Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 17

Arizona Dailn Star Metro News TUCSON, THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1979 PAGE ONE Bond vote faces delay over format By GERRY REEVES The Arizona Daily Star Pima County's $146 million bond election faces considerable reshuffling and probable delay because, a bond attorney told county officials yesterday, some bond items cannot be submitted to voters in their current form. Stern, of the consulting firm of O'Melvaney and Myers, said the county cannot list $20 million for new bridges under flood-control projects. The consultant also said that a $500,000 study on how to move traffic from the northwest side to the southeast side of Tucson cannot be included in the bond election because only capital improvements are authorized. Moreover, an engineering study would be needed for all projects submitted to the voters as flood-control projects, Stern said. Chuck Huckelberry, acting Highway Department director, estimated that it would take at least two weeks to prepare such a study, meaning the board will miss its April 12 deadline to get the ballot printed in time for a May 22 election.

Board Chairman E.S. "Bud" Walker said that although the bridges do not qualify as flood-control projects, there are street and road projects in another portion of the bond issue that can be shifted. Walker said that although the amount of the bond election probably will not change, the bond consultant's opinion means that the bridges will have to be listed under major street-improvement projects and some of the street-improvement projects will have to be listed as flood-control projects. The reason Flood Control District financing is being sought by the board for some projects is that the county's remaining debt limit is $70 million, and that ceiling will be avoided by issuing some of the bonds through the Flood Control District. Supervisor Katie Dusenberry said the debt limitation, while a problem, doesn't mean projects would be unduly delayed even without Flood Control District bonding capability.

She said the remaining debt limit will increase as the county continues to pay off bonds and as the county's assessed valuation increases. "If the voters approve the measures, we would not be selling all of the bonds in one year anyway," she said. Walker said that the $500,000 study that would have to be deleted from the bond election probably will be allocated to widening Orange Grove and Ina roads in the vicinity of Interstate 10. Supervisor Conrad Joyner said he thinks there are some advantages to waiting until either June 5 or June 12 for the bond election. Joyner said that in June the county should have permission from the Legislature to sell $21.5 million in revenue bonds for sewer improvements.

The Senate Government Committee is scheduled to hear the sewer revenue legislation at 7 tonight. The legislation must then go to the full Senate and be signed by the governor. The legislation has already cleared the House. Inez Robb, 78, noted columnist, dies in Tucson Body-shop blaze These firemen were among 45 who battled a three-alarm blaze last night that gutted Corvette Corner, a custom-car body shop at 500 N. Sixth Ave.

Damage was estimated at $186,000. Flames estimated at 50 feet high were visible a mile away at the height of the fire. There were no Southwest Gas could face new inquiry on rates Two members of the three-member Arizona Corporation Commission say they are still not satisfied that Tucson-area natural gas customers are being billed fairly for some company expenses by the Southwest Gas Corp. They say they may move to reopen public hearings on the matter. The complaint by Commissioners Jim Weeks and Stan Akers came less than a week after commission auditors said they had uncovered an unreported $1.1 million revenue surplus in Tucson Gas Electric Co.

books and echoed similar objections raised by the city of Tucson during rate hearings on the sale. Weeks and Akers said they object to the handling of a tax matter involved in the sale of the gas works to Southwest Gas by TGE, which became the Tucson Electric Power Co. Sunday. A petition from 25 consumers or the City Council could reopen public hearings on the matter, Weeks said, adding that he would welcome such a petition. Akers said he would be receptive to it, but first wants to study Southwest's first-month operating figures.

Councilman Tom Volgy said the City Council, which earlier had narrowly rejected a proposal to reopen public hearings on the sale, may be more receptive in view of the discovery of the revenue surplus, which led Friday to an unexpected two-thirds reduction in Southwest's rate request for residential customers. Under scrutiny is whether a $4.73 million tax liability Southwest assumed from TGE should have been added to Southwest's rate base. The utility's 140,000 gas customers will start paying off the tax liability with this month's billing from Southwest and will continue to do so until the debt is retired in 2001. Weeks, a Democrat, said the "phantom tax" should have been treated as a capital expenditure on Southwest's books rather than as a capital investment. Akers, a Republican and the commission's newest member, branded the transaction "highly immoral, although apparently legal." Weeks said TGE gave consumers only half of the tax benefit gained from certain accounting practices.

