Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 124

s-BEB The Arizona Republic southeast Apache Junction Mesa Friday, August 16, 1985 7 Lobaco Fun, Food, etc. Sports SE2 SE4 SE5 PUBLISHED MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY Emm If I I 1 I I 1' Mesa policies on relocation to be studied Families put 'out on street' as city buys older houses By BARBARA ROSE Southeast Valley Bureau MESA City Council members have called for. a review of Mesa's relocation policies for families who are evicted when the city buys and demolishes old homes. Mayor Al Brooks said Thursday the issue will be discussed at a daylong council retreat Sept. 19.

"I think it's important enough to talk about," he said. "The Arizona Republic) brought it our attention, and the staff is now doing the necessary background work." A series in The Republic last month revealed that a mother with six children lived out of a car for several months last winter after Mesa bought and demolished the home they had rented for $150 a month in an aging neighborhood called Temple Court. Temple Court, on Hibbert Street near Second Avenue, is one of several low-income areas in which the city is buying homes from willing sellers. City Manager Charles Luster has said the neighborhood is being cleared because the housing is substandard. Mesa provided no relocation assistance until April 1984, when the Arizona Legislature began requiring payments for moving expenses and "dislocation." The city has purchased 11 of Temple Court's 34 homes, and another purchase is scheduled for City Council approval on Monday.

"My personal feeling is that I think we need to be doing more than we are right now" to relocate tenants, Councilman Dave Guthrie said. "As far as the degree of help, I would really need to take a closer look at it." Cities such as Scottsdale and Phoenix follow the federal Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1970, which provides rental assistance to subsidize the higher cost of replacement housing. Cities are not required to follow the federal act unless properties are purchased with federal funds. Mesa generally buys properties with city funds. Councilwoman Peggy Rubach has said she believes it would be "safer and more humane" for Mesa to follow the federal guidelines.

A report requested by Guthrie indicates that Mesa would spend about $77,000 for relocation assistance in the current fiscal year if the city voluntarily followed the federal guidelines. Richard Rosa, Mesa's real-estate services administrator, said the estimate is based on the assumption that the city would buy 20 homes, displacing seven low-income renter families. Some of the homes would be vacant and others would be owner-occupied. The seven displaced families would be eligible under the federal guidelines for "last resort" housing, whereby rental payments cannot exceed 25 percent of family income. Rosa estimated that each of the families would be eligible for $11 000 in rental assistance over four years.

The city's latest proposed acquisition in Temple Court, scheduled for council approval Monday, would force Ramon and Rita Lopez and their three daughters to find a new home. Rita Lopez, 23, said she's eager to move into a "nicer place," but she's worried about finding something her family can afford. They now pay $125 a month for the two-bedroom house at No. 7 Temple Court. Ramon Lopez works as a woodcutter at Mastercraft Kitchens in Mesa.

"I need my kids to have a more sanitized place to live in and a yard to go out in," Rita Lopez said. "But everybody I talk to, they want over $300 (a month Policies, Extra 3 Doyle SandersRepublic Raising Mesa's profile building will reach 16 stories. Above, carpen A high-rise office building goes up and up at Southern and Alma School roads. At left, Donnie Herbert (left) of Glendale and ter Chris Mena of Clifton is dwarfed by the skeleton of the structure. The project is a joint venture of Western Savings and Loan Padgett Berry of Mesa fit nuts and bolts to a girder on the 10th floor.

The and the Wolfswinkel Development Group issue Fiesta Mall expansion stalled by parking By BARBARA ROSE expanding the mall, which is a major sales-tax producer standard cars and to 8 feet for Southeast Valley Bureau t- fh Homart's narking percent of the spaces would be si expanding the mall, which is a major sales-tax producer for the city. But they balked at Homart's parking standard cars and to 8 feet for percent of the spaces would be compact cars. About 25 sized for compact cars. Board member Jerry Boyd raised concerns about traffic, and Charlotte Pokorski, president of the Park Place Neighborhood Association, said residents feel "the traffic already is too heavy." Park Place is south of the mall, on the opposite side of the Superstition Freeway. A study by Homart indicated that the existing street system could handle the added traffic with improvements such as signals at mall entrances on Longmore Avenue, where the expansion would be concentrated.

Homart's proposal calls for converting the existing Diamond's store into additional mall area for smaller stores, flanked by a larger Diamond's store and a fifth, Mall, Extra 3 MESA A proposed $50 million expansion of Fiesta Mall hit a snag Thursday when the city Planning and Zoning Board asked the mall's developers to come hack with new plans to handle parking and traffic. The board voted unanimously to postpone action for 30 days to allow Homart Development Co. of Chicago to rework its proposal. The plan calls for adding a fifth department store and as many as 35 small shops, expanding the mall's retail space by about 35 percent. Thomas Gourguechon, Homart's development director, said the expansion is being considered as a way for the 6-year-old mall "to maintain its dominance and keep pace with the growth of the community." Most board members said thev would favor proposal.

