Orange County NC Website
Browse       Search
25 <br /> VOTE: Ayes, 6 (Commissioner Bedford, Commissioner Fowler, Commissioner Greene, <br /> Commissioner Hamilton, Commissioner McKee, Chair Price); Nays, 1 (Commissioner <br /> Dorosin) <br /> MOTION PASSES <br /> 6. Regular Agenda <br /> a. Community Climate Action Grant - Project Selection for FY20-21 <br /> The Board received the grant project funding recommendations of the Human Relations <br /> Commission and the Commission for the Environment for the FY20-21 Orange County <br /> Community Climate Action Grant Program, and considered approving funding for the <br /> recommended Community Climate Action Grant projects for FY20-21. <br /> BACKGROUND: <br /> As part of the FY20 budget, the Board of Orange County Commissioners (BOCC) created the <br /> Orange County Climate Action Fund dedicated to accelerating climate change mitigation <br /> actions in Orange County. This decision was motivated in part to help the County meet the <br /> climate change mitigation goals set by the Board in recent years: <br /> • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions community-wide by 26 percent by 2025 (from 2005 <br /> levels). <br /> • Transition to a 100% renewable energy based economy by 2050. <br /> The first round of Climate Action Fund projects was proposed by the Commission for the <br /> Environment last year and approved by the Board of Commissioners. These include funding for <br /> solar projects for each of the school districts, a LED lighting campaign for lower-income <br /> residents, and additional funding to weatherize and preserve affordable housing. <br /> For the 2020-21 funding cycle, $478,657 in funding was budgeted to support climate action <br /> projects that will benefit Orange County residents both socially and financially. Following the <br /> direction of the Board of Commissioners, the process for soliciting and selecting projects to <br /> receive funding was conducted through a formal grant program. <br /> The scoring and eligibility guidelines were created by the BOCC and developed the remaining <br /> application elements borrowing from the successful model of the Outside Agency funding <br /> process. The application period for this first round of grants opened on September 18, 2020 <br /> and closed on November 9, 2020. <br /> The Community Climate Action grant program received seven applications in this round from a <br /> variety of non-profit and public organizations whose total requests add up to more than $1.2 <br /> million. While staff fielded some questions from prospective applicants from the private sector, <br /> no private sector applications were received. <br /> Grant applications were reviewed and scored by the Commission for the Environment (CFE) <br /> and the Human Relations Commission (HRC). On December 14, 2020 each of these <br /> Commissions voted to forward their final scoring and comments to the BOCC. <br /> The following is a rank-order summary table of their combined project scoring and <br /> recommendations, and more details on each project are available in Attachment 1 (Project <br /> Descriptions, Scoring, and Comments): <br />