Show: On The Town Station: KNCO File: 9:16.mp3 Air date: 2026-09-16 Source: OpenAI whisper-1 · sent as-is --- transcript --- Morning, Tom. Well, good morning, Mo. It's great to be out here at the Northridge in Nevada City. Sorry for that delay there, but we're all up and going. And it just gave Crystal a little bit more time to pack lunch. Is this lunches to go? Yeah, this is lunches for the Nevada County Jail there. The jail? Yeah. Is it for the inmates or the workers? I think it's for the workers. I think so. But, you know, I didn't ask. But that's a pretty big staff over there. So how much lead time for people listening that might have an office and want to get lunches? How do they do it? They called me at 11 a.m., and it is, yeah, yeah. So I mean, obviously, it depends on what other orders we have going in and out, but for the most part, it's about 30 minutes. That is very quick. Good job by you. So what did they order there? For our kitchen. Oh, my gosh. Shane and Andrew rocked it. Well, you don't want to mess with the cook's buns. I can see the sign. No, no, no. That is, we had to warn people off because it was becoming a problem. Yes, I understand. This is where locals go, right? It's always been about it. That is. That is. We love our local offices, our local community, our schools. We just had a fundraiser for the Children's Festival to help earn money for their craft supplies so that they can put it on free to the community. So, you know, without the community, we wouldn't be here, and they've kept us strong for so many years. You guys aren't running this thing out, are you? No, they're standing right there waiting for me to get some hot food. Let's bring it over. You're going to help me deliver? Yeah, I'll help you deliver. Okay, thank you. Do you want me to? Yeah. All right. All right. I got it here. I'm at full service. That's wonderful. I'm full service. Do I have my County of Nevada hat here? See? I got it here. And who are you guys? Michelle. Michelle. Jessica. Hi. Hi. Are you from the county? Are you from the jail or what? We are. Over the jail. Yeah? Mm-hmm. What do you do over there? I work in the medical unit. Medical unit? And you? Same. Nurse. Yes. All right. All right. Is it a rowdy group over there, or are they well-behaved? They are very well-behaved. All right. And so who's the lunch is for? Is that for you guys? A rowdy medical unit. I'm married to a nurse. I understand. All right. Well, I'll let you get to it. You have to keep people motivated, you know? And a plunge is the way to do it. Well, that's the thing here about the Northridge. That's what I mean. Yeah. I mean, I think it's been three times recently, and so we're getting to know each other on a personal level just over the phone. That's how it is here, huh? You get to know everybody. We do. It's great. My daughter teases me all the time. It's like, we can't go anywhere without ... Can you just stop the mom talk? Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. All right. Now, it's almost fall. Do you guys change or tweak things when it gets into the cooler temperatures? Not quite there yet. Yeah. The soup becomes more consistent, and I can tell you, we have people calling for soup all year round, so we'll have a really happy crowd when that starts to be a regular thing. I know. And they make the best ones homemade here, so everything's from scratch. And I think that just makes it a little bit extra special. All right. They're carried with love. There you go. They are. Thank you guys so much. Such a pleasure. You too. And a new menu is in there. Thank you. Okay. That's what I love about this place. You can just be casual like that, and everybody's fine. And everybody is soup. It is. It is. It's great. I mean, I have people who offer help all the time, even though they're sitting and eating. We try not to take them up on it, but it's a nice way to be. These are problem women over here. The one on the right comes for rib night every once in a while. Yes, she does. What night is rib night? Thursday night. Every Thursday. And it's not just night. It is all day. All day? Yeah. 11 to close or 11 until we sell out. So you sell out of ribs? Yes. All right. Yes. And Shelly's always here with a group of women, it seems like. Not all women, but she's here with a group. Yeah, John. Is she running a gambling circuit? What is she doing? I mean, they are always in the back corner, so they're out of sight. But otherwise, that way we can't keep... I think it's a card game. We can't keep track of them. So... