Under its charter, SBTAC (pronounced ‘S-B-tac’) will provide these services to other organizations that participate in or make use of emergency services in Santa Barbara County. Such organizations include non-profits, schools, and associations, including homeowners associations.
Co-founder Bill Talanian sums it up this way, “SBTAC is an organization made up of people within Santa Barbara County who have unique and highly sought-after skills in various areas of telecommunications.
All of those serving as SBTAC members give their time freely to assist other organizations that do not have telecommunications expertise and are in need of the services provided by SBTAC.” “Further,” he states, “we realized the need for this type of organization because as experts in our given telecommunications fields, we are already being called upon, individually, to provide these services to other organizations. As a group, we can offer the desired level of expertise in the specific telecommunications areas that are needed.”
Members of SBTAC are already working with The Nature Conservancy, Santa Barbara Search & Rescue, the Reagan Ranch, and several school systems and fire departments within the County. Co-founder and the SBTAC’s first President Andrew Seybold said, “For three years I have been donating my time equally between acquiring additional radio spectrum for the Public Safety community on a nationwide basis and working with Bill and others on local projects. There are so many telecommunications experts who have retired to Santa Barbara or work here that forming an organization to make this expertise available to the community seemed like a great opportunity to assist our local community and to work side by side with others who have extensive knowledge in telecommunications.”
SBTAC is in the process of creating a dedicated website that will provide information on how to engage its services. In the meantime, for further information, contact Andrew Seybold at aseybold@andrewseybold.com or Bill Talanian at W1UUQ@cox.net.