Homart proposed fitting more cars into the existing areas by restriping the parking lots into smaller spaces. The company also would build two multilevel parking decks. The gain would be nearly 1,100 new spaces, for a total of about 6,100 spaces, but the ratio of parking spaces to retail floor area would drop slightly. "I'm very pleased with Fiesta Mall, but I think we have an interest in protecting what is there in the long run," said Planning Board Chairman Donald Fuller, who urged Homart to consider additional parking decks. Homart's proposal called for reducing the width of parking spaces to 8'i feet from about nine feet for Therapists can remedy women)' sexuaD woes Tempe, Mesa pupils won't get to school without shot records "The main reasons still are lack of information and a negative attitude about the body," said Morse, who has an office at 815 E.

University, Mesa. By VICKY HARKER Southeast Valley Bureau After a hysterectomy in which one of her ovaries was removed, "Rose Jackson" lost all interest in sex. "For three years before the surgery, I had pain whenever I had intercourse. So afterward, I was connecting pain with sex and was not willing to try again," said Jackson, who asked that her real name not be used. "After surgery, I still was having pain, but it was both physical and psychological, so in order for it to be enjoyable again, I felt I needed help mentally," she said.

Jackson, 37, said she had had a healthy attitude about sex before the pain started and the resulting surgery and was worried that her lack of desire was harming her relationship with her partner. She sought help from Mesa sex therapist Cynthia Morse. Jackson, who lives in Chandler, said that she Palmer, who periodically lectures on sexual problems at Mesa General Hospital Medical Center and St. Luke's Medical Center in Phoenix, agrees that a poor self-image can cause problems. However, he said, sometimes it does not matter how much a woman has been educated or how much she likes her body.

Many women, and men as well, have sexual problems because of "desire disorders" or unconscious psychological problems. Palmer said that about 50 percent of the patients he treats for sexual problems have desire disorders. They are not as easily treated by traditional therapy, such as relaxation exercises, massage and "no pressure" situations where two partners "fool around" but do not have intercourse. "Only in the past few years have therapists been working on desire disorders, which are much more serious," Palmer said. "With a desire disorder, you block out your desire in some way.

An example is someone who only sure we're prepared if it happens again. "The beginning of the school year seemed like a logical time to do something like this." By law, pupils must provide proof of immunization for measles, rubella, polio and diptheria, or parents must sign a waiver saying they object to the shots for medical, religious or personal reasons. If an outbreak should occur, those pupils whose parents signed waivers would be excluded from school. Love said about 300 out of more than 7,000 Tempe Union students were excluded from school because they did not have up-to-date immunization records when the state Department of Health Services declared an epidemic last spring. He said the majority of those whose records were incomplete had transferred to Tempe Union late in the year, and officials hadn't followed up to see that information was sent from the prior district.

Harder hit by the measles outbreak were Mesa schools, which originally had more than 4,000 of their 46,000 pupils on the exclusion list. The number had been whittled down to about 200 by the time the outbreak was over. Mesa is the second-largest district in the state, next to the Tucson Unified School District. -Records, Extra 3 By DAVID SCHWARTZ Southeast Valley Bureau Tempe Union High School District students won't be able to sign up for fall classes and Mesa Public Schools will remove pupils from school if their immunization records are not on file. Administrators from the two southeast Valley school districts 6ay they are taking a tough stance in the wake of a measles outbreak in May, when thousands of Maricopa County pupils had to be excluded from school because of inadequate immunization records.

"We cleaned it all up last year, and now we're just trying to keep on top of it with the new class of ninth-graders," said Jim Love, Tempe Union's assistant superintendent. "We don't want it to happen again." He said registration workers have been told not to enroll pupils without the proper records. In Mesa this fall, pupils will be removed from class after 15 days if the school does not have their immunization records or a waiver form from their parents, said Ray Rafford, assistant superintendent far pupil personnel. Rafford said the decision was based on a review of what went on last year and a desire to avoid a repeat performance. "It was terribly disruptive for us he said, "and we want to make still has some pain from an operation she had in July to remove her other ovary but that her sexual desire has returned.

"She helped me figure out ways to find pleasure again," Jackson said of Morse. "I read several self-help books, such as The Joy of Sex, and tried other activities. I went to a department store and tried on several types of seductive lingerie with the idea of tuning into textures. "Also, my partner and I decided to allocate more time for just touching and holding." Morse and Syd Palmer, a Tempe psychiatrist who specializes in sex therapy, said problems such as Jackson's that are not associated with deep-seated emotional problems are fairly common among women. "Although social mores are more liberal and socie.ty says it's OK to have sex earlier, that sex is fun, many women still have problems," said Morse, who heads a group at Camelback Hospital in Paradise Valley called "Making Love and Sex Better in Paradise Valley." can get excited about movie stars, books, pets, anything or anyone except the person they care about." Most patients with desire disorders have emotional conflicts from buried anger, fear of intimacy or difficulties in early childhood.

Palmer said examples of serious desire problems are sadism, masochism, unwanted homosexual feelings and desiring to be raped. Sexual, Extra 2 Mesa sex therapist Cynthia Morse blames many problems on "lack of information.".