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for hosting us on the town. I'm sorry for the late start. Absolutely. We love having you here. Yeah. And it's important, the group I have here, because we're talking about being wildfire ready. And that's what it's all about with Joanne Fights-Kaufman, who's here. She's president of the board. Joanne, how are you? I am doing well. Always a little bit like a chicken with my head cut off, because I'm helping a lot of people in the community. Isn't it exciting that people want to get the help, though? When you think about it, you can be passive and complacent and just go, well, it's happening in some other place, these wildfires, but not here. But people, at least, are proactive. Yeah. We have, I think, about 20 new firewise communities forming right now in Nevada County alone. Yeah. And one forming up on Banner Mountain is Maureen Gravers here. You're going to be the boss in charge of this community. We're up on Banner, basically. Well, a lot of people would say I'm bossy. I prefer to use the word leader. Leader. We're at the top, so if you use Banner as a crest by Red Dog and Banner Lava Cap, that's my community. So lots of large parcels, a lot of dense forested spaces. Oh, yeah. You know, I think there's like a hiking trail up there I do with the dog every once in a while off of Banner Mountain Trail. So is it that basic area up there? In that arena, yes. Yeah. There's a lot of trees up there. So how many people are in your community? Do you have like an exact number, or is it still forming? Well, we are forming, but our current map is 103 parcels, about 55 structures or residences spread throughout. There's 103. All right. Are they all signing up? I mean, or how's that? Well, the beauty of a FireWise community is when we put our arms around you with our boundary map, you belong to our community whether you're interested in joining or not. There's no obligation. You're still going to reap all the benefits of being part of a community. So it's very unintimidating, but we do go house to house and by exploring what we do naturally and inviting people to do defensible space and home hardening and educational events, we hope to entice more people to become more active because we all gain when the community and all its participants do their fair share. All right. Now, have you done this before? Well, I was under the mentorship of Jeff Peach out of the Banner Mountain FireWise community, which is an incredibly large community of over 1,600 parcels. That's the thing that had the huge sign if you drove up there, right? Yes. Yes. Very large. We're starting to sunset that because it is so large and giving rise to smaller communities like my own. Yes. Yes. So Jeff was my mentor. He taught me. He introduced me to Joanne Fights Kaufman. She's taught me. There are a lot of incredibly knowledgeable people in our community who give selflessly of their own time to teach us because we have a shared passion to be safe. All right. So Joanne, a community is forming. Do you give seminars or get people to give seminars on how to do it and what are needed like handouts and stuff? We absolutely do. We have a whole workshop series from how to start one to the paperwork you have to do, how to gather people together and communicate. And some of those are on our YouTube channel. We also provide individual mentoring. So we have most of our volunteers are experienced FireWise community leaders. So we know how to help new FireWise communities. The coalition, your coalition, Joanne, how is it doing? Community wise, fundraising wise, because you were just in the station. That's how we set up this show just yesterday because somebody was talking about a pump and a drawing you have for a giveaway. Well we're kind of lean and mean and we're going to stay that way. But we've gotten to the point where so many people are reaching out for help and wanting to be involved that we really need to get a volunteer coordinator at the minimum. So this fall we're trying to have a membership drive and John Volz Sr. of Volz Automotive and his son, they've stepped forward in a big way to help us with that. So it's a great thing. And one of the things is John donated a really nice Honda fire pump, a little bit of fire hose and a cart so you don't have to carry the pump around. And we're raffling tickets for that, $50 a ticket and we're only selling 200. You can see, yeah, you can see that at A to Z Hardware. I like that, that there's a limited amount of tickets. Are they going already or what? Oh yeah, I bought a couple because I would use it for my prescribed burns. All right, I don't know if it's this way, Maureen, in your community, they have no sense of humor over here because I said it was a fire pump and I said, John, why would you want to pump out fire? I thought we wanted to do just the opposite and stuff. Is this like a very unfunny group? Well, what's lovely about whenever we get together is just the camaraderie and the neighborliness and the connections made. And we have plenty of jokesters. We get plenty of cartoons sent to us and wouldn't this be funny or isn't this silly? But the undercurrent is always, we're here to make a difference. We're here to make sure people evacuate safely. We're here to make sure