Show: On The Town Station: KNCO File: 10:1.mp3 Air date: 2026-10-01 Source: OpenAI whisper-1 · shrunk from 30.6 MB to 6.1 MB --- transcript --- It's 11-33-79 degrees and it's Thursday, so we'll head on over to Sereno's and find Tom Fitzsimmons On The Town. Good morning, Tom. Well good morning, Moe. It's always great to be here in downtown Grass Valley at Sereno's at Main Street with Jerry Sereno, the man, the legend. As a matter of fact, this is what I love about any time at Sereno's. Clayton Thomas here, fire chief down there at Penn Valley. You guys have a connection somehow with his dad or what? Yeah, he used to do upholstery. Just a great guy, you know, I remember him. And then looking at him, I said, you resemble your dad. I mean, it just came back instantly. That's what Sereno's is all about because we were just talking about the place in Nevada City while you were running around and we all have great memories and stuff. That's right. That's right. It's pretty cool to be a part of something that has such a long tradition. I have grandchildren coming in, they came in here with their grandparents when they were kids. It was just mine. But now they're grown up and they're bringing their kids in or their grandchildren. And all of a sudden I have to go home and look at my birth certificate and say, oh, my God. It's cool seeing your grandkids here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They love it. It's always good to see them. All right. You got a bunch of Kiss the Cook guys. I do. I have four of them here. That represents four winners in four weeks. We have a drawing every week. And this is the Kiss the Cook contest where you put $2 in an envelope purely voluntarily and it goes directly to the unsung heroes in the kitchen. It's like a love note to Booth. This is a note from someone that won and they said that we won the Kiss the Cook drawing on our 50th anniversary. We love the meal. We love the service and continue the project. And we have a Lori that won, a Megan that won, a Toby that won, and a Chad that won. So these all have gone out. In fact, one of these, Matt and Lori, so Lori already had their dinner here and left that nice note. I know that family. That's a great family. And they have a daughter that was in the Nevada Union Hall of Fame for soccer. Oh, really? Went down to Santa Clara on a full ride. Really? Cool, cool. See, that's the closeness around here. Yeah, it is. Kind of. Stories like that. Yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it. But talking about the unsung heroes in the kitchen, we have a dedicated crew in there that day in and day out, they really care about what they're doing. And that's just not a statement. That's a fact. Talk about tradition and time. What's really heartwarming is we had someone in there training. They're actually going to another restaurant, but they're here training. And the same words that I used to start training my sons years and years ago, they were using on a particular food item back there, and I go, it's working. It's working. That was pretty cool. It's the consistency you're talking about. That's the point. That consistency is the hallmark of Serino's at Main Street and any establishment that we've ever had. It's that continuation, that diligent attention to detail that can't be broken. It's a religion here, and it's very, very important. So we're here at 477-6000, make reservations, birthdays, anniversaries, and any type of large event, especially a family event, give us a call at 477-6000, and we're going to take care of you. You're going to have a lovely time. And don't forget to let you guys know it's a birthday or anniversary, you guys have something special, right? Absolutely. Let us know when you call in. Thanks, Tom. So that we can apply our special treat to your birthday person. Okay? All right. Jerry, thanks for hosting us here on town. It's great seeing you. Thank you so much. It's great to see you. Yeah. In downtown Grouse Valley, Serino's at Main Street, the place to be. We're going to take a quick break, check on Wall Street, then Nevada County Law and Fire Protection Council in the house with Tom Vallee, and since I already talked about Clayton being here from Penn Valley Fire Department, we'll talk about those guys when we come back. It is 1137, 79 degrees, and time to chat with Rick Fisher, Financial Advisor with Ostro Financial Consultants, LPL Financial, member SIPC. Well, Rick, I guess Dan Holiday didn't hear that we're in fall now because there's a heat advisory that's going into effect Saturday morning. Oh, really? Because it's supposed to be like 88 today. Is it going to hit over 90? Is that what you're trying to tell me? It could. Usually, that's what a heat advisory foretells, so take extra cautions. I shall. I think I'll stay inside. I might do some work inside the house. Yeah, take the sweater off like Mr. Rogers did so you don't keep that heat inside. Okay. There you go. There you go. It's kind of funny that we had Serino's as the guest because as soon as I get off this call, I'm going to be going to Serino's to pick up lunch for the staff. Okay, you'll see Tom there maybe. Maybe you'll see Tom. Okay. If I see him, I won't ignore him. I'll say hi. Unless he's busy interviewing, I don't want to disturb him when he's doing his job. Okay. He likes when you do the live long and prosper signal. Okay, I'll remember that. The Vulcan signal. All right. How about Wall Street? How are things looking today? Well, we started the day in the green and then we were down most of the session and now we've just popped positive again. I can't say we're going