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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 21, 1976)
NOW MDA ^ngulit nls. m. For 16-8811, m nsol, K/onf officials discuss mt election N HAA round bet!: laced on :MESANI Ih melted 'n sauce, o bread. muci , and tor lie, MnrK A&M Consolidated School Board j meet with College Station officials ssibility of having joint city council Jol trustee elections on April 3. Jonday night the board passed a ten- fesolution expressing its desire to [joint elections. School districts in i required by state law to hold elec- jthe first Saturday in April. Recently legislation requires cities to hold ipal elections on one of three dates in iluding the first Saturday, lege Station’s election dates have usu- set for the first Tuesday in April, ssolution passed, 5-1, with Trustee Wilkes voting against, it. Wilkes (elt combining the elections might blicated because of new election [posed on Texas by Congress last ler the original Voting Rights Act of Rew laws require that any change in procedures must be submitted to the ppartment of Justice for approval 60 to an election, board’s resolution will become effec- pon passage of a similiar resolution by allege Station City Council, possibly ilsday’s council meeting, fboard also appointed a committee, ed of Trustees Joe Natowitz and Hensarling, to study the present ■tax rate structure, which is $1.77 per property valuation. Hensarling also Jed to the liaison committee be- the city and the school board. Phil ger of 1111 Merry Oaks Drive was ipted to the board of equalization. Index ased Texas water projects, page lily finances in relation to Ford’s [roposed budget, page 3 iputer detects heroin pick-up lick, page 4 llysis of Ford’s proposed budget, page 5 bhic woman senses earthquakes, fage 5 jonini candidate for Vince Lombardi Award, page 9 gies beat Houston, page 10 THE FORECAST for Wed- sday is fair and mild with a i of 56 degrees. Tonight’s low be 36. Continued fair and Thursday. Tomorrow pre- cted high will be 64. Cbe Battalion Vol. 68 No. 61 College Station, Texas Wednesday, Jan. 21, 1976 Basketball Game Parking Parking for last night’s basketball game against the ance, in addition to area constables. For details of the University of Houston reached capacity around the game, which ended 74-67 in the Aggies favor, see Coliseum. A University police spokesman said that a page 10. “good number” of police had to be called out for assist- Nuclear arms talks begin Kissinger says compromise Associated Press MOSCOW — Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger opens nuclear arms talks today with Soviet Communist party chief Leonid I. Brezhnev, and most observers were con vinced the basic outline of a compromise was in sight. Kissinger said on his arrival Tuesday night that the United States “will never concede strategic superiority to the Soviet Union. This apparently was intended to reassure critics at home that major U.S. concessions would not be made. At issue is a new treaty to limit offensive nuclear weapons. For the first time, Kis singer brought along a senior Pentagon arms specialist for his talks with Brezhnev. He was James P. Wade, a deputy secretary of defense and the top American military specialist on nuclear weapon negotiations. Kissinger’s schedule called for talks today and Thursday and a final meeting Friday morning before he leaves for Brussels. Even if agreement is reached on a new treaty, there will be a long interval before it could be implemented, a senior U.S. official said. But a breakthrough could lead to a visit to Washington by Brezhnev to sign the treaty with President Ford. During a stopover in Copenhagen, Kis singer said the Ford administration will not let the presidential election campaign this year impede attempts to achieve an arms agreement. “The necessities of world peace will not be affected by our electoral process,” he said. The chief issue between the two govern ments has been whether to count the new Soviet Backfire bomber and the American cruise missile against the ceiling of 2,400 strategic or long-range delivery vehicles for each country set at President Ford’s Vla divostok meeting with Brezhnev in November 1974. The Soviet Union has been demanding that its bombers be excluded from the long-range category but that the American missiles be included. The United States has proposed excluding both by having the Soviet Union agree to station the bombers outside striking range of the United States ajid by limiting the range on the missiles. Kissinger said earlier this week that he had a “clear promise” that the Soviets would modify their last position. The war in Angola is also on the Kissinger-Brezhnev agenda, and the secre tary of state will press for an end to all foreign intervention in the African country. En route to Moscow, he repeated warnings he made previously that continued Soviet intervention would endanger