The Park City Council approved staff’s recommendations for their Special Service Contracts in June. Among them is the SCPW that was originally a local organization but has since been absorbed by a Utah nonprofit. Melissa Allison looks into why council awarded $25,000 dollars to an organization that is outside of the city and county limits:
Park City’s Special Service Contracts are awarded to organizations that provide services to the community that the municipality doesn’t. The contracts vary in amount and types of service that range from serving the youth and arts programs to affordable housing and sustainability.
The Summit County Power Works was a collaborative effort between Summit County and Park City to enter into the Georgetown University Energy Prize.
It was a two year competition which focused on residential energy efficiency as well as in government and municipal buildings.
The goal: to drive down energy use of the community while raising awareness of energy use and efficiency.
Environmental Sustainability Manager Luke Cartin said the university made some changes mid competition that no one saw coming.
"They changed their executive director, they changed the judging criteria, they changed a bunch of stuff," Cartin said. "They even changed the prize from a $5 million cash prize to $5 million financing piece. So all of a sudden the rules changed drastically and SCPW was kind of like, alright, it was originally created to go after that piece. The wheels fell off of it and it kind of blew up so the question was, ‘Alright, what is the next step for SCPW?’”
Last fall, Cartin said the SCPW stakeholders including the Park City Community Foundation which acted as the umbrella for SCPW, the government agencies and local elected officials met to ask what the future of SCPW was, if there was one.
“After that discussion and the turning over the board and retooling the board, the decision was made to say, ‘Hey, you know what? SCPW can become a lot more effective on some of these energy spaces by partnering with a - kind of an energy nonprofit powerhouse,’” Cartin said.
Utah Clean Energy was that powerhouse that absorbed SCPW and Cartin said it was perfect timing to evolve SCPW out of the nonprofit incubation piece and transition it into the larger picture and asking some initial questions.
“’What programs across the country are effective? What’s going on in the Utah scale with the utilities?’ And the great thing about that is now all of a sudden that can focus SCPW on saying, ‘Alrigth we know that these five or 10 programs can be very effective in our communities,’" Cartin said. "And then on top of that we can also say, ‘Hey, we’re going to test pilot three of four projects. And if those are effective, then all of a sudden the Utah Clean Energy can take those projects and apply them statewide as well.”
Cartin said he understands why people might be concerned that Utah Clean Energy isn’t a Park City, let alone a Summit County based organization that is focused on local issues and programs.
“But there’s actually really good reason what we’re doing here," Cartin said. "Through our Special Services Contract there’s actually a lot of, even national scale nonprofits that we give funds to that do impactful projects up here; Habitat For Humanity, Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Even Pandolabs is based outside of city limits but we still fund them because they’re having a great impact in Park City. Same thing with what’s going on with Utah Clean Energy. I partner with them on a regular basis. We’re doing huge work with Utah Clean Energy and Rocky Mountain Power at the National Energy Lab. We do a lot of partnership pieces so Utah Clean Energy understands some of the landscape and intricacies and they’ve worked in this community before so that alignment really made sense.”
All of the projects will be tied to Park City and Cartin said it’s a win/win for everyone. In fact, they’ll be rolling out some programs by late August.
The SCPW asked for $45,000 but council approved $25,000 with Council Member Tim Henney reminding applicants that, just because you received the contract one year – there’s no guarantee you’ll get it again the next round.
Council approved more than $570,000 in special service contracts which staff is almost finished processing.
As for the Georgetown University energy prize, Fargo, North Dakota took the prize.
I’m Melissa Allison, KPCW News.