Tuesday, June 23, 2009 • City, public fed up with status of Lincoln School building

Publisher’s note: This story originally appeared in the Tuesday, June 23, 2009 edition of the Lassen County Times.

The Susanville City Council recently discussed the status of what many people consider one of the biggest blemishes in Lassen County, the remnants of the old Lincoln School building at 1800 Main St.

City Attorney Peter Talia gave a report on all the recent activity surrounding the building at the council’s June 17 regular meeting, a subject that has intensified in recent months due to community and council interest.

“This location has boarded doors and windows yet it is accessible to anyone who wants to move a board,” Talia said. “The building is extremely unsightly and not aesthetically maintained. It is viewed as an eyesore, and in all reality it is one.”

Talia explained the building is currently owned by the Wilkinson brothers from Placerville, California. Wilkinsons’ plan to turn the building into 15 multi-family apartments was originally approved March 14, 2006. A one-year time extension was issued May 27, 2008. That use permit expired March 14 of this year.

Talia said he explained the community’s sentiment to the Wilkinsons, yet he said they still don’t seem to be in any hurry. He said they are still very aware they need to obtain another use permit to move forward with their plans for the building.

Gold Run Realty Owner Jim McCarthy told the council to stop letting the Wilkinsons string it along.

“These owners have been romancing and stalling the city and the planning commission for many years,” McCarthy said. “This is an ongoing issue that gets worse and worse every year.”

McCarthy said the owners should be cited because of the dangers to health and safety. He said if Susanville Fire Department Chief Stu Ratner was able to issue citations for weed abatement, he should be able to issue citations for the health and safety violations in the building.

Talia said this was an ideal case for adding a possible administrative action into the city’s municipal code. This would give more power to the city building inspector to help prevent the kind of disrepair the Lincoln School has fallen into for other buildings in the community. The council said he could go ahead and submit a proposal for changing the municipal code, but Talia was warned to be careful about how giving too much power to the building inspector.

Talia added for the time being, the city could possibly file a mandatory injunction requiring better security for the building as well as beautification.

Talia said he had been in contact with the Wilkinsons and said they were perfectly willing to get right to work on beautifying the exterior of the building. He said they expressed to him that they still wanted to go through with turning the building into housing but over the course of three years.

Some of the councilmembers expressed they were less than happy with how the building has progressed over the years.

In fact, councilmembers Lino Callegari and Doug Sayers said they were simply fed up with everything involving the building.

“That building is not even conducive to be restructured for housing,” Callegari said. “If it were any other person in this community, we would have been on them with the cavalry. This thing is an eyesore, it’s a nuisance, and if somebody gets hurt down there, this council’s aware that we could be in the middle of a lawsuit. We can no longer condone that, and I’m at the crossroads where I’m ready to condemn the place.”