The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 6

i TIES!) AY, FEBRUARY 2, 1971 SECTION 7 111 111 5W Stay with present insurance firm, state commissioner advises drivers KENTUCKY i it wM mm problem gets out of hand." But he added that he believes the industry can resolve its difficulties with the will to do so. As for the possibility of the federal government writing auto policies, Preston commented, "If everyone thinks they've got troubles with their adjustor now, when they can go out and change, the only thing I can say is: How much success have you had with the Internal Revenue Service?" Preston said no auto insurance firm "has made a great deal" of money and as a whole companies have "no more injuries and lost work time no matter who was at fault in a wreck, with specified limits and would cost about the same as current policies, Preston said. The parties involved would be free to sue if necessary for pain and suffering and for permanent disability. iThe regulation of bail bondsmen, which the department has undertaken for the first time under a new law, is working "fairly smooth so far." But Preston added that applies only to the licensing phase, not the rate structures when "we may have more problems." The Insurance Department is not empowered to regulate what bondsmen charge, but does have authority to prevent discrimination that is, to keep a firm from charging more to one person than to another for the same type of FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) State Insurance Commissioner Robert Preston had some advice yesterday for Kentucky's insured drivers: If you're with a company treating you reasonably fair, stay with them, because believe me, the market at this time is terrible." Preston said in a television interview that insurance firms are seeking only preferred risks and that the public must keep paying higher rates when it can find insurers willing to write policies.

The latest major round of proposed increases comes from the Insurance Rating Board, representing nearly 200 firms doing business in Kentucky. The board seeks $8.29 million more per year. A public hearing was held last week and Preston is to rule on the filing shortly. Preston said he fears a federal takeover of automobile insurance "if the than broken even Therefore they'd just as soon get out of the business." "You don't really do the public any favor if you hold rates down because then the average driver can't buy insurance," the commissioner said. Where does it all stop? Well, if they start building cars that aren't so expensive to repair, if injury claims cost less to settle or if there are fewer of them, costs will come down." Preston indicated there is some hope that more durable vehicles will be developed and that medical costs at least the portion involving days spent in the hospital also will decline.

The commissioner also said: He expects a "no fault" auto insurance bill to be introduced in the 1972 legislature, although probably not by his agency. Such a plan would allow payments for More Kentucky news on Page 9, Section A INDIANA Permit is denied for surface mine near UK's forest FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) The state yesterday turned down a second request to surface mine in Breathitt County near Robinson Forest, the University of Kentucky's forestry research and teaching laboratory. The request, submitted by Vols Coal Clairfield, was for a permit to strip or auger for coal on the Hurricane Branch of Buckhora Creek watershed. A similar request by the K.M.C.

Coal Hazard, to surface mine a tract on Clemons Fork in Breathitt County was turned down last December. In denying Vols Coal's request, state Reclamation Director Elmore Grim said the surface-mining operation would "nullify the expenditure and efforts made by the University during the past 47 years." Also, Grim said, past experience with a similar operation under similar conditions has shown that "substantial deposition of sediment in stream beds, landslides or acid water pollution cannot feasibly be prevented." Grim said the operation would present a hazard to a public stream and other public property. Siephefdsve Harrodsburg ElizabelhtownWi tIIvk Danville (I IF 1, Campbellsvilb i II V) GREEN II Greensburg 'A river Cow iCovmto sPrin9Jl MffOffi Staff Photo by James R. Russell Making tracks TRACKS IN THE SNOW lead to a pair of young explorers scouting a small footbridge and a creek in the lodge area of Natural Bridge State Park, near Slade, Ky. Somersef Serves Bowling Green area Bowling fe 53SSW J-ilAKi CUMBERLAND Job training project rolling Burkesville Albany 1 7 i 7 jfl-PAU HOLLOW Staff Map by Lea Ebner By MIKE BROWN Courier-Journal Staff Writer BOWLING GREEN, Ky.

