent mansions atop the Palisades. A tramway carried residents from the bluff to the Hudson shoreline hundreds of feet below. By 1920, more than 25,000 passengers a day were being ferried across the river to Manhattan's once-grand 42nd Street. The Lincoln Tunnel connected New Jersey with Manhattan in 1937, gobbling up a big chunk of township land in the bargain.

But officials thought the increased traffic would cultivate business construction. new plant either in Lamar or Clearfield, Pa. Lamar won out, Mrs. Stafford says, because Lamar has mild winters and 350 days of sunshine a year and Neoplan was faced with a tight construction schedule. Wanting to hire only local residents, Neoplan has helped set up a training program at the local community college.

It also sent foremen trainees to West Germany to work alongside their German counterpats for eight weeks. To show they had learned their trade, the foremen were required to build a bus to take them to the airport for the trip home. Neoplan also plans to make a gala affair of the first bus rolling of the assembly line in May and has invited dignitaries from around the world to attend. The Auwatec family, which founded Neoplan in 1935, did run into some problems with the ceremony, though. The family wanted brass bands to play at the ceremony, but with school out late in May, it appeared unlikely any could be found.

The Auwaters' solution: Offer a $1,000 first prize for the best band playing at the ceremony, $500 for second place and $250 for third place. There will be brass bands playing. F1WG ICONOIWY It did for a while. The ferry service was discontinued in 1959, a victim of the popularity of the car and the ease of travel through two tunnels and across the George Wash "A NAME YOU CAN TRUST FOR YOUR ROOFING NEEDS" RESIDENTIAL COMMERICAL SHINGLES ROLL ROOFING ROOF REPAIR HOT APSHALT BUILT UP FOR FLAT ROOFS GUTTERS AND DOWNSPOUTS I rTTTinTtmirarri -1 1 if-f lJ-M-l'liMiMnt 1 II vi LAMAR, Colo. (AP) This small farm town on the plains of eastern Colorado found itself on an emotional roller-coaster in recent years as it tried to diversify its one-dimensional economy.

First, a meat-packing plant was coming. It didn't. Then an oyster farm was raised as a possibility. It didn't materialize either. But hopes soared again a year ago when representatives of a West German company came to town with plans to build a factory to produce buses for the American market.

This time the hopes weren't dashed. In January last year, "it was like the whole town was in the dumps," says Clare Stafford, chairman of the Lamar Chamber of Commerce's industrial committee. "All the bad things seemed to have converged on Lamar." Iowa Beef Producers had chosen Garden City, over Lamar for the site of a packing plant because Lamar did not have enough treated water. Plans for the "world's first artificial seawater shellfish farm" had been scrapped by Marine Nutritional Systems Inc. of Denver, which went to Washington state instead.

Assembly line Neoplan USA did choose Lamar, which has a population of 7,667, and now occupies the building Marine Nutritional had planned to use. Nearby, in a huge, barn-like structure stands the nearly completed assembly line, which is the length of two football fields. Manley L. Bean, company vice president, says the company hopes to produce 200 buses this year, many of them to fulfill contracts with the cities of Atlanta and Milwaukee. The company says the plant will employ 500 workers at full prodcution and will turn out 500 buses a year.

Bean says Neoplan picked Lamar because the company had found after building a branch plant in Pilsing, Bavaria, that factories in small towns with a strong work ethic are the most productive. Neoplan also has bus plants in Stuttgart, West Germany, and in the west African nation of Ghana. "At the Bavaria plant, we found the people tied to the land know what work is and can do the best job," Bean says. Lamar fits this description. The 96-year-old city is a livestock center for southeastern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle and southwestern Kansas, with feed lots that can accommodate 60.000 head of cattle.

On livestock sale day, the city is all cowboy boots and pickup trucks, and the local watering holes pulsate to the beat of country-and-western bands. Due for change Bob Temple, chairman of the Prowers County Board of Commissioners, says the county was due for a change of pace. For the past decade, he says, there has been no increase in assessed valuation in Prowers County. "Inflation was eating us alive," Temple says. Neoplan will change all that.

Temple figures the company will add up to $5 million to the county's assessed valuation of $49 million when its two production lines are completed and in operation. Bean says Neoplan has involved the city in every step of its planning since the company told city officials in 3 HMiiiMiTimrnm ASK ABOUT OUR CUSTOMIZED ROOFS THAT ADD CHARACTER AND A TOUCH OF CLASS DALE McCLUMSEY, OWNER CALL COLLECT 828-3269 BLOOMINGTON 365-8032 LEXINGTON kMMMM 1 -m i wj mjmi tJ ft 1 r.I fkn -1 fM Do the One Step to your nearest Gold Bond Deoler for super panel prices. I i ci i fi i s. fw W- N-. 1 "I 1 "tin I I Mobioytnd II i 11 y-'- bv oowewHi II Ht 1 wtfftfm I If I I 1 I I I- I I t'! 1 1 f'i I I '1 1 i I 1 I 5 JN ILLINOIS Bloomington Baumgart Building Center 1001 W.

Market St. Parker Home Center 2611 E.Oakland Ave. Champaipn Alexander LumberCompany 910 West Bloomington Roaa Clinton Alexander LumberCompany 401 East Clay E. Kent Co. 400 E.

Macon St. Colfax Alexander LumberCompany Danvers Danvers Lumber Company 101 W. Main Farmer City Alexander LumberCompany 520 West Main Wickes Lumber West Route 150 Graymont Graymont Co-op Heyworth Alexander LumberCompany Hudson Alexander LumberCompany LeRoy Alexander LumberCompany Lincoln Alexander Lumber Company 231 South Sangamon Mitchell-Newhouse Lumber Co. 910 WoodlawnRoad Normal Alexander LumberCompany 2012 West College Avenue Ottawa Fox River Lumber 300 E. Joliet St.

Peru Wagner Home Center Rantoul Alexander Lumber Company 117 West Sangamon Roberts Alexander LumberCompany Rochelle Wagner Home Improvement Center 601 1st Ave. Tolono Wickes Lumber Route 45 South ROYAL SE-5000CD Self-Correcting Single Element Typewriter with Dual Pitch Rnval's most advanced typing instrument can save you valuable office lime with its exceptional range of automatic functions and leatures: Simplified built-in correction technique lifts errors oil the paper cleanlv and etlortlesslv. Dual pilch lor instant switching to 10 or 12 characters per inch. 1-xpress back spacing. I loriontal half spacing.

Automatic paper injector elector. Quick changing ribbon cartridges. Interchangeable tvpe slvle cores. Add the Royal touch to your office. Call lor free demonstration today.

a PAXTONS, Inc. ai7 K. Wnhinfton St. HIcMmiinKton, Illinois 81701 I'hone H27-H2I7.