Nevada County’s Defensible Space Inspection Program, critical to monitoring wildfire danger reduction efforts by residents, has also been hampered by the pandemic. At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Sheriff’s Lieutenant Bob Jakobs, the Emergency Operations Coordinator, said there was a work stoppage. And he says they only had one part-time temporary inspector, until recently. He says efforts to augment staffing were hampered by a non-competitive wage…

So Jakobs says OES worked with the county’s Human Resources Department to come up with a major pay increase. And that’s resulted in a newly-formed Inspection Team comprising of four members…

Jakobs says while complaints will still be given first priority, the team is also identifying areas for vegetation removal and thinning near critical wildfire evacuation routes. Before formation of the team, the county received 125 complaints about inadequate defensible space. 116 were inspected, with only 51 found to be compliant upon first inspection.