Section 001-8-2 - GRANT SOLICITATION PROCEDURE1. All grant programs within the Department shall follow a grant solicitation process. Criteria and individual scoring metrics shall be determined by the Department as specified in the grant solicitation. To the extent that existing grant program rules have different requirements than this chapter, the rules for that grant program shall control.2. At a minimum, the grant solicitation documentation must contain a clear scope of the grant, defined terms, eligibility criteria (including budget), evaluation criteria, and relative scoring weights to be applied, the application deadline, and the agency contact person. Where specific criteria for any particular grant program is required by new statute or other rule, those criteria shall control. A. When applicable, in instances of emergency funding for relief activities or other time- sensitive programming (including but not limited to weather-related events, crop disease, etc.), the Department may determine that only eligibility and evaluation criteria are necessary to dispense with the funding and that scoring weights are not relevant for such grant solicitations. The Department shall clearly document that only the eligibility and evaluation criteria shall be utilized in such instances.3. Grant solicitations must be publicly posted and available online. The Department shall publicly notice, either through newspaper publication or other method reasonably calculated to provide notice to persons who are likely to want to file grant applications, the issuance of the grant solicitation at least fourteen (14) calendar days prior to the application submittal opening date.4. Applicant conferences are allowed but not required. These conferences are used to ensure that all applicants have an equal understanding of the grant program's scope, eligibility, and evaluation criteria.A. If held, applicant conferences must be referenced in the grant solicitation, including date, time, and location (including virtual). The conference(s) must be scheduled a minimum of two weeks prior to the deadline for submitting a grant application.B. If held, applicant conferences must be open to the public, questions raised must be documented in writing, and responses must be written and publicly posted at least seven (7) calendar days prior to the grant submission deadline. The grant solicitation shall include the website to access the written responses.5. When applicable, the Department may utilize a third-party grant administrator to help manage the grant solicitation and management process. In all instances, award decision-making rests with the Department, as outlined in Section 3.