Read NID's 2026 Cost of Service Study here.

We then take a broader look at how AI is being introduced to law students and what kind of proficiency law firms are expecting employees to posses when it comes to the rapidly developing technology. 

We speak with UC Davis School of Law Professor Peter Lee. Professor Lee is also the director of the law school’s Center for Innovation, Law and Society and sits on the school’s AI work group. In addition, we hear from Executive Director of the California Public Defenders Association Kate Chatfield.

Music by Ashot Danielyan and Viosteffa from Pixabay

• Nevada County Transit Services' 12 Days of Holiday Cheer free fare event begins today. Nevada County Connects and Nevada County Now are offering free fare service on all routes until December 31st.

• A Union Pacific train derailed in Colfax this weekend. Union Pacific Railroad representative Jill Micek told KVMR News that approximately 13 rail cars left their tracks near State Highway 174 and Narrow Gauge Road just after 3 a.m. Saturday morning.
  

• The California Department of Public Health has issued a warning to the public due to a recent outbreak of amatoxin poisoning tied to the consumption of wild, foraged mushrooms. The cause of these poisonings has been tied to Amanita Phalloides, also known as the Death Cap Mushroom. KVMR News spoke with Daniel Nicholson, a Yuba Watershed Institute board member who has been researching the local mushrooms and documenting their distribution for more than two decades.

• At last week’s Grass Valley City Council Meeting the agenda's big topic of discussion, the Dorsey Marketplace Project, was yet again pushed to a later date. GV City Manager Tim Kiser says the public hearing considering changes and additions to the development is now scheduled for January 13th at 6pm. The meeting’s first public comment referenced the repeated incidents of violence throughout Nevada County in the past several months, as well as the demonstration held at the Rood Center in Nevada City on Monday, Dec 8th.

• Owner of Grass Valley Pasty Company arrested and booked into the Nevada County jail Friday evening, according to the Grass Valley Police Department. 

• The Nevada County elections office has officially certified the results of Nov. 4th’s Statewide Special Election.  Nevada County’s 66% voter participation rate dwarfs the state’s 50% average and ranks it among the top 5 counties for voter turnout in this special election.

  
  

• As part of KVMR News' quest this December to keep you informed on festive winter activities in our area - we sat down with Nevada Union High School Choir Director Connor Jamison to talk about the impending annual NU Choir Holiday Concert. 

• The library’s annual Winter Reading Challenge kicks off December 1st and runs through January 31st. Brittany Blake, Adult Programming coordinator at the Grass Valley Library, says the Winter Reading Challenge is open to all ages. To take part, you can visit any of the library branches and pick up a bingo card, which fall under 4 categories: pre reader, independent reader, teen, and adult. 

• Last week, CodeRED, a system used to send emergency alerts to residents who have opted in, reported an outage which affected six cities and twelve counties in California, including Nevada County. Now, CodeRED has notified Nevada County of a cybersecurity breach associated with the outage. 

• For nearly 40 years the Nevada Union High School Chamber Choir has organized a fundraiser in the form of a Renaissance celebration.
  The fully immersive experience includes students dressed in period-appropriate attire, live renditions of Renaissance era songs and, even, a comedy sketch. The event is known as the Madrigal Dinner.

• The newly appointed Nevada County Clerk Recorder/ Registrar of Voters, Armando Salud-Ambriz, is hosting a series of informal meet and greets at various locations across the county in December. Armando says this is a chance for Nevada County residents to get to know him and ask questions about elections, voter registration, and the many services the office provides. 

• On November 20th, Nevada County identified a sewer spill at Lift Station #23 near Dove Loop. The sewage spill occurred between November 18th and November 20th, entering into Lake Wildwood as a result of an operational error during scheduled testing.

• Nevada County is accepting applications for a free cat spay and neuter clinic on Tuesday, December 16th. 

• On Tuesday, Nov. 18, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved up to 1.5 million dollars over five years to keep Rough and Ready Fire Station 59 operational during the consolidation of Rough and Ready and Penn Valley Fire Districts. 

