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Rutland-region team wins $50,000 resiliency hub grant as subregional preparedness program expands
Summary
The Rutland-region emergency management partnership announced a $50,000 community resiliency hub award and reported progress on subregional preparedness discussions that have reached 15 of 27 towns; the funds will expand outreach to disadvantaged communities and support volunteer sites.
Maggie, the meeting host for the Rutland-region Regional Emergency Management Committee, announced that the committee’s collaborative CO‑AD (Community Organizations Active in Disaster) application received a $50,000 community resiliency hub award from the Land Access and Opportunity Board.
The grant followed an initial funding round in which the application was not selected; after the board revised its budget the project was included in a second round. Maggie said the award will fund more robust outreach to community groups that have been historically underserved and provide a site to support volunteers working through subregional preparedness efforts.
Why it matters: the funding will let the RMC and its partners move from planning and exercises toward building locally sustained networks and volunteer capacity. “We can even provide a site for volunteers who are helping us throughout this process,” Maggie said.
The announcement came amid an update on a multi‑month subregional engagement process. Maggie and Eric Tolber described a series of facilitated conversations now completed with 15 of 27 towns; facilitators have identified recurring gaps in documentation (memorandums of understanding), communications with vulnerable populations, training reinforcement, and staging of resources during a response.
Speakers singled out Middletown Springs as a locally promising example: organizers there have developed neighborhood‑scale preparedness networks, scheduled public events, and are piloting low‑power decentralized communications (a “meshtastic” network) to support text messaging when other systems fail.
Maggie said the project team expects to complete all subregional discussions this year and will circulate an after‑action report summarizing trends and recommendations. The RMC will invite town representatives to join ongoing planning; she asked members to contact her or Bill Jones to volunteer for outreach work.
Next steps: the grant will fund year‑one outreach and planning; subregional after‑action reporting will be produced before the next round of facilitated discussions. The committee did not take a formal vote tied to the grant during the meeting.
