Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 3

how you csn csll us City News Desk 222-6600 Classified Gold Ads 222-5000 Insurance Dept. 222-6470 All Other Calls 222-6400 lottery extra Thursday's number, 024, was picked once before: on 8-28-82. ft For Delivery 222-6500 Section Page 3 SECOND FRONT PAGE Friday, March 18, 1983 awmaker 3 page3 judyDicbolt up front: Chall enges A -4 A 1 I-Pll il i bid I tefiT- JF I I I fe lt Urn jww' I 4 i I VJ Township Deal By RICK RATLIFF Free Press Staff Writer A state senator said Thursday he will ask Attorney General Frank Kelley's office whether Pontiac Township can try to lure business away from Detroit by using a law that was intended to aid inner cities. Sen. Harry DeMaso, R-Battle Creek, who sponsored the state's 1975 Downtown Development Authority Act, said he believes the township may be improperly using the law to encourage Detroit-based Comerica Inc.

(formerly Detroitbank Inc.) to build a $20 million computer center in the township. The development would pull 450 jobs out of Detroit. Assistant Attorney General Eugene Krasicky estimated it will Collectin' the green a job for men only Thousands of dollars are collected for the -needy during the St. Patrick's Day Sharin' of the Green mass at Detroit's Most Holy Catholic Church, but the committee selects the ushers for the mass feels the -collectin' of the green ought to be done by men. News of this leprechaun-brained ap- roach surfaced earlier this week when largaret Cooney, development director for the University of Detroit, found out she was T.

Cooney was listed in a church pamphlet as an usher and was willing to serve. But Father Jay Samonie, pastor of the church, Said Cooney's name was never formally Submitted to the usher's committee, which includes Cooney's cousin, Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Vlnce Brennan. Brennan said there's no policy excluding women from being ushers. Male ushers, who have been attending the mass for years, said Brennan, "quickly recognize the public fig-; ures from the courts and political offices and make sure they get ushered to the front." Victor Venegas, a lifelong member of Holy Trinity and co-ordinator of the ushers for 15 years, said Cooney could pass out collection envelopes and boutonnieres if she wanted to help, but she couldn't shake the baskets. He said things get "kinda' rough" for women inside the church because some of the attendees have been celebrating St.

Paddy's Day at local pubs before they get to mass. courts: Free Press Photos by JOHN COLLIER To boldly go where no man has gone before, John Sassak (above) invented an amusement ride that sends its pilot aloft on a column of air. Rob Cortis (below) takes a demonstration flight. 1 -W at Spaceship no bull take at least 90 days for his office to issue an opinion after a request is made. Pontiac Township has declared a square-mile parcel of vacant farm land a downtown development area where, under the 1975 law, the township can give tax advantages to businesses.

"BUT THERE'S no place in the Downtown Development Authority Act that allows them to do this," DeMaso said. He said the law is intended to encourage rehabilitation of decavine central cities. It's ride 'em spaceman for bars I Jf if Sly 'J I prototype Saker One, seven years in the making, is his newest creation. It heralds, he said Thursday, "the next generation of video games." FOR NOW, the Saker named after a species of falcon is in use at Sassak's Livonia bar, the Diamond at Plymouth and Farmington. In June, 1,000 units will go into production at Sassak's Segmented Carbide Die plant in' Livonia.

He plans to lease them at $2,500 a month. If advance publicity is any indication, there should be plenty of takers. Already, Sassak has been interviewed by radio stations as far away as London By MARTIN F. KOHN Free Press Slaff Writer For $2, bar owner John Sassak will serve something that lifts you off the floor, spins you around, turns you upside down, has you shooting at enemy spaceships and still lets you drive home unimpaired. It's called the Saker One Space Probe and you don't drink it.

You ride in it, floating above the ground, held aloft by a blast of compressed air. Controls inside the spherical probe enable the rider to spin and turn over In a complete circle. Also in the sphere is a video game that simulates a battle in space. John Sassak, bar owner, is also John Sassak, inventor and industrialist. The not to spur development of farm land.

Sen. DeMaso "We put together every law on downtown development we-could find, and then we put the best parts together," he said of the' 1975 act. "It's a good law. I hate to see this thing be gutted." Bruce Gibson, Comerica senior vice-president in charge of administrative service, said Thursday that bank lawyers are sure the act is being applied legally in the township. Gibson said Comerica has taken an option to buy 70 acres from Meadowbrook Park Development real estate company and hopes to build its computer center before the end of the year.

