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23 <br /> b. Community Climate Action Grant (CCAG) — FY 2023-24 Project Selection for General <br /> Applicants and Schools <br /> The Board: <br /> 1) received the grant project funding recommendations from the Commission for the <br /> Environment (CFE) and the Human Relations Commission (HRC) for the FY 2023-24 <br /> Orange County Community Climate Action Grant Program; and <br /> 2) considered approving funding for the recommended Community Climate Action Grant <br /> projects for FY 2023-24 as outlined in the attached report. <br /> BACKGROUND: As part of the FY 2019-20 budget, the Board of Orange County Commissioners <br /> (BOCC) created the Orange County Climate Action Fund dedicated to accelerating climate <br /> change mitigation actions in Orange County. This decision was motivated in part to help the <br /> County meet the 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 /> • Newly adopted Climate Action Plan (November 2023) <br /> For the 2023-24 funding cycle, $564,085 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 Orange County Commissioners (BOCC), the process for soliciting and <br /> selecting projects to receive funding was conducted through a formal Community Climate Action <br /> Grant (CCAG) program. <br /> For this grant cycle, the BOCC reserved half of the total funding for this grant program <br /> ($282,042.50)to be awarded to projects submitted by either of Orange County's two public school <br /> districts. The remaining half ($282,042.50) was to be made available to all other eligible general <br /> applicants in this round. <br /> The Community Climate Action grant program received eleven (11)applications in this round from <br /> a variety of general applicants representing non-profit and public organizations whose total <br /> requests added up to $614,540. Two (2) projects totaling $557,959 were submitted from the <br /> Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools and Orange County Schools districts. <br /> Grant applications were completed over the summer and reviewed and scored by the Commission <br /> for the Environment (CFE) and the Human Relations Commission (HRC). In fall 2023, each of <br /> these Commissions voted to forward their final scoring and comments to the BOCC. <br /> The following is a rank-order summary table of the combined project scoring and <br /> recommendations. More details on each project are available in Attachment 1: <br />