Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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ts V I I CITY PROPERTY TAX The city property tax increase ap proved by Clinton City Council recent ly is justified and probably overdue. It’s Clinton’s first property tax in crease in 20 years. To hold the line on property tax es, city officials have had to dip into utility revenues. This has had its ef fect on utility service in that revenues weren’t able to keep facilities up to date. The day of reckoning has arriv ed. Last year, the city undertook a modernization program for its electri cal power and water systems. That, too, was overdue. Council recently approved a 17- mill increase in city property taxes. This is expected to bring in about $92,600 in addtional revenue to the city. The payment of interest on the bonds for the utility system improve ments requires about $38,000 and the construction of a new power line to the city’s substation will require ap proximately $12,000. The city also intends to purchase a new packer truck for the street department at a cost of approximately $16,000. The new packer truck will pay for itself in a relatively short time because of the savings realized through increas ed efficiency. In addition to these necessary ex penses, the city is faced with rising costs of materials and services dur ing an inflationary period. To calculate what the increase might mean to you, here’s a refresher about tax mills. There are ten mills to the penny. The 17-mill increase actually is 1.7 cents on the dollar of assessed prop erty valuation. If property is on the tax books at $100 assessed prop erty valuation, that would mean that the city tax would be increased $1.70. If it’s on the books at $1,000, the in crease would be $17. The increase makes the city prop erty tax levy 70 mills. That means the levy will be seven cents on the dollar of assessed property valuation. That way sound high but you have to consider that assessed proper ty valuation has little to do with ac tual market value. The current prac tice is for the property owner to nut his own valuation on property for tax purposes. Most valuations are ex tremely low. Even so, Clinton’s new property tax levy will be well within reason when compared with the levy in some nearby towns. Laurens has a 94-mill levy; Fountain Inn, 80 mills; Newber ry, 60 mills; Whitmire, 60 mills; Pros perity, 55 mills: Gray Court, 50 mills. LAURENS HOSPITAL VOTE In the November 3 General Elec tion, Laurens County voters will cast ballots on an amendment to the S.C. Constitution to permit the Laurens Hospital District to incur bonded in debtedness not to exceed 36 per cent. Although voters in the Bailey Memorial Hospital District (Clinton- Joanna area) will be eligible to vote on this amendment, it will not affect their taxes or their hospital district. The amendment affects only the LaurenS~ Hospital District (School arid Cross Hill) which will be taxed for the cost. The indebtedness increase is needed in the Laurens Hospital Dis trict to handle financing of a $1.4 mil lion addition to Laurens District Hos pital in Laurens. It is to be built in two phases over the next 15 to 18 months. The proposal actually would require a bond indebtedness equal to only 11 per cent of the assessed valua tion of property in the district. How ever, the amendment raising the limit to 35 per cent would make available the issuance of bonds if and when there is ever a need for additional money. Not one cent of bonded in debtedness could be made beyond the 11 percent without another referen dum. A constitutional Amendment can be made only every two years while a referendum can be called at any time. By getting approval of an indebt edness increase of 35 per cent in the Constitutional Amendment, the dis trict would be prepared, for example, to get quick referendum approval for matching funds if Federal funds sud denly became available for a project needed by the district. A 11 h o u g h the Clinton-Joanna area is not directly affected, Laurens Hospital District officials are encour aging support from this part of the county because the amendment must be voted on countywide. How Long? A child asks: “Where is daddy?” A wife asks, “Is my husband alive or dead?” Communist North Vietnam is sa distically practicing spiritual and mental genocide on over 1,500 Ameri can prisoners of war and their fam ilies. How long? Funding The Extremes HOUSTON, TEXAS - Con cerned churchmen are deeply troubled by the use of church funds to finance revolutionary organizations and the role of some clerics as apologists for hate groups which engage in violence. This profoundly disturbing development is the subject of public attention here this week as the Episcopal Church holds its national convention in this Southwestern metropolis. Many concerned members of this Protestant denomination be lieve that the church’s General Convention Special Program has been improperly used to fund violent groups. Evidence supporting the po sition of the concerned church men came on the eve of the convention when the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church granted $25,00 to the Black Awareness Coordinating Com mittee (BACC) in South Caro lina over the strenuous ob jections of Bishops Gray Tem ple and John Pinckney of that state. Bishop Temple told the Executive Council that one of the BACC leaders was among militants who drew two-year prison sentences for their part in a gunpoint takeover of Vor- hees College--an Episcopal in stitution in South Carolina. The protests by Bishops Temple and Pinckney were of no avail in the Executive Council, however. The reason may be that Bishop John E. Hines, presiding Bishop of the na tional church, doesn’t agree with the established accepted concept of violence. In a provocative statement quoted in the HOUSTON CHRONICLE, Bishop Hines said the Episcopal Church may have to formulate a new de finition and concept of violence. He declared, in a comment strangely similar to New Left pronouncements, that ‘the na ture of violence emerges not simply as acts of violences by individuals or groups, but by a pattern of long-entrenched institutionalized violence.