WGBH Journal; Dick Lerman

Good evening and welcome to GBH Journal I'm Amy sands. And tonight show the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation has some ideas for property tax cuts but the MTF reminds us that you can't cut the property tax without raising something else like the sales tax. Meanwhile back in the garage the Department of Energy explains to all you inventors just how to get hold of some of the 1.5 million dollars they've set aside for energy saving inventions. And just to show the department they haven't caught New England napping all together. We found two inventors who will tell us all about how computers and bicycles can make music. Well music does rejuvenating one's energy anyway. Well you're all of that. All of that right after the local news. The status is spending a program designed to encourage employees to use public transportation. For the past two months two thousand one hundred ninety five state employees have been using half their MBT eight passes although the program was considered a success by state and BTA officials. The state legislature had never approved funding local cities and towns were picking up the cost of the program as a graves a spokesperson for the Office of

Transportation said that the next administration and the legislature will have to decide if they want to continue the program fees from an alcohol treatment program have brought the state to a million dollars in the last year the program which is operated by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health offers drunken drivers an alternative to probable conviction and the loss of a driver's license. Instead the driver charged with drunkenness can participate in a six to eight week program which offers alcohol education and rehabilitation. Deputy Commissioner Sidney Barr said that the program is now self-sustaining and has resulted in a marked decrease in criminal convictions for drunken driving. Governor elect Edward King has made state secretary of Elder Affairs James Callaghan an offer Callahan feels he can refuse yesterday Callahan. Dukakis administration appointee announced he will not stay in his post in the King government. He said he feared that King's tax relief policies would adversely affect the budget for Elder Affairs. Instead Callahan will join the faculty at Brandeis University. Finally the First District Court of

Appeals in Boston has upheld a lower court ruling which stated that a Waltham woman's constitutional rights were not violated when her parents tried to have her deprogrammed away from the Unification Church. A lawyer for the parents called it a victory over religious cults. Another religious cult the Hari Krishnas have been dressing as Santa Claus and requesting donations on the Boston Common because this attire has been confusing members of the public many of whom thought they were donating to such charitable organizations as the Salvation Army. The Boston licensing board has ruled that the Hari Krishnas Santos must wear identification. The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation will fall a bill this week which would seek a cut in state

property taxes by as much as six hundred fifty million dollars. The major components of the bill would broaden the state's sales tax to cover clothing as well as tobacco alcohol and entertainment and would mandate a cut in local spending by 5 percent during the first year it was law. Greg Fitzgerald takes a closer look. The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation is a private organization funded primarily by the state's business community to look at the question of taxes and public policy. It was founded during the depression initially looking at the severe problems of high property taxes which were forcing many homeowners out of their homes in the 70s it has focused heavily on the area of taxes and state economic growth. The bill which would be filed this week proposes to reduce property taxes by more than 20 percent in fiscal 1980 and limit tax increases in following years. It's a detailed package of legislation which would affect the state as well as local governments. Its major points include extending the state sales tax to a wider range of consumer goods

such as alcohol tobacco clothing and entertainment while requiring local governments to cut their projected 980 budgets to a level 5 percent below this year's budget by far the major funds for the property tax relief would come from the extended sales tax and in effect would rob Peter to pay Paul. In other words residents would be paying more of their annual income for sales tax but less for property taxes. I posed the question of tax transfers to mass Taxpayers Foundation research director Suzanne Tompkins. It is true that almost 400 million dollars of the program is to be financed by a broader based sales tax and that is in a sense money out of one pocket or out of some pockets and into others. The reason for doing that is that said property taxes are uniformly high everywhere we have rates that are below 1 percent of full value in some places and rates that are close to 10 percent of value in others and the money that

all of us wherever we may live high tax or low tax community that we will pay from the sales tax will go principally to really very high property tax burdens in those places where the burdens are very high the highest is perhaps Chelsea next would come. Boston in terms of tax rates. New Bedford low Fall River. Was to Springfield to a lesser degree. Those those are the places over 75000 population perhaps where the tax base is Holyoke is a prime example where the tax base is eroded dramatically in terms of the sales tax portion of this proposal. Would you consider that sales tax is a regressive kind of tax in terms of the individual not so much to town in norther any problems with a sales tax is less regressive than the property tax which is a tax on shelter but it is a regressive

