Greetings and welcome to Friday and welcome to April!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Sarah’s Update:
This week began with reading about Economic Development Week and starting to take some notes and brainstorming some thoughts on what we are going to do for that. After, I finished working on the Blue economy page and added a section on the Entrepreneur page about the Rural Opportunity Initiative. Once I was done updating the Entrepreneur page, I made a post about the new and improved Entrepreneur page on our Facebook page.
On Wednesday, I updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider on our website and added information about an upcoming SBDC course. Then I worked on a brochure for EDALC that will eventually be given out to local establishments, most likely for Economic Development Week. Afterwards, I made a Facebook post about the First Weekend Art Celebration in Toledo that is happening this weekend. Later, I began reviewing and summarizing key opportunities and challenges based on the OCCC external environmental scan and then finding data to back up those summaries to be used during the creation of OCCC’s strategic plan.
At the end of the day, I got to go to the Women in Business: Unplugged event which was amazing! As a young woman starting my professional career I found it incredibly valuable and inspiring. At the end of my week, I participated in the Art Toledo meeting and continued to work on summarizing and finding data for the OCCC strategic plan.
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Paul’s Update:
ROI – This week, the ROI communities convened online to learn about our reporting process and how we’ll be keeping track of success metrics for the ROI program. I was also invited to sit in on an SBDC staff meeting to share with them details of the ROI program and ways we could collaborate together – we came up with some awesome ideas. I also gave the SBDC team and update on our O2IH congressionally-directed funding and the project work it will support.
COGS CARES Act funding – I spent some time this week reviewing several loan applications for the COGs special CARES act loan pool. They are working hard to push those dollars out and get them working in our region by the end of July.
Enterprise Zone – Earlier in the week, I met with CJ at the assessor’s office for our annual EZ “let’s stay connected” meeting. I worked with both Rogue and Dahl to assist them in getting their EZ exemption claims in before the April 1 deadline. We got all documents submitted with two hours to spare! I also started the Enterprise Zone process rolling for Cambrian Innovation, who will be building a specialized water treatment solution for Rogue.
OCCC – Yesterday, Sarah, myself, Dan Lara and Dave Price got to do an initial dive into the EMSI data software that OCCC has access to – what an amazing tool, and we only scratched the surface. Dan will be setting up a more in-depth tour of the tool with some folks with EMSI so we can see how we can all us it more effectively. Birgitte and I met today to talk OCCC strategic planning and came up with some specific sub-projects we’ll tackle together in the coming weeks and months.
Lincoln City – I’ll be presenting to the Lincoln City Council on April 11th and needed to get materials in by today for the council packet. Using my “baseline” EDALC presentation, I crafted a unique version for Lincoln City that will outline ways we can directly benefit their community and add capacity to efforts already under way.
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Meeting Reminder:
Our April EDALC BoD meeting is next Thursday.
Time: Apr 7, 2022 03:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9178104987?pwd=bVJDN0VlUEM3aG9EaFhJQUZjcDJHUT09
Meeting ID: 917 810 498
Susan and I accompanied Sarah to the Women in Business event (held by the Newport Chamber) on Wednesday – what an impressive and insightful event! Special high fives go out to our EDALC Directors Carrie and Lesley!
Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