Agenda 10-19-2021; 6-a - Community Climate Action Grant (CCAG) – FY 2021-22 Project Selection for General Applicants

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5 Attachment 1 Idiom- ORANGE COUNTY NORTH CAROLINA Date: October 19th, 2021 To: Board of Orange County Commissioners From: Brennan Bouma, Sustainability Coordinator Steven Arndt, Director Asset Management Services RE: Orange County Community Climate Action Grant- Project Descriptions,Scoring, and Comments for General Applicants For the 2021-22 funding cycle of the Orange County Community Climate Action Grant program, $536,665 in funding was budgeted to support climate action projects that will benefit Orange County residents both socially and financially. For this grant cycle,the Board of Orange County Commissioners have reserved half of the total funding for this grant program ($268,332.50)to be awarded to projects submitted by either of Orange County's two public school districts.The remaining half($268,332.50)was to be made available to all other eligible "general" applicants in this round. During the time this round of grant funding was open for applications over the summer, County staff reached out to staff at both school districts to notify them of the grant funding opportunity and offer assistance. Orange County schools staff passed along this notice to other school staff and the Director of Facilities and Construction. No grant applications were received. When the grant period opened,the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools were in the process of hiring their new Sustainability Director.The new Director was hired 2-3 weeks before the grant application period closed. County staff worked with them to create a project idea that might be ready in time and they were able to submit a proposal. Only one project totaling$68,616 has been submitted from either School district, and no funding allocated for the schools has yet been recommended for approval.Attachment 2 provides additional information. In light of the Board's interest in supporting school climate action projects and the special challenges facing schools as they operate during a pandemic,the current grant deadline for school projects will be extended through the end of November. County staff have already begun reaching back out to the schools to offer direct assistance in generating project proposals for this extended FY2021-22 round of funding as well as the FY2022-23 round of funding set to open later this year. The Community Climate Action grant program received seven (7) applications in this round from a variety of general applicants representing non-profit and public organizations whose total requests add up to more than $880,000. While staff fielded some questions from prospective applicants from the private sector, no private sector applications were received. Following the scoring and eligibility guidelines of the Board of Orange County Commissioners (BOCC),the applications were reviewed and scored by the Commission for the Environment(CFE) and the Human Relations Commission (HRC). The BOCC asked the Human Relations Commission to score the applications on the Social P.O. Box 8181 * Hillsborough, North Carolina 27278 Telephone: (919)245-2625