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About Sandy post. (Sandy, Oregon) 1938-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 19, 1982)
The S^näyPost Editorial & Opinion Von Braschler. Publisher Caroline Duff. Office Manager Don Dillon. Editor Scott Newton. t9ews Editor SANDY. OREGON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1982 School can survive with marketing Sandy High boosters who hoped fam ily dollar when the kids need for helpful public input on ways to new shoes and the car screams for trim the budget to a passable tax repairs. levy figure m ight start looking for So many citizens faced with answers internally. A 100-person layoffs, wage cuts and higher liv board meeting turnout Monday ing costs can’t feel terribly upset proved a democratic approach that school personnel face wage that drew too little help too late. freezes or that classrooms might Long-range planning ideas sur become more crowded now. faced along with notion that some That’s not to say they aren’t sym bus routes could be consolidated. p a th e tic , ju s t th a t th e y ’ re Staff announced some good news re a lis tic . Even those “ na y” that a few new easy dollars were voters who rejected Sandy High’s found in state basic school support last levy try showed interest in the and $22,500 extra cash carry-over school by their turnout. Their re locally. Also, some three and a jection wasn’t of the value of the half teaching positions can be cut quickly with tim ely decision by school, but in the school’s budget amount. some staffers to leave for jobs The m ajority of the d is tric t’s elsewhere. The b o a rd M onda y a lso patrons, after all, are post war separated its budget into A and B baby boom kids growr. up. They selections Sept 21. Along with an remember classrooms crowded A main levy, a $404,040 B sup with 30 or more chums. How plemental levy would enable the worked up for battle can they get school to operate without drastic over school budget cuts today, cuts. Without voter passage of the when even a home mortgage A levy, however, the school eludes their reach? reportedly must close down short Sandy High officials have done ly after Sept. 21. their best to establish good com Boosters disappointed by lack munity rapport and solicit input of resolve Monday should realize through meetings, mailings and by now that successful marketing even questionnaires Perhaps now of the school ultim ately falls on on they should pull in their horns and school officials. In the harsh spen ’ some hours alone on theJ' private sector, no business person budget. A m erchant w ithout faced with economic red tides public support doesn’t keep put honestly expects customers to ting up the same prices with the Is "creative” financing really recommend how to cut operating same number of clerks. By con the salvation of the nation's ailing costs. No homemaker honestly ex tract, the merchant grabs a real-estate industry, or is it a dangerous “ balloon” that is all pects outside help in deciding how chalkboard and does a little sub too likely to blow up in the faces to make do with the shrinking traction (VB) of unwary home buyers9 STILL VP in THE A IR Wall Street report: Creative home financing dangerous? Chamber consolidation promising Sandy Chamber’s recent long committee, also meets separately ing look at the state’s $1.4 billion on specialized tasks w ith a tourist potential has some wags separate budget they raise mostly calling for unification of the on their own. Chamber with its retail com m it Like SAM retailers, they pro tee, Sandy Area Merchants. baby get more accomplished by They wisely point out that meeting as a separate work com c o o p e ra tio n , h a rm o n y and m ittee apart from the main strength in numbers are valuable Chamber body. attributes for any town that em Unfortunately, SAM and the barks on a marketing crusade to festival committee have evolved improve its appearance. to large bodies that rival that Since Sandy as a bedroom Chamber’s routine summer ac derives much of its cash flow tive attendance of 20-30 Many of worth from downtown shops, it these committees’ members are makes sense to want to make not C ham ber m em bers, as those valued shops more popular originally intended when the com with visitors here As Charles mittees were formed. Johnson of the Newport Chamber Restored under the Chamber’s told local merchants Tuesday, wings, would these committees be those visitors might be out-of- able to raise funds, as they do with towners from just down the road their individualized identities9 If with money to spend somewhere. not, the C ham ber’s present The split in question between finances would be pressed to sup the Chamber and its offshoot com port these committees to their mittees isn’t that wide or illogical, present level of activity. however. The retail merchant Perhaps the best of both worlds group meets separately once a could be found in Sandy by keep month to work actively on sales ing these strong work committees promotions for stores downtown. as they presently meet apart for I t ’s a working group that pushes their specific main tasks. Then a one another to weed store lots, unified drive for Chamber wide work on store friendliness and goals could be infused into these selection and advertise local la rg e com m ittees, once a ll prices. members are properly