Greetings and welcome to the first Friday in April!
Thanks to all who could attend yesterday afternoon’s Board of Director’s meeting. We had a great, thought-provoking presentation from Erik Knoder (though I still find it a little confusing as to why public education employees are clumped under government and not their own category – seems to needlessly muddy the picture!) It was also a pleasure to welcome Commissioner Jacobson to the fold as the county’s ex officio board member to EDALC.
Here’s our weekly staff update:
Blue Economy::
This week, I met with Kim Thompson from the University of Oregon. She’s leading a project for Business Oregon getting data on the needs of Oregon’s coastal ports, and they are targeting both port leaders and local economic developers. I think Paula had a similar conversation/interview as well. I also met with Robert Killen of RAIN to review some of the results of their EDA grant with OSU as well as some work they are doing with Lemelson Foundation funding. We also talked about some potential project work we could help with, utilizing some remaining EDA funding. – Paul
Communication/Marketing::
I continued to work on the Spring newsletter throughout the week and posted on the EDALC Facebook page about the Beach, Bike & Blues festival happening in Waldport on May 6th. – Sarah
Community Connecting::
Some excerpts from Leslie’s weekly update:
Oregon Coast STEM Hub has 13 bilingual and trilingual high school students starting their 8-week Healthcare Job Shadow Program. The group will visit both Midcoast Samaritan Hospitals, OSU Extension’s Nutrition program, The Walden Project, and other healthcare entities to learn about the wide range of local job opportunities in healthcare. Students completing the program will receive stipends for their participation.
It was another stellar turnout at last evening’s presentations at the Maritime Heritage Center. For those unable to attend, the presentation will be uploaded alongside their previous presentation recordings on their website (http://www.midcoastwatersheds.org/community-presentations). Cheers to the employees, board members, and volunteers at Midcoast Watersheds Council for their many years of inspiring collaborative efforts! I’m grateful for their focus on storytelling and collaborative community participation.
Here’s the link to Leslie’s always-thought-provoking full update:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sxoL92afEcQ_C9x2oYSrfNI9nV0bWSFA3_zEnFVE51k/edit?usp=sharing
Creative Economies::
For ART Toledo this week, I updated the ART Toledo events page, Paul and I attended their meeting on Thursday, and on Friday I added a contact form to sign up for the newsletter on the contact and volunteer page on the ART Toledo website. – Sarah
Enterprise Zone::
As I mentioned in the final moments of yesterday’s BoD meeting, I put together some over-arching EZ stats to share with the legislature this week. Since 2020, expansion projects incentivized by the Lincoln County EZ accounted for $5,073,236 in private investment (across five projects). These investments lead to the creation of 27 new full-time jobs (and, unquestionably, accounted for the retention of local jobs as well, but EZ reporting doesn’t focus on retention, only new jobs). – Paul
Entrepreneurship and Innovation::
Next week is the graduation celebration for the third cohort of business startups going through the CO.STARTERS CORE program (a ten-week intensive training program for early stage startups, facilitated by Misty Lambrecht). We’ve funded and subsidized the tuition for all of the attendees thorough our Rural Opportunity Initiative grant dollars, and it’s lead to a significant number of brick and mortar startups. – Paul
Events::
This week I sent out some additional invites to the Fail Fest and finished the ad for the event I will be sending out to the chamber directors next week. I reached out to Jason Holland again about the event space details and created a video for the event on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Friday, Paul, Leslie and I met with Kate Schwarlzer, the founder of Indy Commons, who has experience putting on Fail Fests to get her advice on running the event. – Sarah
Organizational Development::
Paul, Leslie and I had our team meeting Tuesday morning, and I attended the board meeting Thursday afternoon. – Sarah
Project Work::
On Monday, I looked into how to tag Oregon Prospector entries for residential development opportunities and added the first residential property. On Tuesday, I scanned and sent some EDALC documents about the community and economic development grants awarded in 2005-2007 to a community member who requested it. I updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider on the EDALC website on Thursday and Friday. I also updated the average rent for commercial buildings in Lincoln County report on Friday. I continued to work on the business licensing cheat sheet for each of the cities in the county, and updated Oregon Prospector listings on Friday. I also began working on the minutes from April’s board meeting. – Sarah
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
Childcare – On Wednesday morning, interim Newport Chamber Director Judy Kuhl and I met with Bryan Steinhauser, the
Business Liaison for the Early Learning Hub of Linn, Benton & Lincoln Counties. We learned about their engagement work as well as how they’ll be coordinating with Lincoln County and OCCC to accelerate the creation of more at-home childcare businesses. We’ll be meeting with their marketing contractor in a few weeks to explore ways we can help them spread the word on local efforts. – Paul
Northwest Coastal Housing – EDALC will be working with NWCH to help facilitate and guide the development of their new strategic plan. I had a couple of preliminary meetings this week and they sent me some materials to read over. On Monday morning, I’ll be meeting with Sheila Stiley (NWCH’s Executive Director) to dive a little deeper into the organization to give me the background needed to formate an attack plan for the project. – Paul
Newport Chamber – Next week, I’ll be part of the small interview team to do the first rounds of interviews for a new Newport Chamber of Commerce Executive Director. – Paul
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
As if Susan and I need a reason for a toast – today is our tenth wedding anniversary (we’ve been together quite a bit longer than that – it just took me a while to warm to the institution of marriage again!)! We picked our wedding date based on the availability of our favorite band (https://www.bluemothertupelo.com/), and we had a pirate and bacon-themed ceremony, topped off with one helluva live concert. I can’t believe ten years have flown by so fast!
Have a happy and wonderful Easter weekend! 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 🙂