An occupation training program that officials praise as flexible and comprehensive moved into high gear here yesterday. The program began early last month, but only yesterday was the last of four areas of instruction, or "clusters," added to the operation. Now the entire program can handle 72 persons at one time. Developed through the cooperation of more than 10 local, state and federal agencies, the new training center now can offer machine operation instruction in addition to clerical, health occupational and welding instruction. But more than that, the center, located in an old auto agency, will offer a number of support services designed, in the words of local Model Cities executive director Robert R.

McCormack, "to eliminate all those factors that can deter a person from achieving in the world of work." Specifically, McCormack said, there will be health services available to trainees with medical problems. And a child-care center located in a nearby church will tend dependents, thus freeing their mothers or fathers to learn a skill. Also, a "self-study center" devoted to academics like English and mathematics is located next to the training center. Here a trainee can be sent to brush up on reading if he's having trouble understanding the instructions for a piece of machinery, or on addition if he can't work a necessary math problem. What's more, to make it financially possible to take training, persons from disadvantaged households are given more Nunn's plan for the turnpike AN EXTENSION of the Kentucky Turnpike from Elizabethtown southeast to the Columbia area, plus widening of the existing turnpike north of the proposed Jefferson Freeway, would be partially financed by continued tolls on the existing turnpike under a plan advanced by Gov.

Louie B. Nunn. The proposed highway, and uncompleted routes related to it, are shown in broken lines. If the plan does not materialize, the Turnpike could be freed of tolls by 1974. (Story, Page A 1.) Retired Air Force officer pilots aeronautics school than $40 a week plus $5 for each dependent child.

Those from outside the immediate area are given a travel allowance. Unlike other vocational training programs, this new project is "open ended," meaning that whenever a vacancy occurs in a cluster, a new trainee can be moved into that slot without waiting for a whole new class to begin. Training can last anywhere from eight weeks up to nine months, depending on how skilled in his cluster each trainee wants to become. For example, a man learning welding can get out after eight weeks as a qualified tack welder, or stay the full length of the program and become a seam welder. The approximately $300,000 project is funded principally through Model Cities and the federal Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA).

Using Manpower-Training act funds, the Bowling Green Area Vocational School is furnishing the facility, equip-ment and staff. The neighborhood Em-another Model Cities agency has acted office of the state Economic Security Department is recruiting many of the trainees from poverty areas. And the Full Employment Commission ployment Service a branch of the local to bring together all the agencies and necessary funds. Both McCormack and Phillip Hampton, supervisor of the regional vocational pro-gram, believe flexibility is one of the new training center's major innovations. In addition to being "open-ended," the training clusters can be altered to meet the employment needs of Bowling Green and the surrounding 10-county area.

For example, if the Department of Economic Security determines there is no demand for welders, then instruction in the welding cluster can be redirected toward an area for which there is a demand. The program is still in its infancy but everyone connected with it insists they are well pleased with the results so far. The program's coordinator, James Cormney, noted that all the clusters have a full enrollment, and John G. Napier, executive director of the full employment commission, said that 90 per cent of those who began a month ago are still with the program. "But," added Napier, "if we lose one person to anything but a job, then we haven't done our job.

Jobs is the name of the game." There are similar training centers operated with MDTA funds in Louisville and Somerset, according to Hampton. crowded colleges aren't leaving enough people "to repair the plumbing and the airplanes," the proposal drew impressive support. Still, the project didn't come easily. It seemed too expensive at first, and the site of the main vocational school in Somerset was viewed as an impractical place. It was determined, finally, that enough federal and state money could be obtained through the Appalachian Regional Development Program if the people of Somerset and Pulaski County would provide the state with land adjacent to the airport.

That condition was met by an off-sea- years as a pilot and an engineering and aircraft-maintenance officer, turned out to be the embodiment of the idea for the aeronautics school. McCarty came to the vocational school as head of its federally sponsored manpower-development training programs. Meetings with state and federal officials revealed that the expanding aviation industry, depending chiefly on men trained in the military, was facing a shortage of trained workers. There were no publicly supported airplane-mechanics schools in Kentucky. With vocational educators agreeing with McCarty's assertion that social pressures leading students to over By PHIL NORMAN Courier-Journal Staff Writer SOMERSET, Ky.