uniformed The Sandy Mountain Festival as Chamber members who also Comm ittee, another Chamber attend (lia m b e r meetings (VB) Letters to the editor: School, parking spur mail I have a question for the Department of Education, PTA and school hoards Why don't they use their combined ef forts to develop alternative financing to support the property tax. instead of con tinually year after year asking the proper ly tax payer for an increase in taxes'* Gerald N Robv Welches Parking incites Dear old man, I'd call you by name, but aa is typical of complainera. you have not aeen fit to ap The school lax ba*i< ally is the reason for proach ua yourself. You know who you are The Sandy police the tax limitation measures being put on the ballot Approximately SO percent of the say you ve complained 10 times about our car* parked in our own driveway blocking property tax goea for education Many pro party owner« never have children in your path on the sidewalk Aa you can see. the driveway is unusual •ehoof, yet they are forced to pay increas ed taxea to pay for the education of ly short and any car would hang over a lit tie children of people who never pay property last Might I suggest that you walk up another I am sure if the Department of Educa street and let the police use their time to tion PTA and school hoards were to «pend •top crime in Sandy We are not trying to be unreasonable, aa murh time and effort in this direction as but I do think you must be a very unhappy •her da getting the increase they would find alternative financing person to concentrate all this energy on this. 1 am not against education, but I do think Please stop by sometime for a cup of cof tfca way of financing should be change I fee and let ua introduce ourselves R a property owner in Oregon for Nancy Nutter Sandy That question is increasingly being argued by housing experts as the availability of conven tional fixed rate mortgages falls to an all-time low and alternative forms of financing attract a growing majority of U S buyers The controversy swirls around so-called balloon clauses, which are generally part of a three-to five year payback package that keeps monthly outlays at a level the buyer can handle, but then hits him with a big “ balloon payment at the end Some critics, such as William F McKenna, chairman of the President 's Commission on Hous mg. have maintained that finane ing a short-term mortgage with a balloon clause can create pro blems as serious as delinquency and foreclosure for an under financed or unemployed pur chaser Such concerns seem specially worrisome at a tim e when, W illia m O 'C onnell, Savings league president, reports. "The rise in the number of delinquent mortgages indicates that the recession is biting deeper into household budgets ” Now. though, the real «state in dustry is fighting back with studies purporting to show no d is c e rn ib le d is tin c tio n in foreclosures between those who bought homes via the conven tional or alternative financing routes «The Mortgage Bankers Association reported 140.000 home foreclosures in the first quarter of 1982 > There s no question that alter native financing is not only cat ching on. but threatening to take over in the current dismal hous ing market Only 40 percent of the 2 35 million existing homes that changed hands last year were financed by conventional mor tgages (at rates generally from 14-18 percent). Keneth T. Rosen, chairman of the real estate and urban economics program at the U n iversity of C a lifo rn ia at Berkeley, tells me he thinks that level of sales will be roughly m at ched in 1982, despite the errors of recession and high interest rates, but that alternative financing may have to rise to 80 percent of the total In a study he made for Century 21 Real Estate Corp , which claims to be the world s largest realty organization, Rosen found that delinquency rates were in deed similar for conventional and alternative financing (over five percent' and that foreclosures were holding at a “ surprisingly low" one-half of one percent Richard J Loughhn, president of Century 21, acknowledged to me that the research was con ducted to counter reports that alternative financing had led to a rising rate of mortgage delin quencies and foreclosures He of fered the study as evidence that "the vast majority of delinquen cies are traceable to the effect of the recession” rather than to the form of financing chosen Arguing that “ creative” finan cing provided the only route to home ow n ersh ip fo r m any Americans today, the realty ex ecutive said about 71 percent of Century 21 's transactions now in volve buyers who pay less than they would on a conventional. fix e d -ra te m o rtg a g e . (T h a t study, taken when a 15-1/2 rate prevailed nationally, showed that because of alternative financing, these buyers were in effect pay ing 12.1 percent ) Clearly, alternative financing in which a typical buyer might, for example, make a 10 to 20 per cent down payment and cover the ’ rest of the purchase with primary and secondary sources of financ ing (including a second mortgage with a balloon payment) is both e n tic in g and p o te n tia lly dangerous Personally speaking: Battery of clocks shatter dreamland I hate aiarm clocks, don't you9 Time is such a fleeting thing for moat of us, even an intruder for some Half of us seem intent on capturing it