to close positive, but right now we've got the Dow up about 8, excuse me, almost 20 points to 50,926. S&P 500 is also about 21 points to 76.73 and the NASDAQ is up 71 points to 26,932. Taking a look at commodities, we've got crude oil up big, up over 2%, up $2.04 to $92.46 a barrel. Gold is up $24 to $4,210 an ounce with silver up 50 cents to $61.07 an ounce. And last but not least, we have the 10-year treasury yield currently is at 5.24%. So kind of a transitional market. We'll just see how it hangs on until the market close. And we'll find out from you how it all turns out following the 5.30 newscast today. So until then, this has been Rick Fisher of Ostro Financial Consultants, Inc., LPL, inviting you to call us at 273-4425 and discover the difference when you think beyond investments. Have a wonderful afternoon. Awards members of every tier can enjoy 50% off all suites and 30% off all standard rooms Sunday through Thursday. 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Tom Fitzsimmons here with Tom Vallee from Nevada County Law Enforcement Fire Protection Council. I was expecting, for my listeners out there, see Tom, I'm full disclosure, I was expecting Mimi Simmons. She had something come up. I wouldn't say you're a poor substitute, but you are on the eyes, all right? She's a little bit better looking than you. Yeah, I suppose I'd go along with that is the truth, yeah. We'll call it factual. All right. However, though, it has been an exciting time for the council itself because there's been projects being presented and stuff and things getting done. It's kind of been an exciting time, it sounds like. Yeah, we've funded quite a few things this year. Was really nice to get that article in the union. I think it let people know what we do do. I mean, from the helipad to extrication equipment to large diameter hose for Ophir Hill before they joined Nevada County Consolidate. It's been a busy year. The highway patrol, we did a couple things for them. We just keep plugging along and trying to fill holes where they pop up. We're waiting for Clayton to hit us up for something. It's been a while, so we're waiting. Give me something coming up. Now, for people who want to find out more about joining Law Enforcement Fire Protection Council as an associate member or things like that, how'd they go about doing that? We've got a website, nclawandfire.org. There's a lot of information there. We meet once a month and get all the first responders together. The associates are welcome to sit around the table. The information that's passed around is phenomenal. People don't understand how much goes on behind the scenes in this county to make it work because a lot of small agencies, everybody's involved when it happens. It's interesting to see that dynamics in who the players are. I think a lot of the new associates, when they first see it, are kind of amazed. Bill Trout, when he came up with the idea many decades ago about having Law Enforcement Fire Protection Council, I'm not sure if he thought it would work this well, but Clayton Thomas, your chief at Penn Valley, it is kind of nice to have all this interaction with all the department and heads getting together every month. It really is, Tom. Back to Bill Trout, a phenomenal idea. It's done a lot of good for the community. The folks involved with it, both from the agencies and members of the public that are associate members, are all working for the same thing. That's to make this place a safer and a better place to live. The kind of contributions that the Law Enforcement Fire Protection Council can do, just as Tom was saying, large diameter hose, makes a big difference in a structure fire. For some of these small agencies that can't afford to buy stuff like that, one roll of that five inch large diameter hose, and I know this because I just bought six of them, is $1,000 for a hundred foot section of hose. For a small agency, that's difficult to do sometimes. There's competing needs and interests and services you're trying to provide. This is a community organization that really helps fill those gaps. That's a lot more money than I thought it would be. How long do those hoses last, since you bought that up? Probably on average, 20 years. It's an investment. Definitely a capital piece of equipment, but yeah, they fail. When they get used, they break. That's why the guys are always doing maintenance on them too, right? To make sure they're clean. Yeah, so hose gets washed after every time it gets dirty at a fire, and then at a minimum, they get tested once a year to make sure that they won't burst under fire ground conditions. Do you have anything for this Law Enforcement Fire Protection Council that might be happening and stuff, or anything that you guys have talked about as ... You're the chief, but like the board down there and stuff in Penn Valley? Just like any agency, we have needs. We're working on funding for equipment and training in our water rescue program. As the listeners probably know, the South Yuba runs through a big portion of the county and a big portion of our fire district. It actually makes our northern boundary. We've taken 20 trips to the river this year on incidents. Not all of them rescues, but I just did the calculation the other day, and with the average number of responders, we spent about 160 person hours down there on emergencies this year, because it's a very heavily recreated place. Matter of fact, I think I talked about this last time you were on clean, is that when I walk my dog past the emergency department, Penn Valley vehicle might be there, and it was coming out when I was coming over here, matter of fact, coming back down to Penn Valley and stuff. You guys are very busy with emergency calls that way too. We are. We're on track to have our busiest year ever, probably finish it out with around 2,200 calls. August was our busiest month in history, and that was a little over 200 calls. 