Local CD pick of the week

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• Viewpoint: SLO’s homeless need real solutions

  Viewpoint: SLO’s homeless need real solutions

  So Becky Jorgenson blathers, and James Duenow blathers right back (Viewpoint, Sept. 12). Now, we are close to a homeless circus here in our county. If Oprah were to visit now … what would she think?

  I am a nobody. I don’t hold any positions within the county that qualify me to be an expert on anything but teenage behavior as a high school teacher. Being on leave currently, I have time on my hands.

  So … I want spend some time on homeless issues. Why? For the same reasons many of us do: a sense of guilt mixed in with the desire to do things that make me feel as if I’m part of the solution. Like many, I wish for anyone who doesn’t want to be homeless to get his or her life going, and the best place to start is to have one’s own place to sleep at night. This place needs to be warm and safe.

• Kimball Motors in SLO for sale

  Kimball Motors in SLO for sale

  Kimball Motors Co., family owned and operated in San Luis Obispo since 1947, is for sale.

  Longtime owner James W. Kimball is retiring at the age of 80. Sales manager Nick Russell confirmed Thursday that the dealership, which has 30 employees, is in the process of negotiating a sale with a buyer in Southern California, though he would not disclose the price or the potential buyer.

  Kimball Motors, San Luis Obispo’s oldest car dealer, has estimated revenues of more than $30 million a year, Russell said. The prospective buyer has no plans to move the dealership and expects to retain the majority of its employees, Russell said.

• SLO County leadership is looking up

  SLO County leadership is looking up

  Like most folks, when our phone rings in the evening we tense up a bit, expecting either a late telemarketer or bad news.

  So when we got a call around 8 p.m. Monday night, we were surprised by a recorded reverse 911 call from the Sheriff’s Department asking us to be on the lookout for Felisa Lizada, a 62-year-old woman with dementia who had wandered off in Los Osos.

  The recording asked us to check our backyards, sheds, cars — just about any place where someone may have sought safety or sanctuary. It was the first such call we’d ever received.

• SLO County cemeteries are alive with history

  SLO County cemeteries are alive with history

  Whenever Halloween approaches, people often associate cemeteries with zombies digging out of their graves or transparent souls wandering through tombstones.

  But while the notion of hundreds or thousands of dead people lying in one place is ripe for scary stories, graveyards are also fascinating sites that tell us much about history — for instance, that the 1880s were not a good time to be a baby around here.

  Smaller, older cemeteries are especially intriguing because they feature a throwback look that channels not the dead but stories of their time and place.

• Tourism holds strong in SLO County

  Tourism holds strong in SLO County

  Tourism, one of the county’s top economic drivers, fared well this past summer — a sign that it’s helping to lead the local economic recovery, experts said.

  Several cities — including San Luis Obispo, Pismo Beach, Paso Robles, Arroyo Grande and Morro Bay — reported year-over-year increases in transient occupancy tax revenues (bed taxes), which were welcome news to hoteliers.

  “Tourism is doing well and consumer spending overall has been coming back, and I don’t think San Luis Obispo County has been any exception,” said Jordan G. Levine, an economist and director of economic research for Beacon Economics, a Southern California-based forecasting firm that presents the county’s annual economic forecast.