"If TGE got a full credit they should pay the other half that did not go to consumers," Weeks said, adding that the total cost to consumers would be between $850,000 and $1.4 million. "The customers are not only getting no credit, but the company has been given a rate of return on it." Tucson Electric officials denied Weeks' charge that only half of the liability was credited to customers. "Our customers have received the full benefit of the accelerated depreciation," said company President Theodore Welp. "Customers got back the full $4.7 million through lower rates." Welp said the sale and accounting procedures caused no loss to consumers. "Everyone got home free in this deal and it bugs the out of me," said Akers, a former state House speaker.

"TGE got out whole (debt-free) and Southwest is now ready to unload it on the ratepayers for the rest of their lives. I'll be dead before it's paid off." Rocking to be sold to developers' group Estes Co. officials and Donald Diamond, part owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team, have reached an agreement to buy the financially troubled Rocking Ranch for about $9.4 million, it was learned yesterday. The agreement between ranch owner Joseph Rae and William Estes president of the local homebuilding firm; James Shedd, Estes executive vice president; and Diamond, a local land developer and president of KVOA-TV, is expected to be signed within 48 hours, Rae said yesterday. The sale agreement also provides for the payment of about $3 million in Solot Co.

debts against the ranch, a spokesman for the transaction said. Rae isn't a party to Solot's petition to reorganize under federal bankruptcy laws, but he owes money to hundreds of investors who hold mortgages on the ranch through the Solot Co. injuries, but 11 Corvettes at the shop were burned. Paints and other materials caused small explosions and left a choking odor that made the fire hard to fight. The blaze started about 8:25 p.m., and was under control by about 9:30.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known. (Star photo by Art Grasberger) Contempt alleged in boarding home case By ELIZABETH MAGGIO The Arizona Daily Star The Arizona Department of Health Services yesterday asked for a contempt of court hearing for the operator of a local boarding home who it says is housing people in need of medical care. The action resulted from a state health department official's inspection last week of Brown's Boarding Home for the Elderly, 2834 E. Grant Road. The official found that three residents who should have been relocated under terms of an out-of-court agreement reached last year were still living there.

Criminal complaints were filed last month against the boarding home's operator, Mary Brown, stemming from the death of a 98-year-old woman who had lived at the boarding home. The home's legal problems began last year when the state health department culminated a year-long investigation by suing Brown and her now-deceased husband for operating a nursing home without a license. In an out-of-court settlement, the Browns agreed not to house anyone in need of medical care. County health officials drew up a list of people at the home who were in that category. But in December, one of them, Augusta Reidy, was found dead in a house behind the boarding home that was rented by Brown.

Among last month's criminal complaints were four counts involving the keeping of Reidy in violation of the Superior Court order. Yesterday's action resulted from the discovery last week that three other people who should have been moved out last year were still living at the boarding home. City may wholesale water Two water companies serving the booming northwest area may be buying their water wholesale from the city of Tucson after 1989 under a plan to be presented to the City Council on Monday. The city's water and sewer department is asking the council to approve a plan to sell the firms water at the cost of delivery as an alternative to further expansion of the city's water system. According to city water officials and local builders, the plan will remove a major barrier to housing development plans for the northwest area.

It also is part of a plan by the city to get private water companies in the Tucson area to stop pumping groundwater from the Tucson basin. According to Gene Cronk, city water and sewer chief, wholesaling water to private water companies will make these firms share in the cost of importing water from Avra Valley and the Central Arizona Project. It also is an alternative to the city's policy of buying private water companies, Cronk said. Parties to the agreement are in the process of determining whether those debts total about $2.2 million, as Rae claims, or about $3 million, with interest charges and advances, as Solot officials say. Rae began purchasing the ranch on Tucson's far eastside in 1961.

A The owner of the Rocking Ranch and a former Solot Co. vice president face charges of securities violations. Page 10B. large portion was purchased from the Internal Revenue Service, which had foreclosed on the land because the previous owner was in debt for back taxes. In 1977, the U.S.

