It was a sparsely-attended Town Hall conversation regarding wildfires and how to better reduce the risk at Grass Valley City Hall Wednesday evening. It started with a brief presentation from Fire Chief Mark Buttron, who discussed the development of what’s called a Community Wildfire Protection Plan. He says an assessment showed that the top priority is a FEMA term called “community lifelines”…

click to listen to Chief Buttron

Defensible space assistance, evacuation route improvements, and home hardening were other priorities mentioned by Buttron. But a number of residents wanted to see more enforcement of the vegetation management ordinance. Susan Rogers said it shouldn’t just be complaint-driven…

click to listen to Susan Rogers

Mayor Jan Arbuckle also brought up the familiar issue of many people not being physically or financially able to do better thinning and tree removals, especially the large number of seniors…

click to listen to Mayor Arbuckle

Some of the 20-or-so audience members also wondered if some of the city’s Measure E revenue could be re-allocated for wildfire prevention, instead of proposing another sales tax measure. But officials explained that voters approved specific ways of spending it, with most supporting it being used for recreation improvements. The City Council, which mostly listened to the comments, will discuss the tax measure and allocating more funding for firefighters at its next regular meeting on Tuesday.