Press and Sun-Bulletin from Binghamton, New York • 27

Congress Toys With Railroad Problem Business Beat New Factory Sets Roots In Deposit The Sunday Press Business Binghamton, N.Y., Sept, 16, 1973. 9-B and Dick Shoup (R- Wash.) bankruptcy. The judge has asked the Interstate Commerce Commisssion (ICC) for an interim report by Oct. 1 on Penn Central reorganization plans. Oct.

1 also is the date proposed to the ICC by the Penn Central's trustees to liquidate the railroad line unless a fed-. eral solution to its financial problems is forthcoming. Despite the seeming in-escapability of either a solution or liquidation of the Penn Central by Oct. 1, the situation has had a "Perils of Pauline" nature to it for some time. The Penn Central has been in bankruptcy for more than three years, it was in serious financial trouble well before that and it still keeps running.

Several house staff sources expressed the belief that the House could approve a bill by the end of the month and Judge Fullam would be willing to grant a couple of weeks delay. "The judge just needs some assurances that help is By MICHAEL F. CON LAN Sptcial Prtit Writtr WASHINGTON Congress is moving slowly to avert the Northeast railroad crisis, but the track is far from clear. Last week saw the Senate signal its intention to let the House have first crack at restructuring six bankrupt lines in 17 states, including the Penn Central system. Meanwhile in the House, the subcommittee handling overhaul legislation reported some progress, but indicated that it had at least another week of work ahead.

Beyond that, the measure must clear both the interstate and foreign commerce and rules committees in order to come up for a floor vote in the House. The reason for the sense of urgency is approach of the Oct. 1 deadline perhaps only symbolic set U.S. District Court Judge John P. Fullam in Philadelphia, who is overseeing the Penn Central on the way," said one staffer.

The Nixon administration also would like to see the Oct. 1 deadline and the ICC reorganizations that it implies put off. Federal Railroad Administrator John-W. Ingram urged the ICC not to approve a Penn Central reorganization plan, but to await a congressional solution of the administration's liking. Ingram told the ICC that since it was only considering the Penn Central and not the other five bankrupt lines or healthy ones either its decision now would result in a piecemeal solution.

Other railraod developments last week included the President expressing concern, a senator calling for nationalization and another senator predicting impending disaster -In his second State of the Union message, President Nixon said, "A failure of any' significant part of our nation's railroad system would impair our ability to move freight ef- lines. The Shoup-Adams measure calls on the federal government to provide severence pay to the thousands expected to be laid off. The administration has indicated that it considers the House bill too expensive, even though no decision has been made on how to provide for the fired workers and thus hang a price tag on the plan. The administration. also prefers to negotiate with the companies acquiring the railroad assets, while the house bill has a mandatory feature.

One house staffer claims the administration "has made almost no constructive input" towards finding a compromise. "It's a dialogue of the deaf," he says. But an administration source contends, "we haven't in anyway shut the door on the Shoup-Adams bill." The source, more at ease with politics than railroads, appraises the current confused state this way: "This is a typical Washington poker game. And no one's tipping their hand." Work has begun on a 23,400 square-foot furniture fabricating factory adjacent to the Celotex plant in posit. The $250,000 plaint, being built for Indian Country, is expectedd to be completed by April, 1974.

Frank Kamp, Indian Country president, said he expects to employ a dozen persons and generate $500,000 in sales during the plant's first year. The new factory will cut material to specifications for furniture factories and do painting and vinyl lamination work, Kamp said. Indian Country owns 10 acres at the site and plans to develop the acreage into an industrial park for light manfacturing operations, he added. ficiently and cheaply to ail parts of our nation." He called on congress to act on the administration's solution to the crisis, warning that some other plans such as unnamed ones calling for heavy government subsidy or quasi-nation-alization were "beyond the pale of acceptability." Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.) went further beyond the quasi-nationalization pale he called for the full federal ride.

In a Senate speech, Weicker said he would introduce legislation next year that would "require the federal govern Basically, it would establish a planning mechanism to come up quickly with a scaled-down passenger and freight network in the northeast to replace, revamp or merge the six current operations. In addition it calls for creation of a federal national railway association to acquire the assets of the bankrupt lines by issuing the current stockholders stock in the new system. A final major consideration of the bill concerns the 102,000 workers now employed by the ment to take over and operate ssw'rs' all passsenger in our 1 ran systems. Sen. Vance Hartke (D-Ind.) told a news conference that his bill requiring further ICC study would not, b6 brought up for a Senate vote until the House acted because Bank Purchase Filed Hancock National Bank has filed an application with the New York Banking Department to purchase the assets and assume the liabilities of the First Nation-' al Bank of Hamden.

