Last night’s Annual Meeting was attended by its 3 board members (Sheriff Ian Parkinson, Cal Fire Unit Chief Scotty Jalbert, Cal OES Chief Rob Lewis), its officers, several dignitaries and members of our community.
Most impressive was the list of accomplishments the relatively new SLO Regional CERT program presented. At last year’s Annual Meeting, they announced that they would create at least one new CERT program in the county. This year, they were able to report that three new CERT programs were formed: North SLO County CERT, South SLO County CERT, and Lake Nacimiento CERT.
Additionally, at last year’s Annual Meeting they said they would increase the training opportunities offered. There was more than 4,200 training hours provided in 2019 using more than 780 volunteer hours. This included several LISTOS classes which are given in Spanish.
Finally, they set out to find grants that would help their mission become a reality. Over $50K was awarded to CERT programs within SLO County: $25K to North SLO County from the California State Governer’s Office; $15K (2 grants) to Cambria CERT from PG&E; and $10k to the SLO Regional CERT from PG&E.
They left us with a single goal for 2020: to provide training to as many communities as possible.