What are the real impacts of the recent announcement by Fire Safe Council to furlough staff?
I’ve dedicated my life to a career in public safety, civic engagement, and volunteerism. I served as a Fire Chief at CAL FIRE, was elected to the county Board of Supervisors, and was a founding member of the Fire Safe Council Board of Directors, serving on the Board until my recent retirement. I am greatly troubled by the county’s sudden decision to decline ongoing funding and oversight of several existing county-wide projects originated by FSC or move forward on any new contracts.
We need projects benefiting our community completed by the FSC immediately through its long- standing partnership with the county. Wildfire threat in Nevada County is real. The county’s actions only continue to delay work on several key projects. And why? Paperwork?
For over 30 years, FSC has initiated and conducted numerous initiatives within Nevada County, including the largest national Firewise Community program, annual Green Waste Drop-off’s, Residential Chipping, Defensible Space Advisory Visits, Low-Cost Defensible Space Clearing, and landscape level vegetation management. Projects such as Ponderosa, South County, Woodpecker Ravine, Deer Creek, and Forest Health were all done by FSC. By “done” I mean FSC originated and designed the projects, applied for funding, and hired crews to do the work. FSC completed this work long before the county became a simple fiscal agent to get this work done, and has addressed wildfire preparedness for decades, long before the county considered it a priority.
I don’t take our fiduciary responsibility lightly; it is why I’ve remained committed to seeing FSC through unsubstantiated claims from a few disgruntled ex-FSC employees, resulting in a 2022 Grand Jury inquiry. FSC’s Board cooperated with Grand Jury requests, despite their lack of legal authority over an independent 501c3 non-profit. Accountability is equally important for all agencies, non-profits, and government institutions. FSC displays all public information documents on our website.
Due to concerns raised in the 2022 report, FSC immediately improved its operations to ensure accountability. All changes were approved by our Board with direction from our legal counsel and CPA. We successfully underwent multiple internal, 3rd-party and county fiscal audits, our taxes are current and filed, and we made changes to provide clarity and segregate duties. Yet, the county fails to recognize successful audits and positive changes made within FSC.
Ironically, the Grand Jury and forensic audits raised more concerns regarding county operational deficiencies, procedures, contractual oversight, and consistency and acknowledged that FSC had undercharged the county for services.
The county acknowledges that FSC has, for years, successfully and professionally completed fire mitigation project work, improving fire safety for thousands of our citizens. Yet, in March when FSC was to begin work on the Ponderosa project, that FSC and the county worked in partnership on since 2019, the county unexpectedly went out to bid for vendors to do the work FSC has completed for 5-years.
FSC then found out the publicly elected Auditor/Controller listed FSC a ‘high-risk vendor,” without explanation, substantiation, or due process. No notice was given or documentation of what constitutes a “high-risk vendor.” The county repeatedly acknowledges “FSC is a critical community- wide partner in wildfire safety,” then claims that “perceived risks to public funds cannot be ignored.” What risks?
One reason states invoices submitted to the county for completed work contain “errors.” FSC requested specific information about these errors, agreeing FSC, like all agencies including the county who bears similar responsibility, makes occasional minor errors. We cannot resolve issues unless the county provides details regarding supposed errors and any impacts, they may have on the outcome of a given project.
FSC completes projects involving millions of dollars with multiple agencies (CALFIRE, FEMA, USFS, USDA, Sierra Nevada Conservancy, Fish and Wildlife) successfully treating thousands of acres. FSC works with these agencies and meets all requirements for work, budgets, reporting, and audits and is not a “high-risk” vendor with agencies having vast experience and expertise with wildfire mitigation and grant management, compared to the county/OES. County mandates to revisit projects (Ponderosa) with repeated environmental reviews and unnecessary administration significantly escalate costs, waste tax dollars, delay project completion, and reduce the funding available for actual mitigation work.
The Nevada County OES has allowed our Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP) to expire in August 2023. This federally mandated document, updated every 5-years, is required for entities to apply for FEMA pre-mitigation and hazard mitigation funds. The Purpose Section (1.1, page 18) of the expired LHMP states:
“This plan was also developed, among other things, to ensure Nevada County and participating jurisdictions’ continued eligibility for certain federal disaster assistance: specifically, the FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program (PDM), and the Flood Mitigation Assistance Program (FMA).”
The FSC along with other eligible entities in the county was, in December 2023, unable to apply for $30-million in grant funding aimed at reducing the risk of wildfire in our community. The expired county LHMP document jeopardizes years of program and project funding in queue with FEMA. Projects such as Ponderosa Phase-II, Access and Functional Needs & Abatement Programs, Deer Creek Phase-I, Home Hardening Retrofits, Woodpecker Ravine/Building Resilient Infrastructure in Communities (BRIC), and various other funding applications that FSC are not directly involved with. The expiration of this document prevents the community from accessing necessary funding by eliminating the opportunity for grants to be submitted in a timely and competitive manner and requiring exemption requests. This failure impacts local municipalities, fire districts, special districts, not just non-profits like FSC. Most importantly it fails the citizens who expect government to fulfill its most basic of functions: serve the community in a competent manner.
The real implications of the county’s recent ‘high risk vendor’ announcement? Unnecessary delays in wildfire safety project completion, to protect your family. It’s that simple, and is unacceptable, with so much work still to be done towards wildfire resilience in our community. We should never have reached this point.
Hank Weston -Penn Valley
Thank you Hank for this clarifying statement! The Fire Safe Council has played a pivotal role helping make Nevada County more firesafe since its inception in the 1990’s. I have used their neighborhood defensible space advisory visits, free chipping programs, neighborhood chipping programs and free green waste drop off programs for years. I hope the county can review their processes so that effective non-profits such as the Fire Safe Council can continue to be an important part of Nevada County’s fire safe program. Thank you again Hank and big thanks to the Fire Safe Council!!
I would agree, chipping and green waste drop off have been great for the community. The shaded fuel breaks aren’t done in a timely manor, Forest Health is minimal with a skeleton crew of 7-10. The nepotism is outrageous. Funds are unaccounted for. Multiple pieces of large equipment have been sold and not replaced. When all the money is accounted for and only then will I believe that management could stay in place. FSC is a great asset to this community, it’s the money hungry people in charge that need to go. The grant funding will come back when new management is in place.
(FSC’s Board cooperated with Grand Jury requests, despite their lack of legal authority over an independent 501c3 non-profit) The NCGJury has no legal authority over the FSC ,true but NCGjury has investigative authority if any county money was given to FSC . As a past member of the NCGJ ( over 4 years) I found that the NCGJ is independent and has fair representation of all political party’s. I never saw a vote by the NCGJ that was voted on due to party lines. The NCGJ informs on what they investigated and investigations are mostly started due to a complaint by a county member.
I was in a class given by the FSC to train volunteers to do home evaluations to reduce fire risk for those who requested such help. There were about 20 people in the class. We were to do two home evaluations with an experienced partner prior to being allowed to do them on our own. The office had a long list of requests of folks who had obviously waited for months. I volunteered for several dates but was never coupled with a partner. After about 3 months of calling without success I finally resigned as a volunteer. I know of at least two others who had the same experience. What a loss for our community to lose volunteer hours for a service to make our homes safer. The FSC office did not seem to be at all functional. Now I read about larger management issues, which may explain some of the end user problems.