Attorney's Office filed foreclosure action against Rae for the IRS, saying Rae owed nearly all of the original $610,000 mortgage signed in 1965. That lawsuit is still pending, along with another filed by the Tanner Co. against Rae and the Solot Co. for $250,000. Inez Robb, a former nationally syndicated columnist, died at Tucson Medical Center yesterday.

Robb, 78, suffered from Parkinson's disease. In 1953 Robb began working as a columnist for ScrippsHoward Newspapers and United Features Syndicate. Her column was carried in 140 newspapers around the country until her retirement in 1969. She was one of the first women war correspondents during World War II and she covered every presidential inauguration from 1936 to 1968. Robb also covered two coronations and the installment of Pope Paul VI.

Robb and her husband, J. Addison Robb, who died early last month, had lived in Tucson since 1962. They had previously lived in New York City. Robb was born in Middletown, on Nov. 29, 1900, and was raised in Caldwell, Idaho.

Robb She received: a degree in journalism at the University of Missouri in 1924. In 1927 she went to New York to join the Sunday staff of the New York Daily News, where she worked until 1938. From 1938 until 1953 she was a reporter for William Randolph Hearst's International News Service. Robb was also a steady contributor to numerous national magazines. She completed more than 10,000 published articles during her career.

She wrote one book, "Don't Just Stand There," published in 1962. Robb was a member of Theta Sigma Phi journalism society and Phi Beta Kappa scholastic honorary. She was an officer of the University of Arizona Foundation and a patron of the Tucson Museum of Art. Services for Robb are pending. Survivors include one sister, Cathryn Callaway McCune of Tucson, and a brother, Stephen Callaway of Rock Island, Ill.

A hearing will be held in 30 days to determine if Brown is in contempt of last year's court order because of this, said Mark Santana of the Arizona Attorney General's Office. Brown decline' to comment. However, relatives of two of the people in question called the reporter to say that the people wanted to stay at Brown's despite the court order requiring them to leave. "I wish people would leave him alone. He pays his own way," complained John Masizoli, son of 75-year-old Tony Masizoli.

He said his father had moved to another place but had become depressed and moody there and wanted to go back to Brown's. Wanda Vann said she had moved her mother, 79-year-old Dorothy Carter, twice after the court order last year, but that the moves did not work out. "Mother insisted on going back to Brown's," said Vann. Robb Under the plan, Foothills Water Co. and Vistoso Water Co.

would assess residential users a one-time "water-development fee" of $135 per housing unit. The fee would be accumulated to partially defray the cost of building a $3.6 million delivery system for city water. Construction of the system would start by Jan. 1, 1989. The plan, which was worked out with the companies by a committee from the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, is intended only for the northwest area, water officials said.

"If it proves to be a success, however, this plan eventually could be expanded to include the southwest, the northeast and southeast sides," said Steve Davis, a water department hydrologist who drew up. the plan. The plan excludes the Metropolitan Water a major supplier of water on the northwest side, but city officials said Metropolitan Water may be included in the northwest water system at a later date. No mass arrests planned UA rally on grass today University of Arizona police are not it comes if there are individuals who planning massive arrests at a mari- are sources of distribution, we would juana-reform rally on the UA mall certainly consider apprehending today, which one prospective speaker them," he said. predicts will be a "smoke-in." The rally mostly speeches to proMike Moran, the 47-year-old mari- test the lack of bills in the Legislature to juana reformer of the Grass Roots or- decriminalize marijuana use and home ganization, said about 1,500 are ex- cultivation has been approved by pected to attend (students will be on the campus officials, said UA senior Jeff mall for Spring Fling activities), and Patten, the organizer.

marijuana will be passed around. "I've heard people say there'll be UA Police Chief Keith O. Cubilieri some civil disobedience," Patten said, said yesterday that the presence of "but that's not included in the plans for marijuana at the rally concerned him, the forum. but added that he is considering only "If, indeed, smoking marijuana is inisolated arrests, if any. trinsic to an event like this, it'll just Sweeping arrests, he said, would 'be have to happen," he said.

"I do believe a fruitless effort." that an event like this should happen," "We'll have to take each situation as he said..