Grants Pass has been working on a sustainability plan that will help the city be more resilient in the case of a natural disaster. The plan includes projects like installing electric vehicle charging stations downtown and adding solar panels at city-owned landfills. But the city is struggling to find funding for the projects and has limited resources to work on grants that could help. Claire Carlson is a reporter for The Daily Yonder, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on rural America. She has reported on the challenges facing Grants Pass and joins us with details.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Last year, the city of Grants Pass approved a sustainability plan aimed at helping the city become more resilient in the face of natural disasters. The plan includes things like electric vehicle charging stations and solar panels at city owned landfills. But now the city is struggling to find funding for these projects. Claire Carlson is a reporter for The Daily Yonder. That’s a nonprofit newsroom that reports on rural America. She joins me in the studio with more details. It’s great to have you here.
Claire Carlson: Good to be here.
Miller: You started your article with an explanation of something that I’ve always wondered about. Anybody who’s been to Grants Pass has seen the sign that hangs proudly over the main street. It says, “It’s The Climate.” How did that sign come to be?
Carlson: It’s a great sign, it was very exciting when I drove through town to report this story. I saw that sign and thought that that would be the perfect lede to this article. Because the sign, as you said, it says “It’s The Climate.” It actually had its 100th anniversary in 2020. It was first hung by the city’s founders to kind of extol the virtues of the weather there, because it’s a pretty mild climate all things considered. It snows sometimes, but it usually doesn’t accumulate in the city. And the temperatures in the summer are eighties, and it’s usually a dry heat. So it’s a very comfortable climate. They were trying to get people to move to Grants Pass.
Miller: Back when climate meant something very different than it does today, obviously now used to describe humans changing our climate. And at a time when now it’s a very partisan issue, I bring this up because it’s important to, for some background for Grants Pass in Josephine County. Former president Donald Trump won the county by something like 61% of the vote. And he has called green energy a scam. He has said he would “drill, baby, drill.” How did a sustainability plan pass last year in Grants Pass?
Carlson: That’s a great question. So the city had already been working in years prior to figure out how to improve their energy infrastructure. They’ve been working with a nonprofit called Energy Trust that works in the state of Oregon with rural communities specifically. So energy efficiency had already been on their minds. But 2020 came around and they realized that it would be kind of helpful to make an actual plan related to all of this.
The City Council, in 2021, one of their members, Vanessa Ogier started pushing for a sustainability plan to be formally produced. They don’t have staff members that they could dedicate to that plan. So they first applied to this AmeriCorps program that runs out of the University of Oregon. They applied to that program to get someone who could work full-time in the city for 11 months to write the plan. And they created a volunteer task force. Then throughout 2022 and into 2023, they wrote the sustainability plan. And in spring 2023, they presented it to city council, and they approved it.
Miller: What does the plan call for?
Carlson: It has five larger goals. The biggest goal is to build energy resilience within Grants Pass. It’s a pretty isolated area. Grants Pass is the county seat of Josephine County. So everyone living in that county relies on Grants Pass. They rely on it for health care. If their power goes out, they go to Grants Pass. The city really wants to kind of improve their energy ways so they can, in the event of fire - that’s the biggest risk in Josephine County - if there are power outages, they wanted to build something that was a little more self-reliant. That’s the biggest goal.
And they also want to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions over the next several decades, and just overall improve sustainability citywide. And that’s a huge part of the sustainability plan is that it’s focused on city owned utilities, city owned buildings. There’s nothing with private residences or businesses.
Miller: There is not a call for emissions reductions for residents of Josephine County or the city of Grants Pass?
Carlson: Exactly.
Miller: And the primary point here is local resilience in the face of natural disasters or fires, as opposed to what people there might see as a more politicized big picture of climate change?
Carlson: Exactly. And that’s why it’s called sustainability plan, not climate action plan, for example.
Miller: So this was approved in May of 2023, 10 months ago. What has Grants Pass done so far to actually implement it?
Carlson: So they’ve done a few feasibility studies into the projects that they proposed. Feasibility studies into where we should put electric vehicle charging stations, for example. Or which streetlights would be good to transfer to LED? Those are some of the specific projects that they propose in the plan. But right now, they’re kind of in the midst of figuring out how to actually pay for these projects. Because that’s the biggest looming question. This plan exists, but implementing it is a huge task on its own and requires a lot of money that can’t just come from the city budget.
Miller: How might two huge bills signed into law by President Biden, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 infrastructure law - how big a role could they play?
Carlson: They could play a huge role. Both of those laws, there’s billions of dollars of funding for communities just like Grants Pass to fund energy resilience projects. So Grants Pass stands to benefit a lot from those laws. But it’s a matter of creating a competitive application and being chosen for that.
Miller: What are the challenges that smaller communities in particular would face in terms of writing those grants?
Carlson: Smaller rural communities, there’s often just not as many resources that larger communities can put into that grant application. So larger cities will have hired grant writers. You just don’t find that in a rural community. There’s also not as much money to put into the process of figuring out which grant might actually apply to the projects that they want to do in Grants Pass. So it’s a staff problem and it’s a money problem.
Miller: But don’t these laws specifically set aside money for communities just like Grants Pass? I thought this was something that Congress thought about in advance.
Carlson: Yes, they definitely did think about it in advance. Because as you just said, some of the grants out there are specifically for rural communities. They say we want to give this money to rural. That kind of aligns with the Biden administration’s commitment to investing in rural America. He said that four years ago and they’ve really stuck with that, and you can see that in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
But one of the obstacles is that a lot of those grants that come from those laws have match requirements. So a rural community, or any community, to get that grant they must put forth their own money as well. And it’s usually a set amount. But smaller communities, they might not have the budget to set forth any money. So that can be a huge barrier to funding. And that’s a huge barrier that communities smaller than Grants Pass often face. So Grants Pass is in a good situation, because they’re a relatively large community when we compare it to some of Oregon’s smaller towns. But it’s still a problem.
Miller: And it’s worth reminding folks that you’d mentioned there wouldn’t even be this sustainability plan to begin with, likely, if it weren’t for an AmeriCorps volunteer, who was funded by this large national system, who came and spent 11 months of her time there.
The issues that Grants Pass is facing right now, what do they tell us about what other rural areas all across the country are dealing with?
Carlson: So I think that the first part of what you mentioned, that AmeriCorps member, that’s huge. You need to have people who are willing to commit their time to work on a plan like this. Because so much of the sustainability initiatives require a lot of planning. And Grants Pass, the Public Works Department, which is the department that’s been leading this effort, they said that without that AmeriCorps member, they would not have made that plan at all.
And the sustainability plan gives them a leg up when they’re applying to these grants because it gives the specifics of, “these are the projects we want to do, this is how much they cost.” A lot of grants require that to even apply. And many small communities, they don’t have that AmeriCorps member to dedicate to creating that plan. So I think it shows that there’s definitely a lot of need out there that’s not being addressed because of these resource and staffing issues. And Grants Pass, it kind of highlights that. But I think they’re in a good position now that they have this plan to potentially get these grants. But that’s going to be the biggest challenge.
Miller: Claire Carlson, thanks very much.
Carlson: Thank you.
Miller: Claire Carlson is a reporter for The Daily Yonder, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on rural America.
Contact “Think Out Loud®”
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.