Nevada County Grand Jury
2024-2025
Quick View
Full Details →
Findings & Recommendations
4 findings
F1:
The jury recognizes that the Community Roots’ business plan continues to evolve. The Community Roots business plan to date provides an excellent overview of the program ob- jectives and design. Budget projections and costs for the next three years are available as of the Community Roots meeting of March 27, 2025.
Related Recommendations (1)
R1:
Community Roots should update the Joint Power Agreement to reflect changes that have occurred since formation of the Joint Powers Authority, because the present form of the agreement speaks to the business model before the districts agreed to transfer their food funds to Community Roots.
F2:
The jury has no evidence that the Nevada County Board of Education has ap- proved Scott Lay’s commitment to cover operational funding deficits for the Community Roots program for the first five years, or ratified the $1 per month lease of the new kitchen facility.
Related Recommendations (1)
R2:
Members of the Community Roots JPA should continue working together to make locally sourced, fresh, scratch-made meals available to all Western Nevada County stu- dents.
F3:
Community Roots is now moving in a good direction and has identified sufficient available start-up funding to meet Community Roots’ budget, which should continue to improve the quality of food available to students in Nevada County.
Related Recommendations (1)
R3:
Community Roots should track and report to the public participation rates to help monitor the school lunch program’s success.
F4:
The Joint Powers Agreement is out of date because it does not reflect changes in the Community Roots program from 2025.
Related Recommendations (1)
R4:
The Nevada County Board of Education pass a resolution to ratify Scott Lay’s commitment to cover operational funding deficits for the Community Roots program for the first five years and the resolution should include the $1/year rental commitment for the new fa- cility.
Findings & Recommendations
8 findings
F1:
The county has addressed nearly all of the agreed to recommendations from the 2019 report.
Related Recommendations (1)
R1:
Local governments (cities, the county, and the BoS) should enact compre- hensive and coordinated anticamping laws; possibly consulting existing anti-camping laws in other counties and states.
F2:
Homeless persons living in the WUI present a high risk of starting wildfires, en- dangering themselves, county residents, first responders, and property.
Related Recommendations (1)
R2:
Local governments should develop one or more designated low barrier “sanctioned” camping areas for the homeless, with facilities and access to support services, similar to those established by other municipalities.
F3:
Nevada County, with its rural nature, very high fire risk designation, and, in many cases, single evacuation routes, needs to be extra vigilant regarding fire prevention.
Related Recommendations (1)
R3:
Local governments should extend the duration of trespass letters ob- tained from private property owners to one-year or longer to enable law enforcement personnel to quickly remove encampments from private property.
F4:
Homelessness continues to increase in the County.
Related Recommendations (1)
R4:
Local governments should provide additional shelter beds to close the gap between the number of unhoused people and the number of shelter beds.
F5:
Nevada County has substantially fewer shelter beds available than the PIT home- less count.
Related Recommendations (1)
R5:
Local governments should prioritize removing the homeless from the WUI.
F6:
Law enforcement agencies often find it frustrating when dealing with the unhoused population, and lack tools to remove homeless from fire-prone areas in WUI.
Related Recommendations (1)
R6:
Local governments should expand the criteria currently used to deter- mine warming shelter hours to be more realistic and better address the exposure risk that home- less face in colder months.
F7:
Law enforcement agencies have difficulties removing homeless camps from private property.
Related Recommendations (1)
R7:
The County should update the 2018 Ten-Year Plan to address this re- port’s findings and recommendations.
F8:
While Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Truckee have adopted anti-camping laws, the County lacks a comprehensive anti-camping law.