in some glass jar like a butterfly, while the rest drag race it to chase it down the road Myself,I just hate to get up in the morning to the demanding screams of alarm clocks that ra t tle my very soul from peaceful repose Of course. I ’ve sur re n d ered to M an 's M inu te Measure by surrounding my t r a n q u ilit y w ith C a re fu lly Calibrated Clocks Obnoxious, noisy clocks My battery of bedroom clocks represent convention's last line of defense against my quick slip in to dreamland In dreamland there are no calendars, appoint ment books, deadlines, routine chores or clocks Leaving the "now" to drift blissfully puts me in dreamland's non time There I can live out a Walter Mitty life to completion in a matter of seconds That leaves time during the night’s second act lor a potpourri of my favorite moments from memories lived partly in the past and partly in the future Non-time is fun Last year's birthday party melts into last week's picnic, with a hand picked cast of characters from both earner scenes Notice how the moat unlikely bunch of people m ingle as friends in your dreams’ ) Or I might enter new worlds in my dream and w in ter almost aimlessly without any worry of wasting time. That's when those blasted clocks explode First one rattles its threat at me, then a second backs up the threat A third clock chimes in. as though too timid on by VON BRASCHLER its own to threaten me That s bad enough, but then the onslaught repeats itself every 15 minutes until every bone is rattJ ed and ever> membrane shocked into the realty of the moment: 7 a m An evil genie, disguised as a roommate concerned for my good grooming, showed me how to calibrate these time-saving devices I think this Proper Plan ning Procedure jumped right out of pages from Health and Good Grooming. 101 You'll remember that was the same text for happy living that told us how to lay out our next day's attire before retiring That was the same text that told us how to gargle and battle the dreaded B 0 - an affliction that advertising gents sold us as a ge nuinely American paranoia Personally. I think some Nazi wrote this book Who else would iron every article of clothing and shine footwear daily9 But like the agreeable weak peasants who followed the crazed unreliability Of course, I never Furor, I gave in to my friend's throw away alarm clocks, believ advice from The Book Really. I ing they might mend their ways have no one to blame but myself and atone for the past like for giving in so easily to such naughty children who grow up nonsense After all, I was the silly with patience and love. fool who lined up the three I line up my three silly clocks undependable old alarm clocks and hope for the best Since none and waited for them to scream at of these three clocks work ac me daily Some call this personal curately, I set them all at dif ; discipline I call it stupid ferent times as checks and; I take the blame for uncorking balances on each other One clock; the dreaded clocks They clicked seems to run slow, so like a p a ; trouble like timebombs from the tient father I advance it 45-50‘ day I found them Because I hate minutes each night all alarm clocks blindly, I in The twin to my retarded clock J vested only in the cheapest likes to run fast, so I set it 10or IS; plastic clocks I could find I minutes behind each nig h t.* bought my first S3 Big Ben at a Sometimes I get them mixed up plaza drug store across from a On those bizarre nights, it ’s good Powell Road motel on my first to have the third clock. I don't day in Oregon The "Big Ben tamper with that clock at all. 1 name printed on the clock sound mean, it runs fairly accurately, ed reassuring, and I was duped except those off nights when it into this major purchase in time stops altogether around 2 a m management. Sure. I should throw all three When that cheap plastic device clocks out and start over An elec- f soon became unreliable. I bought trie clock might prove more a second Big Ben I mean, the dependable, but then I worry first one at ’-nst was priced right •bout those occasional power, Only now u price for alarm outages. Brief outages are the; clocks had rocketed to S3 96 Still worst, too, since the lose of time a good investment in tim e not measured by an electric clock • management. I reasoned easily could go unnoticed That clock gave out after a few So I continue to set my three falls from a dresser caused by wind-up specials and wait for' desperate, flailing arms in the their rude belb that ja r the morn ' A M I admit to overwinding it ing air After each clock rings; just a little, too I mean, if it itself dry, I stumble out of bed to; doesn t get you up early enough set it to ring again 15 minutes; one morning, give it a few extra la te r. T h a t’s the procedure; cranks for good measure the next taught by my careful roommate J try right9 I go along with the plan, because. So I broke down and bought a I like to procrastinate departure th ir d B ig B e n —« lig h t ly from dreamland as long as possi m o re m o d e rn is tic th an its ble So the bells ring and riixt predecessors, but along the same starting at t a m and don’t step line The price by now had gone until around 7 a m up to 94 25 Thia new. improved F a r a parson who hates alarm version, however, carried on the docks and getting out of bad, tim e -h o n o re d tr a d it io n of the only way.
