Citizen Who Got Involved Makes Plea For Youths

fnrlÏÏE Larry Clark, whose appearances at City Council meetings on a number of occasions have earned him a reputation as a pretty thorough conservative, startled councilmen and spectators M o n d a y night with a strong plea for city support of Ozone House. Ozone House was started by a group of young people interested in providing help for runaway kids and trying to effect reconciliations between them and their families. A letter in The News Monday pointed out that .Ozone House had lost its lease on the former Marshall Bookstore and was temporarily housed at 900 Lincoln, sharing offices with Ann Arbor Network and Drug Help. All three ventures are of a kind that might automatically "turn off" people repelled by long hair and beards, but as Clark pointed out, Ozone House is operated by people who know where the problem is and are doing something about it. Nobody could prove it, but it is possible t h a t if something 1 i k e Ozone House and Drug Help and other such programs around the campus had been in existence earlier, some of the Ann Arbor area youngsters on hard drugs could have been steered away from them. "I could stand here all night and teil you of boys with VD, girls pregnant and without family, raoney or hope. Kids that no one wants, kids with nowhere to go." That was the p e a k of Clark's testimony to council, but he even offered a practical idea for funding of the project by the city. He is not the first one to question whether the city doesn't have g r e a t e r priorities for its funds than toi carry out its present extensive streetsweeping program. If residents were not permitted to use streets for regular disposal of tree limbs, grass cutting and other trash, the city could get along with a less expensive program. THE NEWS commends Clark, who was critical of the Ozone House concept before taking a place on its advisory board, for having the courage to "become involved" to f i n d out whether he was right or wrong. The Mayor's Committee on Drug Abuse has been struggling for months to prepare ' recommendations for meeting a deadly serious problem. Meanwhile, numerous young people have acted on their own, with practically no money, little public support but a lot of compassion for kids caught up in the hard drugs habit. Citizens like Larry Clark who are willing to make the effort to find out what it is i all about are also doing their part. The community needs more of them.