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Residents and union raise safety and labor concerns over Hidden Grove funding; board pulls housing items from consent
Summary
Public commenters pressed the Board of Supervisors to reconsider the Hidden Grove/Lone Oak II housing approval, citing evacuation, hydrant access and firefighting constraints and alleging contractor labor issues. The board pulled items 13 and 14 from consent for later discussion; county staff said loan agreements include labor‑compliance requirements.
Public comments at the Nevada County Board of Supervisors’ May 19 meeting focused on safety and labor concerns tied to the proposed Hidden Grove development and related financing for the Lone Oak II senior housing project in Penn Valley.
Multiple speakers told the board the project could create life‑safety conflicts in an area with constrained roadways and limited fire apparatus access. Robert Emmett, reading for a volunteer firefighter who could not attend, said the project “requires multiple exceptions to existing county standards, including reducing Hobart Lane from the county’s 50‑foot roadway standard down to 30 feet,” and warned that combination of narrow roadways and hydrants across Highway 174 could “raise serious concerns about how evacuation traffic, emergency ingress, and apparatus staging and firefighting operations would function simultaneously during a major incident.”
Dolly Lewis, who spoke later, said mutual‑aid resources and current staffing make complex firefighting tasks risky: “Estimated response times to Hobart Lane are 10 to 20 minutes under ideal emergency conditions, which exceeds NFPA response benchmarks for assembling an effective response force,” she said, adding that the local fire district often operates with minimal staffing and depends on mutual aid.
Labor‑compliance questions surfaced during public comment. Matt Kelly of the North Coast States Carpenters Union urged the board not to award publicly funded dollars to developers he said have “a history of wage theft.” He asked whether the county wanted “to give these publicly funded monies to a developer that’s just gonna fleece their pockets, or do you want the potential of that money benefiting men and women from your county that could potentially build this project?”
County staff addressed the concerns during the meeting. A staff member noted that the Western Nevada County Regional Housing Trust Fund dollars and a HOME/HCD state grant had previously been committed through the board and that the loan agreements include “a significant amount of labor compliance requirements” and reporting obligations. Staff also said the county is not the contractor selection authority for the project: the funds are allocated to the Regional Housing Authority and Pacific West Communities to carry the project forward.
The board agreed to pull items 13 and 14 from the consent calendar for separate discussion after the consent vote. The consent calendar passed with the remaining items. No final decision on the Hidden Grove proposal or on contracting choices was recorded in the meeting minutes; the board received public comment and staff responses and will consider the pulled consent items separately.