When retired Air Force Major James P. McCarty came to the Somerset Area Regional Vocational School six years ago, the idea for the state's first aeronautics school came with him. Occupying a huge hangar built into a new, $2.5 million vocational-education annex at the Somerset airport, the school opened yesterday with McCarty in charge of a class expected to number 35 to 40 prospective airplane mechanics. It is seen as a first step that could lead to training programs for pilots, naviga tors, stewardesses and other specialists in the aeronautics industry. Creation of the airplane-mechanics course the official language is aircraft maintenance technician, airframe and power plant has been a long struggle during which residents of this Appalachian community were called upon to raise money for the 15-acre site of the recently completed annex.

One reason that it got started, says H.D. Noe, supervisor of the area school, was that McCarty jorned the staff about the time that the state began pressing for "innovative" ideas. He says that McCarty, a crew-cut military man who had just retired after 20 'ggMfM mMN nw i i.i)ii.iiiMa)MiEl?n,'H J--" 'SSS'Sl'SS son fund-raising drive around Christmas in 1967 that readily brought in more than $20,000. There were lesser problems, which McCarty can recount in detail, but the large, modern annex finally was ready for use last fall. Its estimated $2.5 million cost includes an expensive array of equipment, notably a government-surplus computer worth perhaps $1 million.

McCarty is coordinator of the annex, which already is conducting courses in such subjects as diesel mechanics, automobile-body repair, drafting, welding and data processing. The latter class, which uses the computer, is a cooperative offering by the vocational school and Somerset Community College. While maki'ng it a point to show a visitor through every section of the new building, the major tends to linger in his hangar. There are seven airplanes, all obtained through the state's Surplus Property Division and all destined to be torn down and put back together more than once by the first group of students. Among the airplanes parked amid rows of engines, fuselages, and various training devices is an olive drab F-86 saber-jet.

Standing outside are two larger, commercial airplanes, a C47 and C45 obtained for the school. The school was certified officially last week by a team of inspectors from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). That means that the students who complete the two-year course and pass an FAA examination will become journeymen techniciaTis without going through a lengthy apprenticeship. The first class has been attracted in part by "word of mouth," McCarty noted. With its initial staff of four instructors, he added, the school is certified for as many as 75 students but could be expanded to serve 160 in the new facilities.

Liberalized dorm hours for WKU coeds predicted All Western coeds living on campus presently must be in their dorms by 2 a.m. on weekends (Friday and Saturday nights). Sunday through Thursday, freshmen may stay out until 11 p.m., upper classmen until midnight. Keown said any changes in this policy will not come before next fall. Several student groups at Western have gone on record in favor of a relaxation of dorm hours, but there has not been a demonstration or protest over the issue, as there has been on several other Kentucky campuses.

Last month, the Murray State University Board of Regents agreed to let coeds with parental consent live in dorms without curfew hours. The Courier-Journal South Kentucky Bureau BOWLING GREEN, Ky. Dean of Student Affairs Charles Keown yesterday said he expects a liberalized policy for women's dorm hours to be instituted at Western Kentucky University next fall. Keown said in an interview that the matter has been under discussion within the administration since tost November and that a recommendation soon will be made to President Dero G. Downing.

Keown declined to outline what the policy might entail, but said his office and a student group composed of the presidents of the 11 women's dormitories will begin considering that question within the next several weeks. Yen, man TEL AVIV (AP) Results of Israel's "man of the year" poll were published yesterday. The winner: Premier Golda Meir. Mrs. Meir got 31 per cent of the vote, followed by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan with 22 per cent.

Staff Photo by Phil Norman FORMER AIR FORCE Maj. James R. McCarty, left, who was instrumental in establishing an aeronautical training program at Somerset, talks with an instructor, Barney L. Barnes..