tax there's no question about that. Some of the additions to the tax base that we are proposing are more progressive in their effect and may in the total incidence of that tax alone make it somewhat less regressive. Other parts of it will hit regardless of income level and therefore not make the tax more progressive but one of the things one of the parts of the tax proposal is a very substantially increased program of either credits or rebates to persons with lower income that would mean for example under our proposal that a family with an income a low income Sixty five hundred dollars with four people in that family would be entitled to a refund from the state as much as not $90 for the family of four for the individual.

Under this proposal would be required to cut to cut its spending in the first year in light of how politically feasible is that when you take into consideration binding arbitration and when you take into consideration the fact that school committees. Well you see we have tried to attack those problems too. It certainly is true that right now the selectmen mayors have relatively little control over the size of their local budgets. Because of some of the reasons that you just outlined they have they operate under a state collective bargaining law that for their police and fire employees mandates binding arbitration which means that someone else some third party decides what the town must spend for fire and police personnel. That law expires on June 30th so that is not covered in our bill. It's also true that that school committee says as I said have the authority to determine the amount of money that's

needed for support of schools without any say by the town meeting or city council without any legislative body appropriating the money. We propose to deprive them of that authority. We would let the town meeting or the city council determine the total level of support for the school for any year. Suzanne Tompkins research director of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. If the foundation's bill is successfully pushed through the state house cities and towns would also see the end to a tax burden. Many local governments have lobbied against for a number of years. The legislation would for bid the state to mandate local programs such as chapter 766 a law which requires a local school board to pay for special education programs. The issue of mandated programs is one which will also be debated separately from the foundation's legislation as 12 bills related to banning the practice have already been filed for this legislative year for GBH Journal. I'm Greg Fitzgerald.

Have you been thinking of a way to harness the tide to generate electricity or to ferment garbage to create engine fuel or to preserve heat in your community schools. Pull those ideas together the federal Department of Energy wants to help you develop them. They have 1.5 million dollars set aside for individuals and small groups who want to bring their energy saving ideas into existence. Reporter Chris out when spoke with the Dio ees appropriate technology coordinator Roberta Walsh about that 1.5 million and how to get some of it. I think the focus comes across when we talk about the amount that is being made available. It's one point five million dollars which in normal Department of Energy or government terms would perhaps be the size of one grant. But what we're doing here is making a lot of

small grants available totaling a million and a half dollars for the entire northeast. And basically yes it is for the inventor or anyone that has an idea that they would like to research on small scale technologies that would eventually assist a community in resolving its particular energy problem. We're looking for projects that are environmentally sound that utilize it. The non renewable energy resources we're looking for something that utilizes local labor and materials. It's a community oriented type of program. This is something that will enable a person for example who doesn't have a Ph.D. in engineering to sit down and think about an idea or a project that they would like to have funded and that doesn't have the resources to pursue it. You might say then that the Department of Energy is taking a small is beautiful approach to help

ameliorate the growing problems of New England energy resources. I think definitely the Department of Energy is by this program recognizing the fact that the small is beautiful if you will local community. Self-reliance is something that deserves attention in insufficient attention for those who are strong advocates of this approach. I think it is a step forward in that this message has gotten to the government and the government is responding. Is this program geared for a particular region of the country. Actually this is the third region of the country to be participating in this national D.O.A. program. And the million and a half figure applies to the entire northeast which includes not only New England but New York and New Jersey as well. The Department of Energy Region 1 serves the six New England states and we are administering the program