Charter New York, a big statewide bank holding company that lists Endicott Trust Co. as its Triple Cities area affiliate, has indicated plans to purchase the Hancock Assets of the Hamden bank fell $97,000 to $4.35 million last year, while the Hancock bank posted an increase of $1.31 million in assets to $9.8 million. he was not sure it could pass. However, he warned that if fO Sylvia Porter Congress does not come up mitt, onlitttin tn iitu lMnrth- crisis 'an absolute shut down around Thanksgiving time" was probable. Aside from the apparently side-tracked Hartke study plan, the only legislative vehicle in sight is the one before Tri The Tier the house transportation sub- WILLIAM BEESE.

who coiiimiuee. us. cmei uatucis are Reps. Brock Adams (D- Is retired yesterday as vice h'i rjresident and general man- i WILLIAM BEESE all Only Part of JC Answer ager of Azon Division of the Defiance-Azon Corp. in Johnson City, is succeeded by RICHARD F.

founded Azon Corp. in 1949. Cav-ender has been general manager of a plant in Arlington, Texas. Dave (, Beal i i mn ii.tiit ii i CURTIS WILLI AM was named manager of the Norwich Data Center at the Norwich Pharmacal Co. division of Morton-Norwich Products, Inc.

Gwilliam, manager of scientific systems and programming since January, 1973, replaces Paul J. Del Fuoco who was recently appointed treasurer for the division. The 45th annual conference of the New York State Assn. of Cemeteries begins today at the Binghamton Treadway The conference will continue through Wednesday. JAMES WEAVER, vice president and art director of Fred Ringer Advertising Agency, and photographer FREQ SNYDER of Carriage House Photography will present a lecture-demonstration "Art and Photography on a Budget" to the Public Relation Society of the Southern Tier at 12:15 p.m.

Wednesday in the Ramada Inn. Almost a decade ago to the day, J. Bruce Buckler, chairman of an advisory committee named to help make Johnson City a better place to live, declared that "Oakdale, 10 years from now, will be the hub of the county." So it wasn't surprising to learn that Buckler was satisfied about developments last week regarding the village's Oakdale Mall shopping center. Fowler, Dick Walker Department Store announced plans to build its first branch at the mall and the shopping center's developer, Interstate Properties, promised to announce soon two more department stores for the site. Fowler's will join Montgomery Ward, which is going to open this fall the mall's first store.

The Oakdale Mall represents Johnson City's best hope for a sharp turnabout in its sagging tax base. In a time when costs of government are going nowhere but up, the village's assessed valuation has been falling rather steadily. This year, it's only $25.5 million, down from about $27 million in 1964, and more assessments are likely to be wiped off the books as Endicott Johnson Corp. continues to clear its properties. The mall developers estimate the value of the completed center at $20 million.

Based on current equalization and tax rates in this village, such an appraisal would raise the village's assessed valuation by about 20 per cent and add more 1 than $450,000 annually to the village treasury. That's not all. The $20 million valuation could also generate nearly $250,000 more in school taxes each year for the village's revenue-starved school district and produce almost that much again for the Town of Union and Broome County governments. This totals almost a million dollars in new tax revenues, with' about three-quarters of the amount going directly to the village's own taxing bodies. Yet even this windfall probably won't be enough to bring Johnson City out of the financial woods, for reasons we'll get to in a moment.

OAKDALE HAD BEEN an "unincorporated" part of the Town of Union until it was annexed to Johnson City in October, 1962. The annexation was cheered, because everyone knew the Route 17 Expressway would soon be slicing through the north side of the village, opening up much of the fairly flat, newly annexed land to developers like Interstate Properties. A long string of arguments were resolved about how to i Lloyd L. Kelly, president of the New York State Electric Gas was awarded the Department of Defense distinguished public service award in Washington last week for his service during the past 30 years in' the field of military aviation. 0i'v.

FRANK FINE has joined the new Treadway Inn in Norwich as innkeeper. Fine worked previously for, Stouffer hotels. bring services like garbage pick-up, sewer, water and good roads to Oakdale. Former Mayor Jim McCabe, County Planning Commissioner Joe Missavage and others journeyed to Albany to1 fight for and win a Route 17 interchange linking the Reynolds Road area where the mall is finally ready to rise with Riverside Drive and the bridge across the Susquehanna River to Vestal. The Oakdale Mall area and strips to the east and west were zoned for highway development, clearing the way for new commercial activity along the north side of the new expressway.

Even with all of this, development came slowly, partly because the superhighway wasn't opened until 1971. At least one big development plan fizzled and for a while, it seemed as though the new highway eliminated more assessments than it generated. i BUT THE MALL, which is looking more and more like it could be the retailing hub foreseen long ago by J. Bruce Buckler, is only part of the answer for Johnson City. Listen to Bob Reinhart, chairman of the Johnson City Planning Board, and you'll learn why.