Comerica announced the planned center in January, when company officials said they hoped to get a 12-year, 50 percent property tax abatement from the township for the facility. He said the new center will allow bank employes now working on two floors of the Marquette Building in downtown Detroit to move back into bank headquarters at Fort Street and Washington Boulevard. Photo companions are strange company Operation PUSH, the civil rights organization, has absolutely no connection with dope pushers, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson probably wouldn't know a member of Young Boys Inc. if he saw one.

After all, what would the Chicago-based minister who founded PUSH have in common with a Detroit heroin operation? However, federal prosecutors have a photograph of Jackson posing with two young men believed to be members of Young Boys. The photograph, which surfaced in a pre-trial court hearing this week, was one of many seized by police when they raided the Oakland County home of Milton (Butch) Jones, one of the alleged See GAME, Page 10A I Bishop May-son charges founders of Young Boys. Prosecutors said authorities are still trying to find Jones for his April 25 trial. Of course, it's not unheard Iff. I of for celebrities to find themslves photo the justice system is being used "to undermine blacks and to discredit black I A Gas utility escapes costly agreement By ROBERT H.

BORK JR. Free Press Business Writer Consumers Power Co. natural gas customers will save an estimated $120 million this year because of an agreement approved in Washington late Thursday between the company, its principal supplier, state officials and others, state Public Service Commission Chairman Eric Schneidewind said. graphed in dubious company. Photographs of Rosalynn Carter with mass-murderer John Wayne Gacy and Frank Sinatra with well-known Mafia types come to mind.

insurance: Blues' customers pay (For raises for board The next time you hear that your premi Eric Schneidewind, who made the ums have been raised, The Michigan Blue Cross-Blue Shield board of directors voted 17-14 Wednesday night to increase their pay from $200 to $225 per meeting and to pay their committee chairman $250 per meeting, in addition, they voted themselves $20,000 Clergy group: City probes aren justice By HARRY COOK Free Press Religion Writer For the second time in a week, a group of Detroit's leading black clergy issued a stinging criticism of the treatment of blacks by the federal justice system and the media in the Magnum Oil and Vista Disposal investigations. The Rt. Rev. H. Irving Mayson, a bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, on Thursday compared U.S.

District Judge John Feikens' handling of the negotiated resignation of Darra-lyn Bowers from Vista and Charles Beckham term life policies. The changes will cost the Blues an additional $28,096 a year. Each of the 46 board members made about $4,500 last year. The Blues say their board members intake only about a third of what board members for commercial insurance companies make. The deal allows Consumers to slip out of a large commitment to buy gas a commitment made before it was hit by massive energy conservation, a mild winter and lost industrial customers because of the recession and rising gas prices.

The deal settles a 31-month-old complaint against Trunkline Gas Co. originally filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by the Public Service Commission and Attorney General Frank Kelley. The federal panel oversees interstate gas pipelines. THE COMPLAINT asked the FERC to eliminate Trunkline's contractual right to require payment for a large fixed percentage of the gas ordered, even if not needed by utilities. The two-year agreement erases the clause in Consumers' contract with Trunkline requiring the Jackson-based Consumers to pay for 75 percent of the volume it had agreed to buy, even if there were no demand for it.

Such clauses between utilities and pipelines are standard and known as minimum bill requirements. In return for eliminating the minimum bill requirement, Consumers agreed to cover its portion of the cost of Trunkline's pipeline. The PSC said Consumers' contract with Trunkline would have required it to pay $120 million in minimum bill penalties this year. what's 2 men charged in '82 slaying get probation By JOYCE WALKER-TYSON Free Press Staff Writer Two men charged with beating a man to death two days before he was to be married have been sentenced to probation by a Wayne County Circuit Court judge, who said the dead man threw the first punch. Ronald Ebens, 43, and Ebens' step-son, Michael Nitz, 23, both of East Detroit, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter after first being charged with second-degree murder in the beating last June 19 of Vincent Chin, 27.

Chin, of Oak Park, died four days later at Henry Ford Hospital. Judge Charles Kaufman sentenced the men to three years' probation and a $3,000 fine eaclT Wednesday. WITNESSES TOLD POLICE that Chin, a draftsman at an Oak Park engineering firm, had gone into the Fancy Pants Tavern on Woodward in Highland Park with three friends to celebrate Chin's upcoming marriage to Vickie Wong. Witnesses said a scuffle broke out after Ebens and Nitz said something offensive. A tavern employe asked them to leave.

