Time to put the Printery in mothballs

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• Renovation of iconic Atascadero building offers peek into past

  Renovation of iconic Atascadero building offers peek into past

  Recently I had the chance to peek at some photos of the interior of Atascadero’s City Administration Building, which is being repaired to the tune of about $42 million. Slightly half of that total will be paid for by the federal government while the city is paying the rest. The Federal Emergency Management Agency only will pay for what the 2003 San Simeon Earthquake damaged. But the city wants to do a complete restoration of the inside of the building, which Atascadero founder E.G. Lewis never got around to doing.

  When Lewis built the City Administration Building over a four-year period, he didn’t get the chance to really finish the detail work such as painting the columns and the plaster ceiling decorations.

  Add to that the fact the building was used for only about six years by Lewis before he was forced into receivership. The building was then sold to Frank Moran of Seattle in 1927 and turned into a satellite campus for a junior college that was based in Washington. Moran also purchased the Printery

• That’s a wrap for Atascadero icon

  That’s a wrap for Atascadero icon

  Crews have installed white plastic shrink-wrap over the top of Atascadero’s Administration Building to keep out the rain for the next year while they continue to reinforce the earthquake-damaged building.

  The covering is meant to protect the interior of the four-story structure after the upper rotunda’s tiles were removed to prepare for structure reinforcement.

  Installing the white tenting just happened to fall two days before Atascadero’s historic Colony Days celebration Saturday, coincidently celebrating the area’s founding roots with a “tent city” downtown.

• Loss of funds will hurt Atascadero

  Loss of funds will hurt Atascadero

  Stakes in the ground at the front entrance to the Historical Society’s Colony House delineate where pathways will meander and then line up with a pedestrian bridge joining Colony Square with historic Sunken Gardens. Those walking paths would have passed through a small plaza consisting of landscaping, benches and maybe even a bronze statue of Atascadero’s founder, E.G. Lewis.

  But that project, along with a few others for the city, came to a screeching halt as a result of the state Supreme Court’s decision Thursday ruling that Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers have the right to abolish redevelopment agencies throughout the state. The governor wants to use the money to help the state with education funding. That certainly isn’t a bad thing. But you know the state is likely to reduce its funding for schools by the amount it gets from those redevelopment agency bucks.

  Over the past decade, redevelopment monies, generated here in Atascadero, have helped bring about downtown improvements, spruce up the front of

• Atascadero history gets a new look

  Atascadero history gets a new look

  I first met Steve Martin when he walked into my high school advanced speech class. Steve, along with a dozen other students, wrote, recorded and produced a 15-minute radio show that was broadcast over KPRL on Wednesday nights.

  It was the only positive thing I ever did as a teacher. Fortunately, I remain friends with many of those students, but more so with Steve. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Fresno State and spent much of his adult life in broadcast and print journalism and public relations before being hired as the executive director of Atascadero Main Street eight years ago.

  Often, we covered the same news event.

• Letters to the Editor 10/24

  Letters to the Editor 10/24

  Where are the jobs?

  There is lots of static these days from conservatives claiming higher taxes for the very wealthy will kill jobs. The Republican candidates and conservative pundits all claim that the best way to encourage job growth is to allow the wealthy to keep their earnings, as the wealthy are the job creators.

  Currently, the tax bracket for the wealthiest among us is as low as it has been for several years. So, if the wealthy have been enjoying a low tax bite, where are all the jobs their dollars should have been creating these past three years? The wealthiest have had it pretty good these past several years, but the job outlook remains grim.