Soviet- American detente. But his warnings are ex pected to have no effect on Soviet aid to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, the MPLA. Kissinger and Brezhnev will also discuss the civil war in Lebanon and the prospects for new peace negotiations between Israel and the Arabs. Fee requests exceed budget by $78,000 By SANFORD RUSSO Battalion Contributing Editor Over $78,000 more than is represented by the projected $1,078,000 in Student Service Fee Allocations have been re quested. The MSC Directorate and Council, Stu dent Government, Extramurals and Direc tor of Student Activities pleaded their cases before the 12-member student committee Monday night. Extramurals is the title for intercol legiate, competetive sports outside the jurisdiction of the Southwest Conference. Their spokesman, Dennis Corrington, recommended a 121 per cent increase over last year’s request by asking $35,338. He explained that the increases were because of addition of four new activities, an in crease from four cents to eight cents per mile for travel expenses and adding billet ing for long-distance off-campus competi tion. Corrington said that the budgets submit ted to him from which he prepared his re quest did not represent the total sum that each club needs. “A good deal of the money that the clubs deal with is directly out of the participants’ pockets,” he said. He also said that many of the clubs make their own money by work projects such as the water polo teams’ stadium clean-up, selling T-shirts, bake sales and admissions sales for those activities where spectators can participate. Town Hall requested an additional $15,000 over last year’s $45,000. The additional funds are needed to help with the Check policy tightens — on-hand cash suggested If you are one of the many students who banks out of town, be sure to keep some extra cash on hand for your late-night, spur of the moment excursions this semester. Check-cashing policies have always been tight around town, so unless you are aware of the situation and plan ahead, you may soon feel the squeeze. If you plan ahead, there are three locations on campus that will cash your checks. Students may cash checks with a student identification card at the MSC Main Desk for a maximum of $20. This desk is open for this purpose seven days a week from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. The Fiscal Office in the Richard Coke Building and the auxiliary window in the Rudder Tower, which are open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., will cash checks up to $50. The Bank of A&M does not cash out-of-town checks, but University National Bank will cash them with a 50-cent service charge. Most of the area stores will cash checks with proper identification (driver’s license and student I. D.). Fed Mart will cash checks for up to $25 if you fill out a check-cashing card with them. Gibson’s, K-Mart and Lewis & Coker will cash $10, out-of-town checks with the proper I.D. Skaggs-Albertson’s will no longer cash out-of-town checks . $7,500 per-show cost of series or free attrac tions and to create a greater discount for students purchasing single-performance OPAS tickets. The budget is $10,000 more for the Series performances, increasing by two shows next year, and $5,000 for OPAS discounts. Mark Probst, chairman of Town Hall ex plained that because there are six home games next year the Town Hall program will have to expand since its existence is part of the “home game tradition.” The OPAS discount is being asked be cause Town Hall feels that students need more incentive in the form of lower prices to attend concerts, said Probst. He added that “a little less thatn half of the audiences (numbering between 2,300 and 2,500 people) were students.” The speaker’s programs, Great Issues and Political Forum presented a six per cent increase, with most of the additional coming from Great Issues. “Because the cost of travel arid hon orarium keeps pace with the amount of in flation, we need an additional $1,000,” said Lawrence Schumann, chairman of Great Is sues. Great Issues sponsors about eight pro grams a year with a present budget of $16,200. Political Forum requested the sane amount as last year’s $12,926 saying that the nature of its programming was different from Great Issuses. Political Forum plans to bring a program about every week and a half and considers itself limited by manpower rather than fi- See Fees, p. 3 speedway’s past plagued with failure By ROD SPEER Contributor :tive for the past two years, Texas Speedway is on the verge of being o a racing syndicate, the World Series to Racing, with two races scheduled is year. April 4, a 200-mile championship car ind a 200-mile stock car race, both red by the United States Auto Club I, will be held, pending the track’s A similar USAC-sponsored slate is set :t. 17. date, the history of the speedway, eight miles south of College Station