According to police reports, the fight continued outside. Police said Ebens got a baseball bat out of his car, then chased Chin to the corner of Woodward and Davison where he beat him with the bat. Judge Kaufman, who heard no testimony when the men pleaded guilty, said court documents showed Chin started the confrontation in the bar. "THE ONLY REPORT I saw indicated that Mr. Chin threw the first punch," Kaufman said.

"While this certainly wasn't a case of self-defense, it was the continuation of a fight that Mr. Chin apparently started. Now Mr. Ebens and Mr. Nitz went beyond what was necessary for self-defense.

If it had been a case of self-defense, they wouldn't be guilty of anything." Kaufman said his decision to sentence Ebens and Nitz to probation stemmed from their lack of a previous criminal record and their stability in the community. "We're talking here about a man who's held down a responsible job with the same company for 17 or 18 years and his son who is employed and is a part-time student," Kaufman said. "These men are not going to go out and harm somebody else. I just didn't think that putting them in prison would do any good for them or for society. "You don) make the punishment fit the crime; you mRe the punishment fit the crimi- datroit: Consumers would have been entitled to apply to the commission to include the penalties in its rate base, and the cost likely would have been PSC said.

THAT COST would have been about $60 for an average customer in 1983, according to the commission. Instead, Consumers will pay an estimated $6.5 million in pipeline costs, the PSC calculated. That amount would vary depending on how much gas Consumers does buy from Trunkline. Schneidewind said there may be savings soon in the bills of Consumers' 1.2 million customers. Thursday's agreement doesn't include the state's other utilities that buy gas from Trunk-line.

However, Michigan Consolidated Gas Southeastern Michigan Gas Co. and Michigan Gas Utilities buy very small amounts of their gas from Trunkline and its parent pipeline, and are in no danger of having to pay minimum bill penalties, the PSC said. The agreement still must be approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. ACORN tiring of delayed meetings The city's elusive director of employment and training, OIlie McKinney missed another appointment: McKinney was supposed to appear Thursday before the Detroit City Council, under a subpoena issued Feb. 23.

But McKinney who turned down five requests to appear before the council before from the Water and Sewerage Department to former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's alleged harassment of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "The federal justice system undermined Dr. King," Bishop Mayson said.

Edgar Hoover went to colleges that had pranted Dr. Kine Judge Feikens honorary degrees and Scouts' dinner gets a bellyful asked them to revocate them and in other ways sought to discredit him. We now see the same system used to undermine blacks and to discredit black leaders." BAY CITY (AP) Girl Scouts expecting a the subpoena was issued didn't show, as usual. Representatives from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) have marched into City Hall four different times, expecting to meet with McKinney to discuss jobs. At the request of Corporation Counsel Donald Pailen, the council agreed to forgo an attempt to enforce its subpoena and wait until Monday for a new appearance date.

"Information The clergy group had called a press confer magic show at their annual father-daughter banquet instead were entertained by five belly dancers dressed in Middle Eastern garb. "There's a place for everything, but this just ence to announce a fundraising program for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change in Atlanta. The center is.

tottering on the edge of fiscal collapse, according to the Rev. Charles Adams, pastor Detroit's Hartford Memorial Baptist Church. The Rev. Charles Butler, pastor of Detroit's New Calvary Baptist Church where Mayor isn't the place," said Patty Bielawski, leader of the St. Hyacinth Girl Scout Troop.

"I don't think girls of this age need to be exposed to this, especially with their fathers." doesn't have arms, legs or a voice," Council President Erma Henderson told ACORN. time," according to her mother, Vicki Wiliet. "She said it was boring." But Brian Grossman, who escorted his seven-year-old daughter Melissa, said the dancing was not "risque," and added: "From the guys I talked to, everyone is looking forward to going next year." Rosemary Jacobs, the evening's program chairman, said the dancers were dressed in "peasant outfits which covered them from their neckline to their toes." "It was very tastefully done," Jacobs said. "It wasn't your stag parMdancing." She added: "I only heard of one fathl- who was embarrassed, and many were grinning from ear to ear." "We're going to get information and that Bielawski said most of the troop leaders had all we care about." But ACORN spokes-i woman Joyce Dlggs protested. "Look at all' these people." she said.

"They don't have no idea belly dancing would be featured at Tuesday's banquet. "Last year we had a magic Young is a member, said the need to raise funds for the King center "proceeds from the same situation that calls us to be concernec'bout the jobs and theiye to pay $2 just to come i downtown. ere must be some kind ofr show, and we were expectinsimuar entertai-ment this year," she said. See CLERGY, Page 5A Eight-year-old Alison Wiliet had a terrible conspiracy. We're tired of this.".