While the Oakdale Mall creates retailing excitement on the' village's north side, the reverse could happen along and around Main Street in downtown Johnson City, Reinhart warns. The downtown can survive and prosper, Reinhart believes, if downtown merchants, roused by the impending activity at Oakdale, band together to spruce up.their business-. es. Reinhart thinks this is about to happen, as evidenced by renewed interest in problems of parking, architecture and design, housing and general attitude on the part of the village's downtown retailers. "The important thing," Reinhart says, "is that you don't roll over and play dead." Only SS Solid For Retirement Last of Five Your financial independence in your retirement years will rest on three foundations: your Social Security benefits, your individual savings and investments in all mediums, your private pension, if any.

all three, only the Social Security foundation is solid. Your private pension could turn out an empty benefit. It well may be that your fringe benefits include a relatively generous retirement pension plan promising to provide you and your spouse with a decent living standard when added to your Social Security, private savings and insurance. It is possible too that at least part of your accumulated pension coverage is "portable" to another job under certain conditions, But the fact is that millions of you are drifting along under the dangerous illusion that your pension is safe and will be substantial. For many reasons, your plan may not pay off at all.

As for size, today's average monthly pension benefit is only about $100 to $125, and even after long service, newly retiring employes are getting only TAKE THIS as a warning to check up at once on the vital details of your pension plan and to get the facts straight. You cannot plan intelligently if you are deluding yourself and your family. Your life insurance is probably designed primarily to create an instant estate for your family in the event of your death. But let's say you have an endowment type of policy the most expensive kind which guarantees you a specified income for life when you are ready to retire. This type of program would free you from the responsibilities of money management or investment decisions, would guarantee you a fixed monthly payment and would assure you that you would never outlive your capital.

It should not, however, be your entire retirement program in an age of inflation Although an annuity can generate a good monthly return far more than bank savings you may be able to do much better by investing at a young age in real estate or stocks. Remember the chilling message in last Tuesday's column: even if you can manage a retirement income equal to your actual earnings today, it will put you way, way down the living scale of 20 or 30 years from now. Ownership of stocks involves inherent risks. Despite this fact and despite the miserable performance of the vast majority of stocks in recent years, the long-term trend of stock prices is up. If you invest in stocks of sound, growing companies, your dividends plus your capital gains should provide you with an average annual return of around 8 to 9 per cent, Do, therefore, put part of your retirement funds in carefully selected stocks (or mutual funds or similar investments).

Don't ever forget your basic objective is long-term appreciation and do not be sidetracked into dangerously risky, speculative-situations. History strongly suggests that you'll come out ahead. Ownership of bonds involves unavoidable risks too. But again, despite this and the fact that bonds are fixed income investments, today's historically high interest rates also strongly suggest that you place another part of your retirement funds in high-grade corporate or tax-exempt bonds. SUMMING LP: There is no magic formula which dictates the precise percentage of your funds that you should place in each type of investment to provide a maximum retirement income.

If, though, you diversify your financial program in real estate (a home), stocks, bonds, cash savings, life insurance and similar mediums you will have done your best to add solidity to the other two foundations of your financial independence in retirement. (That is what my husband and I are doing.) Just by realizing the obstacles, just by being aware of how imperative it is for you to start planning as early as you can, you will have taken a giant step toward achieving your retirement income Eureka Sale Planned The Eureka Tent Awning with head- quarters in Conklin, is looking for "substantial growth" through the purchase of the company by C. Johnson Sons makers of Johnson's waxes. Negotiations for the sale are now going on and the deal is expected to be closed by Oct. 1, Robert B.

De- 1 Martine, Eureka president, said. Eureka will retain its name and management, he said. S.C. Johnson, which owns several other recreation product companies, 'is planning the purchase for diversification of present Dow Jones Wire Cooperstown Bank Plans'Merger Bl 1 NEW YORK The board of Bankers Trust Co, Albany, and First National Bank of Cooperstown, approved plans for the merger of the two institutions. Holders of First National would receive 4.5 Bankers Trust New York Corp.

shares for each of the 10,000 First National shares. First National has one office, with total deposits of $14.1 million on June 30, 1973. Bankers Trust Co. has 24 offices with total deposits of $220.9 million on June 30, 1973. 1 Bankers Trust Co.

is a member bank of Bankers Trust New York Corp. A registered bank holding company, which has $12.8 billion in deposits. Bankers Trust of Binghamton is also a member of the holding company. The plan is subject to approval by stockholders of both banks and supervisory authorities. i Cczh 3 1 GE Raises Dividend General Electric Co.

has raised its quarterly dividend from 35 cents to 40 cents, payable Oct. 25 to shareholders on record Sept. 24. GE has a plant for the production of aircraft electronic equipment in the Triple Cities. PRESS PHOTO BY JOHN J.

GUGUEIMI CLEARING THE WAY The cleared site of the Oakdale Mall where Fowler's plans a branch store; Far in background is the new Montgomery Ward store and Reynolds Road is on She left..