embers don't catch. There's a lot of really important things we do, so it is serious business. But whenever we do work parties or have community events, it's a relaxing, joyful affair. Yeah, because I'm like one of those people that had to go with the fair plan or unfair plan, whatever you want to call it, right? Just because of where I live on the top of Gold Hill area, Grandview Terrace and stuff, but it's by the state park and so it's kind of tough. But this is like what you have to deal with up on Banner too, right? Yes, exactly. In fact, throughout our 9595 zip code area and surrounding areas, a lot of us only have the fair plan as an option. And the fair plan, people forget, the fair plan acronym stands for Fair Access to Insurance Requirements. They're the insurer of last resorts. And a lot of people are very upset right now because they're hearing in multiple media that the fair plan policy rates are going to go up at least 29.5% effective mid-October. So if your policy is going to renew mid-October or after, you're looking at an incredibly steep policy increase. So for that, if any of your listeners are interested, the Sierra College Community Forum is going to be hosting a fair plan discussion. And the topic is what to do, what can we do with this increase coming? And the primary speaker is Phillip Irwin. He represents the fair plan. It is at Sierra College, Nevada County Campus, which is at 250 Sierra College Drive. It is Friday, September 25th, from 1030 to 1130. He's a highly calm and informative speaker. I would encourage anyone that's on the fair plan that has concerns to come. And he's going to talk a lot about other additional discounts available, the Firewise Community Discount, and what you can do to control your policy costs by grabbing those discounts, and the coalition can teach you exactly how to get them. I appreciate Phillip having the guts to kind of show up, to be honest with you, because it'd be easy not to do it. Yes. He's very brave, but he brings a very calm influence, and he's matter of fact. This is the situation. I didn't drive the situation. The market drives the situation. The number of devastating wildfires California has had, particularly last January, 2025 L.A. area fires, were devastating to the insurance community. And so we have to change course. And part of it is shoring up the insurance so that the policies can be paid when claims arrive. And most of it is about how do we prevent this so insurance companies want to come in and want to provide us good coverage at a fair rate. Joanne, one of my talk show guys on my hour show, Jason Tedder, he was involved in that fire off of Dog Bar Road just recently. And it was right on his neighborhood. It was like one house away, the house that went up and the property and stuff. But he gave a great testimony. He had defensible space. He was very proactive about it. And he watched that fire that was really a problem lay down and really get under control just because of the work that he did, the mitigation work. That's great. I mean, people having that experience is the best information we could share. We have Wildfire Ready Home Program, and that includes a workshop. The next one's on October 4th. And we go through what causes homes to burn and then what are the things that you can do, including the low-cost ones to make your home safer and get the discounts from Fair Plan or others. So that's great. He saw the benefit. He sleeps well at night now. It was powerful radio book. He said it laid down and almost looked like a cigarette butt, you know, that was just kind of laying down. And that was powerful for everybody here that the work does work. So that's what it's all about, getting Wildfire Ready. Anyway, we're going to take our one break and do that right now as we're on the town here at the Northridge. So a quick break. New generations, 50 years, and countless happy memories. Foothill Mercantile is celebrating a golden milestone with a very special two-day sale. Saturday and Sunday, September 19th and 20th, you'll save on every purchase at Foothill Mercantile. Just draw for your discount savings, up to 50% off. Come browse an ever-expanding collection of gifts, housewares, holiday decor, toys, collectibles, candy, and greeting cards. All inside of one of downtown Grass Valley's most beloved stores, Foothill Mercantile. 