Photo from Reno-Tahoe International Airport website

In 2025 the small committee tasked with decision making watched 297 hours worth of submissions before whittling down the event’s final lineup.

This year the focus will be on animation and the artists committed to that craft. But, as Locks points out, animation is expensive. And some filmmakers have been turning to artificial intelligence to cut costs. “Does that erode how we interact with reality, or does that enhance creativity,” Locks asks. 

Films created with the use of AI are able to enter the festival.  Locks says, “Ultimately, audiences are going to be the ones who decide if AI succeeds or fails in filmmaking.”

KVMR News spoke with Judith Berliner and Brandon Dellis, library assistant at the NU library.

Watch the Planning Commission meeting HERE.

Sierra Roots is hosting their annual shelter training and orientation tomorrow, November 13th from 5 to 7pm at the Nevada City Veterans Hall. Mike Cannatella, Shelter Program Manager, says the training is open to anyone interested in learning more or getting involved with Sierra Roots. 

You can watch the Nevada County Elections’ livestream of the ballot processing center on the County’s Youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdGzGr9WdIE

The League of Women Voters of Nevada County has additional resources, including a multi-part video series about Prop 50 for voters still unclear about the proposition.  https://my.lwv.org/california/nevada-county/elections/upcoming-elections

Friday October 24th through Sunday October 26th, Nevada County expects rain, mountain snow, moderate winds. The county is offering free sand at four locations; residents must bring their own shovel and sandbags. 

Today, we’re wrapping up this special series at a station in Paonia - a tiny town in western Colorado. We speak with  KVNF Program and News Director Brody Wilson.

Today, we’re taking you to the small town of Whitesburg, Kentucky in the heart of Appalachia. To a station without a designated news team, trying to build a news room in the wake of setback after setback. KVMR News speaks with Jared Hamilton, Programming Coordinator at WMMT 

and the only current full-time staff at the station. 

We start nearly 800 miles away, gaining about 4,000 feet in elevation with a community radio newsroom that has developed a reputation for fastidious reporting. In 2025, the desk received a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award and two honors from the Public Media Journalists Association. We speak to Sophia Boyd-Fliegel (Managing Editor at KHOL in Jackson, Wy).

Photo: Senior Reporter Dante Filpula Ankney (left), Managing Editor Sophia Boyd-Fliegel, Executive Director Emily Cohen and Reporter Jenna McMurtry critique a recent episode of KHOL's podcast on local news, music and culture, Jackson Unpacked. 

In cannabis news, local cannabis researcher, mentor, educator, advocate and CBD pioneer Wade Laughter passed away on Wednesday, June 4th. 

You can read the NCSO's Military Equipment Use Annual Report on the Sheriff's website. 

The Grass Valley Skatepark Coalition's proposal to save the existing park can be read on change.org. 

KVMR News Correspondent Kelley Rees spoke with Brittany Blake, the Adult Programming Coordinator at the Grass Valley library to get the details. 

For more from Natalie McMaster, remember to tune into Curtain Call with hosts Cy and Joyce next Friday, May 2nd at 6:30 p.m.

Spotify pays artists fractions of pennies per stream. But Liz Pelly's book goes even deeper to reveal how Spotify has quietly worked to remove bands and artists from its most popular playlists and replaced them with fake or ghost content commissioned for cheaper than paying actual artists. What happens when we think we're listening to a band, but it's actually just content made by a company to keep us streaming for longer?

Many thanks to Alexis Alrich for providing her original composition for this story, "Bell and Drum Tower," recorded in 2020 by the Janacek Philharmonic. 

Learn more about Alexis' work at her website.

More information on Liz Pelly's book can be found at her publisher's website here. 

KVMR's Sherrie Cunningham spoke to Dr. David E. Olson, director of the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics at UC Davis to learn more. 

You can learn more about the Alternative Housing Work Plan and sign-up for email updates at nevadacountyca.gov/alternativehousing.

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• 00:00: Jane Kim - State Director of the California Working Families Party.
• 08:24: Lorena Gonzalez - President of the California Federation of Labor Unions.
• 16:51: Everett Kelley - National President of the American Federation of Government Employees.
• 26:54: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 14th district.
• 56:07: Bernie Sanders - United States Senator from Vermont.