* Bishop Hines’ remarks are of concern to all Americans, not simply members of his de nomination, for his words con stitute an apology for violent individuals and groups, and condemnation of American society. If Bishop Hines doesn’t understand or accept the es tablished concept of violence, he must be closing his eyes to the grim realities of our county today. The United States hasn’t any need for a new definition of violence. The meaning of vio lence is very clear from events. Violence is the destruction of the mathematics center at the University of Wisconsin by radical fanatics and the death of a 30-year-old researcher and father of three children. Vio lence is the pattern of assolts and assinetion attempts on poHrimen violence is mur der, arson and rioting by mobs hi the Mg cities of the nation, violence is the wave of bomb “Weathermen* re- Thoughtful citizens cannot a- gree with Bishop Hines that there is “long-entrenched in stitutionalized violence* in the American svstem. This is the country whose courts have gone to an extreme in defending the rights of individuals as against the rights of society. A- mericans believe in justice— and in the law and order that make justice possible. If any “institutionalized vio lence* is to be found anywhere in America, it must be in the Tax-exempt organizations that supply rm.aey to revolutionary groups. For example, radical clerics who channel church funds to militants can be said to be institutionalizing vio lence. That is something that undoubtedly will be considered by the delegates at Houston. One cannot be a Christian and believe in social change by means of Molotov cocktails and sniper attacks on policemen. Religion isn’t served by fanning hatred of a lawful, orderly society. Tragically, some radical churchmen are determined to aid extremist elements. For instance, convention officials decided to pay the expenses incurred here by a group from the socalled ‘Submarine Church,* a California-based fringe group. This hippie group attended the annual Presbyter ian Assembly and shouted four- letter words at the delegates. Many churchmen, In a num ber of denominations, have been unaware of the funding of ex tremists. Once they become aware--and the Houston con vention is producing dis closures important to all de nominations - the ordinary church members are likely to cut off funds for un-Christian and un-American programs de vised by small cliques of radical clerics. It is reasonable to conclude that ‘the man in the pew* will not put money in the collec tion plate if it is going to groups similar to the Black Panthers. Changes At Colleges Dear Mr. Publisher: ttfador bv * Somebody told me one time that change is a sign of life. If that’s true, the colleges and universities of today are bud ding like spring-time. When I was a boy the purpose of a college was to help you get a job. There was work over on the other side of them school hills. After a while the school image changed and parents sent their younguns to college so’s they wouldn’t have to work like they did. It was to teach ’em to suceed without working. Then Vietnam came along and college became the place to beat the draft You could go to college and be away from all the vio lence and the killing. Before long came another change - the college became a battleground. It’s safer In Vietnam than it is on some college campuses. Pretty soon the fearful ones who went to college to stay out of Vietnam, will have to go to Vietnam to stay out of college. Like I say, Mr. Publisher, if that ain’t change, I don’t know what is. I wonder what the next gimmlc will be? Will colleges become the .palaces that rule the revolution? Will they be come homes for delinquent children? Will they be replaced by something else - say like mental service stations on every corner? I for one con fess to being confused by the hole thing. The direction in today’s edu cation seems to be to let the student learn what he wants to. That being the case, I don’t see why they need to go to an institution to do that The Good Book says we should ‘train a child in the ways he should go*. I reckon that means that some things are worth passing along to the next generation. But it seems that we have grave doubts a- bout what we’ve got to pass a- long. Peter Marshall once said that a fella who dicbi’t stand for something would fall for any thing. It looks like we’ve reach ed that point. Mr. Publisher, it’s a good thing somebody made me study arithmetic, cause I would have never dene it on my own. At least, now I can count my change to see whether I got cheated or not. And fortunately, some body taught me the Ten Com mandments so’s I can tell whether I’m cheating or not I gotta run now. Maybe that’s the answer! Parson Jones * * * 2-B—THE CHRONICLE, Clinton, S. C., Oct. 22, 1970 Look ■' Lpr r&H; eview Future Shock By Lennart Pearson Head Librarian Presbyterian College FUTURE SHOCK. By Alvin Toffler. 