from here. And we're particularly excited about it because no England traditionally has been characterized as having lots of Yankee ingenuity and we're kind of self-sufficient up here in New England particularly as regards to energy where we are the major consumers we do not produce energy resources so much in this region. We do have indigenous resources such as wood. We have a tidal power potential. We have things that have not been developed either if it has been developed it has been developed on a small scale and this is why we think that this program is particularly appropriate for New England. In earlier alternative energy programs conducted by the Department of Energy. What kind of results were produced. The grants for the first program which was kicked off last year in the California Nevada Arizona and Hawaii area. Have resulted in one hundred eight proposals actually being

funded. Now that was out of some eleven hundred proposals that was submitted for review and among the types of projects that that funded were for example a waste heat recovery system in a restaurant and among the other types of projects funded in that area were solar cooling systems. Again something that was indigenous to the particular region of the country. Now in the Midwest that program involving five states has just closed off its proposal acceptance period and twelve hundred applications have been received there in New England with a substantially smaller population we nonetheless are expecting about 2000. We wouldn't be surprised if we got that many proposals. The review process is all going to be handled right here in the New England area. Simply because of the nature of the program you can't really evaluate a proposal in terms of indigenous New England resources and the nature of our energy problem.

Unless you live here if you want to apply for a grant instructions are available by mail from the US Department of Energy in Boston or you can call 1 800 3 9 2 6 1 5 9 that 800 3 9 2 6 1 5 9. And speaking of energy saving solar heat is turning in a better performance this year than last according to a preliminary report on the New England electric system's three year experiment with solar heating of hot water. Last year the solar hot water units were operating with an average efficiency of 25 percent. This year the average efficiency has risen to 41 percent. The main causes for the rise have been replacement of some equipment and the education of the families participating in the experiment. Current estimates are that it would take 19 years for the savings achieved on the electric bills to cover the initial expense of the solar unit but continuing improvements in solar technology should reduce that figure in the final year of the test New England electric will try to determine how widespread use of solar systems will affect the utilities electric rates.

Well New England hasn't waited for the federal government to come up with some money as far as inventions go. It's quite clear that the Yankee ingenuity we just heard about is already hard at work. Listen to this one in the music laboratory at MIT a scientist has programmed a computer to compose complex musical selections. The product is not the familiar beep beep beep of electronic sounds but rather complex and melodic arrangements. You can hear for yourselves courtesy of reporter Vivian Dukat very VERCO as a composer working at MIT's electronic music studio. He's developed a computer system which can aid in the actual composition of a musical work. It can also produce musical sounds which remain part of the work as performed one of

the ideas we've been developing here is that maintaining the traditional composing modes of operating that is to say as it deals with music traditional notation. The way it's done here is he plays his school or his musical ideas in through a keyboard and in the that his keyboard is a it's an organ like he would and in the score of what he has just played appears in standard music notation on a screen TV like screen in front of him. He can then edit that score and change notes. And change the way the notes appear changed accidentals with the clefs or whatever and then have the computer play the score back to him. The first performance we will hear is the computer playing this piece back in real time that is to say at the proper speed the computer in this case is playing all of the parts itself and playing them just as fast as it can get around them all and this is an

example of a tinkly harpsichord sound rather like the piano sound or how to chord sound that a composer works with when he's working at a keyboard or as a composer. Next the composer will take that fragment and score it for us. Different sounds for different Thomas. In this case he may have been experimenting with some string like sounds. That is to say sounded that remind one don't necessarily simulate massage but remind one of the violins and violas and cellos with some for Bravo and some of the other aspects of it. It was the same part of the piece played back now by different tempos. To give you a further example of that I'll play a portion now from a piece that I composed for

computer and viola a piece called synapse for feeling computer in which the computer is required to imitate a viola. A set of notes in the course of the performance. What you're going to hear first of all is the computer playing a lot of rather random likes sounding notes itself. Then you'll hear a viola sound and this will be imitated in the background by the computer playing pretty much the same pitch and the viola in computer then trade off. BOEM BOEM BOEM BOEM on those notes and getting faster and faster and eventually dying away. You'll hear this in a section playing out first of all the start as I said with some rather random like pitches before you hear the viola and the synthesised or the echoed and Viola coming in. And you work this way is it is it hard for you to go to work at home and think imposes