ate Highway 6, h^s been a story of investments and little success. Here Battalion will examine the rocky road iceway has traveled since its concep- in 1969. ten the board chairman of a Michigan firm chose Bryan-College Station as site for a major raceway in 1968, he had a vision. : chairman, Lawrence LoPatin, hoped mild a raceway that would quickly be- area has been a string of liquor stores, a massage parlor, and a topless-dancer night club across Highway 6 from the speedway. Deer blinds stand in the vacant dirt park ing lot that once accommodated as many as 40,000 racing fans. The plate glass windows surrounding the press box have been shat tered by vandals. The concert platform for Willie Nelson’s three-day progressive music jamboree is the centerpiece of the speedway infield. A 10-foot high caricature ofWillie’s smiling, bearded face peers at the speedway scoreboard, which reads “Texas. 500, November 18, 1973” — a race that was never held. In 1968, LoPatin, representing Michigan-based American Raceways Inc., came to Bryan-College Station seeking a 5,000-acre tract of land with access to a major highway that would lead to Texas’ largest population centers. The racing facil ity, including parking, would require fewer than 1,000 acres. But, should the speedway be successful, the firm reasoned the value of the adjacent land could skyrocket or the land could be used to provide auxiliary rac king services. voir.) Dallas and Houston businessmen had tried to influence LoPatin to choose their respective areas for the site of the speed way, but LoPatin took the advice of Dennis Goehring, president of the Bank of A&M, and selected Bryan-College Station. Goehring, who was soon to be head of the Brazos County Industrial Foundation, had flown to Detroit earlier that year to talk to LoPatin. This area has certain advantages, accord ing to local businessmen. It is close, but not too close, to the state’s big cities. *■ The Navasota River bottomland is not as costly to purchase as land near an urban center. The track is within 200 miles of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Beaumont-Port Arthur. Boyett said that LoPatin had hoped to draw race fans from those areas. American Raceways Inc. owned race tracks in California, Georgia and Michigan and was building another in New Jersey. The company’s newly created subcorpo ration, Texas International Speedway Inc., began selling $1.1 million in stock and $3.3 million in 15-year loans to help finance the Jt $6.25 million facility. From Highway 6, looking past the speedway’s billboards, acres of grassland (the parking lot) give way to what resembles the back of an earthen dam. On the other side of that mound, aluminum stands seat ing 26,000 face a two-mile eliptical track known for its steep banks, which allow cars to reach speeds in excess of 200 miles an hour. Including the infield, the speedway could hold 56,000 spectators. The press box stands above the seating area and is the only part of the speedway bowl visible from the highway. The track has its own hospital, restrooms, cafeteria, sewage system and garages. One former general manager, Bill Marvel, called it “a small city. In addition to the main two-mile oval track, the facility includes a 2.75-mile Grand Prix road racing course. Speedway contractors began construc tion in April 1969 and worked around the clock to meet racing commitments for the Fall. - The track opened Nov. 9, 1969, with the See Speedway, p. 7 m M Jt m Jl V Billboards facing Highway 6 advertise Willie Nel sons 1974 Fourth of July picnic, the last event held at the speedway. ie part of the national race-car circuit attract racing fans from throughout the th-central United States. Juilt in less than seven months, Texas srnational Speedway (as it was then ed) helcUits opening race in November 9 with much fanfare. 'low, six years later, the track lies idle. >t from the sheet metal wall surrounding track bleeds onto an asphalt surface that n’t felt the rubber of race car tires in re than two years. Billboards facing ?hway 6 advertise Willie Nelson’s Fourth uly picnic of 1974, the last event held at speedway. |nce that time, the only activity in the The speedway owners once talked of ex panding the operation into a large sports center including a golf course, according to local businessman George Boyett, a former speedway general manager. They had also considered holding hydroplane races on 50,000-acre Millican Lake, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to build within one-half mile of the speedway by 1980. Boyett said the lake, which has been in the planning stages for decades, was no doubt a factor in selecting the site for the speedway. (Of the 4,200 acres purchased by the Michigan racing organizers, 458 acres would be flooded by the proposed reser- Buzzards scatter from the north chute where they sun themselves on the deserted banked track. Photo bv Steve Goble