This week is Public Health Week and KVMR's Shannon Harney has produced a series that highlights some of the work our public health staff is engaged in locally. 

Any questions you might have can be directed to the Department of Public Works at public.works@nevadacountyca.gov or (530) 265-1411.

Drawing from original interviews with some of the greatest living cowboy poets and archival audio from the gathering, April produced a KVMR Public Affairs special radio documentary.

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The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is a production of the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada. Thank you to the Western Folklife Center Archives for the audio of works by Andy Hedges’, Buffalo Kin, Amy Hale and Dom Flemons.

To learn more about the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, visit nationalcowboypoetrygathering.org.

The recording of Gail Steiger’s song My Son was from a 1987 PBS documentary made by the Steiger Bros called Ranch Album. 

Works used:

1. “Goodbye Old Paint” by Charlie Willis. Performed by Jess Morris in 1942
2. “From Town” by Charles Badger Clark. Performed by Andy Hedges in 2025
3. “Tennessee Stud” performed by Buffalo Kin in 2025
4. “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry. Performed by Amy Hale in 2016 at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering
5. “My Son” written and performed by Gail Steiger for the 1987 PBS documentary Ranch Alum
6. “Lone Ranger” written and performed by Dom Flemons in 2017 at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering

We Are Not Strangers Here was made possible by a local partnership with the Nevada County Arts Council, Grass Valley-Nevada City Cultural District, the County of Nevada, Nevada County Historical Society and the Nevada County Historical Commission. The broader exhibit represents a collaboration between the California Institute for Rural Studies, Susan Anderson of the California African American Museum, the California Historical Society, Exhibit Envoy, and Dr. Caroline Collins from UC San Diego.

If you see any downed power lines assume they are energized and extremely dangerous. Stay away and call 9-1-1. In western Nevada County PG&E can be reached at 1-800-743-5000. In the eastern parts of the county residents can call the Truckee Public Utility District at 530-587-3896. 

Sandbags can be purchased at area hardware stores and free sand to fill them is available at:

• The Nevada County Warehouse: On the corner of Highway 49 and East Broad Street, Nevada City.
• The Penn Valley Fire Protection District: 10513 Spenceville Road, Penn Valley.
• The North San Juan Community Hall: 10057 Reservoir Street, North San Juan.
• The Higgins Fire Department: 10106 Combie Road, Auburn.

Higgins Fire - Brush 23
Ophir Hill Fire - Engine 523
Penn Valley Fire - Brush 44
Nevada County Consolidated Fire - Brush 89
North San Juan Fire - Engine 6168
Grass Valley Fire - OES Engine 4609

Over 40 million people rely on the Colorado River to bring them water, but with water sharing guidelines set to expire shortly, states are having a difficult time carving up various slices of the pie. Paul Emery sits down with hydrogeologist Steve Baker to find out if any headway is being made when it comes to who gets what in the world of water.

In this week's Money Matters commentary host Marc Cuniberti explains that a “high sigma event” is not, in fact, a questionable fraternity activity but an economic crisis.
 
Molly Fisk brings us poems celebrating winter solstice, the impending holidays, and the new year right around the corner in her ongoing Observations from a Working Poet series.

There are options for home cooks as well. The Interfaith Food Ministry is also offering all the ingredients needed for a Thanksgiving meal. You can make a reservation online or by phone if you’d like to pick up before 11am, otherwise it’s first-come-first-served. Interfaithfoodministry.org or 530-273-8132.

 
And the Food Bank of Nevada County is offering free Thanksgiving meals to go. You can reach them at foodbankofnc.org or by phone at 530-272 3796.

You can report downed trees or other issues on county maintained roadways by emailing public.works@nevadacountyca.gov or by calling (530) 265-1411. In Truckee, the public can call the Truckee Public Utility District at (530) 587-3896. Downed power lines can be reported to PG&E at 1-800-743-5000. If you use life-sustaining medical devices FREED can help. They can be reached at (530) 477-3333. if you need support.