70% of those are medically related, and we have been the ambulance provider in our community since 1978, so it's a huge part of what we do. Well, there's a lot of things you do, and here as fire chief, October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, you got the pink patches on, so it's good to see that. You're the first one that I've seen with them. Well, I'm glad to hear that, Tom. I wanted to be the first on the first, but yeah, that's a great fundraiser. We have nine local fire and law enforcement agencies that participate in that now, all the way from Truckee Fire and Truckee PD to Grass Valley Fire and Grass Valley PD, Penn Valley Fire, County Probation, County Sheriff, Nevada County Consolidated Fire District, Nevada City Police Department. Almost all of the public safety agencies in the county are participating now, and it's for a great cause. The Susan Millar Breast Cancer Foundation, which works to raise money to provide breast cancer services here locally in our community, they're a huge supporter of the Cancer Center at Sierra Nevada Memorial. Now, you had a bucket or something, that thing, you got patches in there, you got challenge coins in there? Right. All of those participating agencies have for sale patches from their agency and from the other agencies, and those go for $10 a piece. Then challenge coins, which get redesigned every year, are available for $20 a piece. Some of those agencies actually have other types of schwag available, like Grass Valley PD has key chains, t-shirts, just kind of depends, some agencies have more products than others. But, yeah, we have a whole list of events coming up this month, actually, where people can obtain those, and also, like I said, all of those agencies at their administrative offices have those items for sale. You designed the patch for Penn Valley, it's a nice looking patch. Well, thank you. What most of us do is take our normal duty patch and then have the manufacturer kind of reverse the colors or change them to pink. Our usual patch is, as many people know, a baby blue patch, four colors, and we just change those four colors to various shades of pink for this event, and then the staff are authorized to wear them for the entire month. I didn't know it was baby blue, I thought it was sky blue. It's baby blue? Sky blue, baby blue. You know, I don't know who designed the first version of it, but I have seen two similar versions. Ours is very distinctive compared to other agencies. I've seen two similar versions in other parts of the country, but it's pretty rare. The fire patches look better than the cop patches, is that still the case this year? I might be a little bit biased, Tom, but I'll go with you on that. I think we have some good designs on the fire side. If people go down to the station, can they get them there too? Will you have these on display down there? We will have them at our main station there on Spenceville Road, and that's open Monday through Thursday, 8 to 4, and our thrift shop behind the main station, which I encourage everyone to come visit. It's an amazing thrift shop. I will say the best in Nevada County, just my personal opinion again, but they will also have them on sale there at the thrift shop from 11 to 4, Tuesday through Saturday. By the way, that thrift store produces a lot of money for that department, doesn't it? People haven't been down there. It's a small little house that has some outlying buildings and stuff, but tons of stuff, and it produces a good check at the end of the year for you guys, right? Yeah, it does actually. They contribute over $100,000 a year. Their biggest year was last year, and that was about $300,000, and that's what has enabled us to buy such state-of-the-art equipment that we have in Penn Valley, because again, as a small agency, budgets are very tight, and that auxiliary is a huge asset to the community. All right, we have to take a little break. We're going to do that right now. We're on the town here. Serena's at Main Street in Grass Valley, so a quick break. We'll be right back. Hey, Nevada County, I'm Lucas Miharas. And I'm Jesse Etlin. We're the founders of Zion Capital right here in your backyard. 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Tom Fitzsimmons here. Serino's at Main Street, downtown Grass Valley. Always a great place to be. Tom Vallee here from Nevada County Law Enforcement Fire Protection Council. Website is what? nclawnfire.org You guys don't have any events now until the red light ball, correct? May 15th, we'll be out at Costella Vista. We're looking to have a real good time this year. It's a big venue and should be a lot of fun. Should be a lot of fun. Chief Thomas, do you go to the red light ball by chance? I haven't had the opportunity to go yet, but I actually already have that date in my calendar. I will be joining them there. It is a lovely venue. I was just out there for the Pawn Order fundraiser a couple of weekends ago. It's a great place. Will you be singing or dancing or anything like that during this event? People want to know. Yeah, I'm sure they do. I think if we would like to maximize the fundraising aspect of this for the council, though, it's best to keep me away from the entertainment plan because people would probably leave screaming if that occurred. They