a usual score without the aid of the computer. Well not really the computer affords another method of conversion that does not detract from one's own accumulated methods as composes one or both. One learns to write in the from a variety of perspectives on a on a piece sometimes working at the piano sound and working at the desk in this case the computer does afford a certain advantage because it can give the composer some fairly immediate feedback which is usually lacking when one is writing for a large Symphony Orchestra. And it is rather interesting from that standpoint with a computer than others no difficulty of the sort of the computer can perform music of any complexity and it always does it right and the only thing the computer cannot do of course is the the other things that are not normally

represented in the score. In other words a computer will do exactly as it's told. This is what the forms will not do. However the computer cannot add anything musical. From the electronic music studio at MIT this is Kat for GBH Journal. So now you've heard the sounds of music composed by a computer about the music made by the amplification of bicycle sounds. Yes an inventor in Cambridge Massachusetts can cause a bicycle to bring music to his ears by amplifying the sounds of tire rims pedals spokes and so on. Dick Luhrmann actually creates musical compositions. Henrietta Davis finds out more. While others dream of long rides in the country on their sleek 10 speed bicycles

romanticizing the quiet transportation provided by the two wheelers declare a composer of electronic music dreams of the amplified sounds of bicycles celebrating the tires the spokes and the rims of the wheels. If using the bicycle as a musical instrument sounds a little whacked out to you it didn't seem that way. The Massachusetts arts and humanities Foundation which recently awarded declare one of five coveted music awards for his piece with three bicycles travel on the name of the piece is a pun which combines the travelling aspects of the bicycle with the name of the Thai gamelan orchestra whose music is bell like. Just how do you perform a piece in which the bicycles are the musical instruments in the way the pieces performed is three bicycles are set up with the pickups on them to each front wheel and back wheel and the bicycles proceed wanted to time it first playing as a certain stuff which is written out for them to play which I guess is rhythmic the sounds are

processed in certain ways. I tend to do a lot of work where by using a tape recorder as part of a performance I can delay the sound. As it happens for example the tape recorder that you see here has four channels on it OK. I can pass the sound from Channel 1 channel to channel 3 to Channel 4 and Channel 4 back to channel 1 again which is going to make some type of an echo. So what that gives me then is the lay between each channel which I can then bring in at will which means if somebody hits one spoke to. In in a live sound the effect that has on the performances the sound was like this BONG BONG. OK so I can create I guess some rhythms going on with the wheel spinning and creating their own rhythms. No I also do other things. I run the sound through various devices. So on with the one of which is called the filter. Another is called a ring modulator

one's called a frequency shift or one's called a gate. I run it through these devices all of which take this sound and give to that sound a new quality. But. Thank you. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Who are the players of the bicycles. I guess one of the things I like about this piece is that I have done this thing where I have met with the people before the pre-performance for as little as a half an hour to an hour we've rehearsed it a little bit

and we come in and we do it. I have a notion with this piece that it's a kind of a thing that I would like to do with children. In fact I know children could perform it easily because it's not a hard piece for them to play. I'm sure they would enjoy it too. You know there's actually a score that the play score which is on let's see a visual score and it's made up to look like a couple of bicycle wheels with musical staffs on them. Kind of for me this is a kind of a pun in this case and I guess a visual one. The performers are then given a kind of a set of rhythmic instructions. I do not I should add I do I do not too many spokes. I suppose I could but I would probably at some point damage and we also I just sing not because I do like bicycles you know can we do a demonstration of how the ear works. Sure. Now what is this. This is this sculpture. And in fact it's a bicycle wheel mounted on a fork mounted on a log with pick ups. And I guess an amplifier.

Music Studio he can take a simple electronic. You know if declarer ever got his hands on my bicycle I think I'd fear for its life. That's tonight's

TV Journal producer for Tonight Show's Marcia Hertz and the engineer was Margo Garrison. Lots of editing and news writing came from Chris out win and Becky roar. I'm Amy sands have a good evening.