506 pages. Random House. 1970. If you have the feeling that the future is ar riving too fast and that its arrival is not very well-coordinated, you may be suffering form “fu ture shock.” This condition of stress and dis orientation is what happens when people are sul>- jected to too much change in too short a time. Alvin Toffler, formerly an editor of Fortune now turned “sociologist of the future”, says that he became fascinated with the concept of future shock in 1965 and has been pursuing it ever since. According to his observations, “future shock is no longer a distantly potential danger but a real sickness from which increasingly large numbers already suffer.” That is why he has been read ing up on the problems of change, interviewing experts, visiting research centers, interviewing ties, and trying in all sorts of ways to discover what is happening to us—all of us. Toffler shows how the old roots of religion, nation, community, family, and profession, are being tom up by “the hurricane impact” of an all-embracing accelerative thrust. Confronted by such a situation, an individual is compelled to an chor himself in new ways, which he can do only as he understantds how the facts of transcience, novelty, and diversity, affect his personal life. He goes on to describe our “throw-away so ciety”—its moular men and organizational “ad hocracies”, its life-styles and subcults, its frac tured families and informational overloads—all in well - researched journalese reminiscent of Vance Packard. Are we going to make it ? May be. But it will require of us a significant im provement in our sense of social responsibility, a revolution in our understanding of the educa tional task, and a mastery of a galloping technol- oy which if left uncontrolled will eventually drive us all mad. Toffler’s book is an important one. particu larly so because (as he points out) so little is really known about the processes of adaptivity, especially by those who call for change, or by those who are supposedly preparing us for what ever brave new world awaits us. His observa tions are extensive and penetrating, and those w’ho like to appeal to things like “the enduring values of the past.” “the unchanging elements in human nature.” and “the lessons of history” will find themselves challenged to come up with an answer. This is a new contribution to the old discussion about “humanistic” vs. “scientific” values—this time from the viewpoint of a social scientist groping toward a fusion of the two cul tures as the key to a better quality of life. Future Shock is especially recommended to those who understand the importance of asking the right questions. T—!* Albert Watson To The Editor: In listening to the various discussions concerning the current gubernatorial race, I’ve been struck by the claims of all candidates to be the man of the people. However, one candidate is far too liberal to be acceptable to the people of South Carolina. Another is so reactionary that he cannot be seriously considered. The Democratic guber natorial candidate is just ano ther in a long line of errand boys for the big money interests of the state. In the usual way of being carried along by the big money boys, John West has been chosen to be their next flunky in the State house follow ing an apprenticeship as LL Governor. This leaves only AlbertWat- son as the true man of the people. Watson, in 1964, as a Democrat, instead of listening to the dictates of his party followed his conscience and the will of the people of South Caro lina in supporting Barry Gold- water for the presidency. For this action Watson was punished by the Decmocrats through the removal of his seniority. Fol lowing this action, Watson de cided to become a Republican. But instead of just switching parties, he decided to bring his case to the people. He resign ed his seat in the House of Representatives and ran in the special election which was then cafied vindicating his decision when the people of South Caro lina sent him back to Congress. This courageous action demon strates Albert Watson to be the true candidate of people in this election. Sincerely, Elmer W. Hatcher, Jr. P. O. Box 501 Presbyterian College Democratic Rule To The Editor: This year with the candidacy of Albert Watson we have the chance to end one hundred years of Democratic rule. During this period, the Democrats have brought this state to the bot tom of the ladder in education, teacher pay, medical services, and other important areas. While these problems have been developing, the Democratic government has bought the only jet for the personal use of the governor. Now they are pre sently constructing a million dollar underground parking lot in Columbia. We need to end this gross misuse of our tax dollars when so many other projects need this money much more. If we are to accomplish this, we cannot allow the De mocrats to hold the state house for another four years. Sincerely, Sandy Haskell P. O. Box 493 Presbyterian College Indians on reservations, who now represent about two-thirds of the more than 650,000 Ameri can Indians, are the country’s most disadvantaged minority graft,* These.people have an extremely high unemployment rate and an average animal in come of less than $2,000. Some Indians on reservations earn as little as $500 a year.