SMALL & CHEAP: UCI chief Jack W....

SMALL & CHEAP: UCI chief Jack W. Peltason, who becomes president of the UC system Thursday, responded to a stinging report on financial perks partly by renouncing a $41,710 stipend for his UCI campus home, where he’ll retire. (A3) . . . Already, he’s been scaling back his own perks with plans to close an elegant tower suite of offices maintained by former UC President David Gardner in Irvine. . . . Expensive furnishings are to be sold, and the search is on for more modest digs closer to campus. Says UCI Vice Chancellor Kathy Jones: “All Jack said he needed was just some place where he could put down his briefcase and use a phone.”