The good news is, Sweetwater County may soon be coming into enough energy efficiency block grant money to conduct an energy audit of every county building.
The bad news was, those dollars lurked behind a grant proposal that was due yesterday, roughly one week after Sweetwater County’s grants manager first learned the funds were available.
But Krisena Marchal doesn’t mind. In fact, she thrives on the pressure.
“I love what I do,” said Marchal, who comes to Green River by way of San Diego, Washington, D. C., and Paris.
“It’s stimulating. It’s always evolving. And I get to work with a great group of people.”
That work took Marchal to Cheyenne to present a proposal for $750,000 in stimulus funds to the Wyoming Business Council — funds which were granted the same day, and which will be used to update the heating and air-conditioning systems at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County.
The next day she was back at her desk drafting a memorandum of understanding to accompany her request for Sweetwater County’s fair share of $5 million in Wyoming Energy Council funds. “Not every grant is a good opportunity,” Marchal said. “Upcoming burdens the county can’t satisfy, 50 new employees — is it really worth it?” But an energy audit enables us to do some strategic planning, and to start setting priorities. It also sets the stage for future grants.”
That emphasis on long range planning is at the heart of Marchal’s work. Hired by the county 10 years ago to manage a single $150,000 block grant, today she presides over $26 million in active grant money, in the form of 130 separate grants — the result of consolidating the county’s grant-writing efforts, tightening oversight and internal controls and putting outcomes first.
Marchal credits “an extremely proactive group of commissioners” for centralizing the grant-writing function, and putting the emphasis where it belongs: on strategic planning.
“When I started, we couldn’t even produce a list of open grants,” Marchal said. “Different departments were getting funds, but we had no centralization or internal controls.”
That day is long gone, and not just because Marchal gradually became the go-to gal for writing grant applications.
“The world of grants has really evolved,” she said. “It’s much more competitive. And it’s much more about measurable results and outputs.”
Changes in the economy require flexibility and creative thinking, Marchal said. Three years ago, an abundance of jobs and a shortage of qualified workers led Marchal to tackle barriers to employment, by obtaining funding for GED classes, trainee transportation and childcare.
Given the current recession, she’s now concentrating on food distribution, housing, emergency medical care and conservation.
For that group, Marchal puts her creative impulses to work seeking out programs that meet community needs for as few dollars as possible. For example, the county’s in-home services program provides basic housekeeping and social services to seniors at a fraction of the cost of institutional care In that context, Marchal has special words for the people who put the dollars to work.
“For me the real heroes are the people who are willing to do the day to day programs,” she said.
Yet compliance requirements are key to maintaining a healthy funding stream. Keeping grant dollars and county operating costs segregated was a vital first step in that direction, Marchal said, a process that has long since been completed.
“At any given moment I can tell you exactly how many open grants we have, which are federal and which are not — it’s night and day.”
But funding agencies also want to know their dollars are being used wisely, she said. Thus a single grant project, carefully monitored, can produce data that ensures success in the next round, or even result in permanent funding. Also important is the clearinghouse function.
“It’s imperative that we know who in the county’s applying for what, so we don’t compete with each other,” Marchal explained.
Tough times highlight the need for ongoing dialogue between the county, the city, and the outlying communities.
“We can only gain by respecting each other’s needs, and coming together,” Marchal said. “We need to be unified locally.”
That strategy may be particularly important at the state level. Simply submitting a list of projects and a price tag to the legislature doesn’t work, Marchal said.
In 2008, the county submitted requests totaling somewhere in the neighborhood of $160 million, and got back $11.6 million. Marchal wants to see a committee of county representatives make a strong factual pitch to the legislature “quantifying what (the county) gives the state in revenues, and what we get back.”
Meanwhile, Marchal’s happy to be the person who brings tax dollars back to Sweetwater County, though she’s also quick to share the credit for the 300 percent increase in grant-based funding.
“We’re the biggest grants recipient in the state because the county clerk, the treasurer, the county attorney’s office and I are partners on every grant agreement,” Marchal said. “To get grants takes a whole array of support, cooperation and coordination.”