did a reverse one for me one time where they actually had an auction where Fred didn't sing. They were actually raising money, which I understand. It's been an active fire season, Penn Valley in particular. You guys have been busy early and often, though it seems like it has calmed down a bit since. Is that the case? That is the case. I think since I was on the show last, we did have one significant wildfire out on the Jones Bar area. Unfortunately, we lost a home there, but we were able to stop that around 20 acres. Again, that's just because of the coordinated effort between all of the agencies, fire, law enforcement, Cal Fire, state parks in that case because they have land out there. That's how we keep fire small in this community is working together. This is a real volatile time, though. Here we are. Our typical October heat wave coming. All we need is a wind event with this. It can be pretty volatile out there. In Northern California's history, our largest wildfires occur September, October-ish and November. Long-time listeners will remember that the 49er fire started in September, burned 33,000 acres. In November, we unfortunately had the Camp Fire in 2018. We're not out of the woods yet. Advice to people if they're going to be doing stuff because they want to get things cleaned up. I know they're trying to err on the side of being smart and making a defensible space and stuff, but some tips on making sure it's a safe thing. Just like we say in the middle of summer, until we have appreciable rainfall, you've got to remember if you're going to clear your land with any mechanized equipment, you want to do that early in the morning before 10 o'clock. If you're going to be out there using mechanized equipment and you have dry grass and brush, have a water source, whether you have a hose, whether you have a trailer with water, whether you have a fire extinguisher, have something to put a small fire out with. Even though we're fast, we're not instantaneous, we're not Superman. It takes time to get to where you're at. Those are some of the things you can do to avoid starting a wildfire. Also, if you're going to go out there, if you unfortunately do start a wildfire, keep your cell phone with you, and that way you can call 911 immediately. A lot of people don't because they're working in the yard and they don't want to break it. They're really expensive, but keep your phone with you so you can report it. I think a lot of people don't realize how big Penn Valley Protection District is. Of course, now when I think about it, it's headed with Rough and Ready now. How big an area is it? It's 100 square miles. We go from the very north edge of Camp Far West Reservoir, all the way up to Highway 20 near Smartsville, over up Lake Englebright to Bridgeport, down through the Bittany Springs Road, Rough and Ready Highway. It's a very large district. As you give that, it's almost like the footprint of the 49er fire, when you think about it from years ago. Most of the 49er fire was in our fire district. It started in North San Juan, but pretty quickly hopped the South Yuba River. Again, it was a north wind day. It burned all the way past Lake Wildwood, to the area of Highway 20 at the top of Pet Hill, where it petered out. Hundreds of homes and devastation to the land. It's been so long ago. A lot of people haven't been here and seen that. We've been getting sweat. We've had incredible response from your forces on the ground. Obviously, CAL FIRE in the air and stuff has been remarkably quick responses to everything. It has been. We're fortunate to have the air attack base in Grass Valley. We're fortunate to have the stations and the engines that we have available here. The coordination. Other states don't have that available. California is, without question, able to mobilize more fire apparatus faster than any other state or country in the world. Real quick, because we've got a couple minutes left. Are there any dates you want to talk about as far as these patches being available and stuff? The kickoff event, the public event, is going to be Coffee for a Cure over at Sierra Mountain Coffee on Maltman Drive. That's next Wednesday from 8 to 11. There will be an event in Truckee the morning of October 15th at Wild Cherries. Pink Patch Night at Golden Era Cocktail Lounge on October 15th. They'll be having another event at Golden Era on the 29th. An entire pickleball tournament at the South Yuba Club on October 24th and 25th. Pickleball tournament? Yes. Well, as we know, it is very, very popular, especially in this community. A safe trick-or-treat for preschoolers the morning of October 30th on Mill Street, just around the corner. Another Halloween event at the Sheriff's Office on the 30th from 3 to 5. And then on Halloween, Nevada County Consolidated. They're stationed down in Alta Sierra, Station 89. We'll be having an event from 5 to 7. And again, you can pick up that merchandise we talked about earlier at those locations. I encourage everybody to do it. It is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It's a great way to support first responders and also your community because it helps breast cancer, the fight for it at Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital's Cancer Center. They do great work there. So I appreciate Clayton Thomas joining me here from Penn Valley's Fire Department. Tom Vallee from Law Enforcement Fire Protection Council. NClawandfire.org is their website. So make your plans to find out how to get involved and be part of that as well. That does it for us. We've got ABC News coming up right now. --- end of transcript ---