Plumas Civil Grand Jury Releases Final Report

QUINCY — The 2025-2026 Civil Grand Jury for Plumas County issued its complete final report on June 6. The final report adds an investigation of the county Roads Department, results of a survey on grand juries in small California counties, and reports on elections and the county jail to an investigation of the Plumas-Sierra County Fairgrounds issued in April.

The Grand Jury found that the Roads Department benefits from effective internal communication and high morale, but recommended the Department should improve its website for better public access, institute a system for logging and tracking citizen complaints, and investigate changing the asphalt mix specified for county roads to reduce costs and construction delays. The formula for asphalt used on county roads is specified in the County Code and differs from the standard mix used by CalTrans. The differences can lead to inefficiency, because the only local asphalt plant, located in Chester, must change over its processes to produce the relatively small batches needed for county paving jobs, the Grand Jury reported.

The Grand Jury also noted that the Roads Department, like many other county agencies, faces challenges in recruiting and retaining staff due to low salaries, in addition to a limited labor pool and the physical demands of some jobs.

The survey of small county grand juries is based on responses from 10 of 15 California counties with fewer than 50,000 residents, including Plumas, Sierra, and Lassen Counties. A key finding of the survey is that small counties often struggle to retain the legally mandated number of jurors. Jurors resigned most often because the workload was greater than expected or because of work, family, or personal conflicts, the survey found. State law generally requires civil grand juries to have 19 members, but juries in counties with fewer than 20,000 residents may have 11 members. Plumas County moved recently to reduce its grand jury from 19 to 11 members in response to similar challenges, aligning it with the other small counties that responded to the survey.

The survey results also indicate that, although California law requires every county to have a civil grand jury, juries often reported receiving insufficient support from county government. Lack of technical resources, such as county email, telephones, and IT support, was reported by about half of the responding counties.

The full report is available online at https://tmmlink.com/i4M7FFd and in print at county libraries or in the courthouse from the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors.