Greetings and welcome to Friday! Holy cow, what a beautiful day and a beautiful week! Work-wise, this week was more of a deep dive into a few projects rather than casting a wide net, and we made some great progress!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week –
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Cindy’s week:
* Completed newsletter content
* Compiled all pertinent info for economic zone sponsors, consenters, and taxing districts
* Continued to assist Paul in sorting through past EZ paperwork and gathering info for future applications
* Assisted with planning for improved member contact and upcoming member event
* Continued to learn more about the EDALC and my role in creating positive change in Lincoln County 🙂
Quick note from Paul – Cindy has stepped up and is taking the reigns of getting our updated Facebook page even more active – check it out and be sure to like the page:
https://www.facebook.com/EconDevLincolnCounty
FYI: Cindy’s ACTUAL email is cindy@businesslincolncounty.com (a typo last week)
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Paul’s week:
BoD Matrix and New Member Application – Just a reminder that we’d like to get each Director to fill out our online member application to help us populate our BoD matrix. Thanks so much for those who have already submitted! Here’s the link again:
Meet and Greet – This week, Alison Roberson and I had a chance to connect with Rachel Cotton, who previously worked as a RARE AmeriCorps member for EDALC back several years ago. It was great to connect with Rachel and also for both Alison and I to explore ways we might interface and work with her in the future, potentially on housing incentive research.
ART Toledo – Toledo’s Main Street Phantom Galleries will officially “open” on Saturday from 3-5pm, with remarks from Mayor Rod Cross at 3pm (in the parking lot next to City Hall). It’s so rewarding to see this project come to life – Susan and I plan to be there at 3pm to join the “Huzzahs!” Here’s a great article in todays News Times:
https://www.newportnewstimes.com/arts_and_entertainment/saturday-brings-art-launch-to-toledo/article_09052db8-9e1c-11eb-8253-379513789e92.htm
Professional Development – This week was a week rich in learning, with Leadership Lincoln and the OEDA Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) Training. The BRE training was super-high-quality and provided me with some insights in what I envision being the core foundation of our work over the years to come. There was also a great side thread on tools EDOs utilize to transform business intelligence gathered in the field into data that can be memorialized – which dovetails well with some of the research Cindy has been doing. We think we’ve got a prospective software solution to test drive (HubSpot), which also has a specific EDO add-on (Kate Porsche, the “me” in Corvallis, connected me directly with the developer of the EconDev add-on tool). We’ll keep you posted as we venture down that rabbit-hole.
Enterprise Zone – We developed our “process overview” email early in the week and sent it out to the EZ sponsors and consenting governmental units. We also reached out to Business Oregon with quite a few questions that arose during the process. Cindy also pulled together a contact list of taxing districts for the informational meeting we are required to host in the coming weeks. I also met with Toledo City Manager Judy Richter to explain the process to her – we’ll need to do a little more hand-holding on the Toledo-front. Cindy and I have five Zoom meetings with the zone sponsors scheduled over the next two weeks, starting on Monday morning.
CWEDD Funding Opportunity – There is an EDO capacity-building grant that will be coming through our COGs (funded by new stimulus dollars) that opens up on June 1. I was pleased to be able to assist the COGs folks in determining eligible projects for the grant, and we plan to submit several applications to assist with our upcoming BRE work and also inventorying and marketing commercial properties (plus a few other ideas I might want to pursue).
Supporting Larger Efforts – This week, I attended regular meetings for the Oregon Ocean Innovation Hub and also our regional Broadband Action Team. On the O2IH front, the huge project is being streamlined into a minimal viable product to better appeal to potential funders such as the EDA. Also, O2IH is more than halfway through the fundraising for the Burning Glass Blue Economy sector analysis. On the BAT front, the “official word” has finally arrived for the EDA grant approval for a four county broadband project feasibility study that can hopefully get rolling this summer.
Newport Vision 2040 – I wanted to share with you all the wonderful video honoring (and often surprising) the winners of the Community Vision awards. Awesome work from some amazing folks and SO positive – here’s the link:
https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=314&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fnewportnewstimes%2Fvideos%2F1212419446160988%2F&show_text=false&width=560
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 🙂