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.