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That's what it's all about. You know, wildfires have happened a lot, Joanne, this year already. Even when I talk to the firefighters on the towns at the Serino's, it's almost scary, especially in the lower elevations and such. Does it seem more active this year as well to you? Certainly to the north of us in Oregon and Washington. Here in California, so far, they've remained pretty small, but we've had a number of them around them. And I have to say, when it gets a little windy like today in the fall, yeah, I start paying really close attention. Yeah, once you get that way up there on Brown Air 2, you get the winds like today, and you start worrying a little bit? We do. Red Flag or any gusty day, we'd have one foot out the door if we're all prepared. It is a good time to give a commercial. Please don't burn on Red Flag days. I hear over and over, escape burn pile. I burn, too. I'm a big proponent of burning, but I have my 4x4 burn pile, and I have my dirt around it, and I have my hose next to it, and it's never unattended. So please don't burn on a Red Flag day. And when you are allowed to burn, please burn responsibly, and we won't have escape piles, and everyone will be happier. Most of the fires, this early part. Now, you have a matching campaign going on. I want to make sure people find out about this, because I saw an ad campaign you were doing yesterday with John Bolz. Yeah, we have a donor that's come forth with $7,500 to match anybody that joins as a member or donates. And our memberships start at $25 a year. A lot of people don't have a lot, but we like to have as many people involved. So yeah. All right. So membership. What do you get for membership? You get just access to information, things like that? Well, you would have priority to our free advisory home assessments, because sometimes we get a pretty long list for that. If there are any workshops, you get on the front of the line for those. We have a newsletter. And we haven't had any member events yet, but one of our volunteers teaches line dancing. So we're looking at an event coming up this fall where members get in free for line dancing lessons. I never know what's going to come out of your mouth, Joanne. Can I be honest with you? I picture when you said line, I'm thinking, okay, it's a fire line. And all of a sudden, it's line dancing. So all right. That's kind of exciting stuff. All right. And it's exciting having your community come together. So congrats on that. Are you happy where you are? And do you need constant volunteers to help you make things happen? Thank you for bringing that up. So part of the large community, the Banner Mountain Firewise community, sun setting is with leaders. I stepped up to do my neighborhood. We want to do neighbors helping neighbor concepts, which are smaller communities. And we are monitoring a map. And people that are interested in monitoring the Banner Mountain area Firewise community map can go to www.BannerMountain.org. And in our spotlight section, we have a proposed Firewise community map. Click on that. And if your neighborhood doesn't have a number showing that someone has started a community there, we need you. And we do have several areas that are still not represented that we'd like to cover. So if you think about it, visit our webpage, hit the contact FBM, and I will contact you and let you know some of the steps and how easy it is to become a community, particularly with all the help that we have lined up for you. All right. And when you say monitor, is that just keeping an eye out on what neighbors are doing and stuff or what? Did I get that right? You need monitors for these neighborhoods? Oh, what we're looking for is volunteers that will help gather neighbors together and create their own Firewise community. Now monitoring is a big word in fire prevention, where we want to monitor red flag days, monitor where the shade of fuel blanks are, monitor opportunities for improvement and doing projects together. So there's a lot of collaboration that we do together. So yes, monitor is a good word. Yeah. You never know where my mind's going. I think it's still a line sensing thing. By the way, the shirt you have on is a very special shirt from Volkswagen Motive. I had no idea you were going to come here and model clothing as well. Well, I'm not typically a model, but these are great shirts. John Voltz and his son, Voltz Automotive, also stepped up to buy a bunch of t-shirts that we could use for our fall drive. And we have a creative marketing genius, retired person, Kristen Cook, and she came up with this auto, you know, theme shirt. Ready is how we roll with the tire going down the roll, the road. And so people that join at the $100 a year level get a t-shirt. Here's the thing. Get your car ready to roll. It's good to have a go bag. Make sure your car is ready to go. That's one thing Voltz Automotive can help you with. Also the county of Nevada has great handouts. That's what's here in front of me. We had a lot of these at the fair. Do I get these here, Maureen? Yes, please. And I want to call attention particularly to you and to your listeners of the Finder 5 promotion to gather at least four of your best buddies in your neighborhood so that you're all prepared to make sure everyone gets out safely during evacuation. And please, please, if you haven't already signed up for the Nevada County Alert system --- end of transcript ---