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20 <br />Attachment 2 <br />Idiom- <br />ORANGE COUNTY <br />NORTH CAROLINA <br />Date: October 19th, 2021 <br />To: Board of Orange County Commissioners <br />From: Brennan Bouma, Sustainability Coordinator <br />Steven Arndt, Director Asset Management Services <br />RE: Orange County Community Climate Action Grant- Project Descriptions,Scoring, and Comments for <br />School Application <br />For the 2021-22 funding cycle of the Orange County Community Climate Action Grant program, $536,665 in <br />funding was budgeted to support climate action projects that will benefit Orange County residents both socially <br />and financially. For this grant cycle,the Board of Orange County Commissioners have reserved half of the total <br />funding for this grant program ($268,332.50)to be awarded to projects submitted by either of Orange County's <br />two public school districts.The remaining half($268,332.50)was to be made available to all other eligible <br />general" applicants in this round. <br />During the time this round of grant funding was open for applications over the summer, County staff reached <br />out to staff at both school districts to notify them of the grant funding opportunity and offer assistance. Orange <br />County schools staff passed along this notice to other school staff and the Director of Facilities and Construction. <br />No grant applications were received. When the grant period opened,the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools were <br />in the process of hiring their new Sustainability Director.The new Director was hired 2-3 weeks before the grant <br />application period closed. County staff worked with them to create a project idea that might be ready in time <br />and they were able to submit a proposal totaling$68,616. No funding allocated for the schools has yet been <br />recommended for approval. <br />Following the scoring and eligibility guidelines of the Board of Orange County Commissioners (BOCC),the <br />application that CHCCS submitted was reviewed and scored by the Commission for the Environment(CFE) and <br />the Human Relations Commission (HRC).The BOCC asked the Human Relations Commission to score all <br />applications on the Social Justice and Racial Equity criterion, as this pertains to their expertise and because the <br />racial representation of the CFE as a whole does not yet reflect the racial diversity of Orange County.The HRC <br />and the CFE discussed the scoring process, reviewed application materials, and shared thoughts on each <br />application over the course of two monthly meetings and on September 13th each of these Commissions voted <br />to pass their final scoring and comments on each application along to the BOCC. <br />In light of the Board's interest in supporting school climate action projects and the special challenges facing <br />schools as they operate during a pandemic,the current grant deadline for school projects will be extended <br />through the end of November. County staff have already begun reaching back out to the schools to offer direct <br />assistance in generating project proposals for this extended FY2021-22 round of funding as well as the FY2022- <br />23 round of funding set to open later this year. <br />P.O. Box 8181 * Hillsborough, North Carolina 27278 <br />Telephone: (919)245-2625 <br />DocuSign Envelope ID: FC54AC26-7897-4270-8EA1-D754CD59EA76