Greetings and welcome to Friday!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Sarah’s Update:
I started off this week on Monday by adding five new business resources to the EDALC website. Afterwards I checked all the links to make sure they were still functional and updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider with a new business course that is all in Spanish. Later, I updated the Art Toledo website and researched some office spaces for Mr. Orndorff who emailed me over the weekend asking for some recommendations. I found some options, which I also added to the average rental cost of commercial buildings in the county spreadsheet and called a rental agency to make sure it was still available. After, I sent the available location to Mr. Orndorff and continued to add to the Lincoln County commercial rental rates spreadsheet.
On Tuesday, I worked on the ART Toledo website and researched some more possible solutions to the formatting issue. I ended up having to create a new page for Chalk the Block because that was the page I was struggling with and was able to fix the formatting issue, but it restricted the available modules that I could add to the page. Therefore, I lost the ability to add a slideshow of all the Chalk the Block art entries, but I figured out I could add a video. I started working on a video off all the Chalk the Block art squares to add to the page. Afterwards, I emailed Mr. Lawson to check in about adding his commercial property onto Oregon Prospector. Next, I took some Toledo Art Walk weekend fliers to the Siletz Library and then reached out again to the major employers in Lincoln County I still haven’t heard from. Later, I tried to find more commercial land and buildings available in the county. At the end of my day, I responded to some questions from some of the businesses who emailed me back about the major employers in Lincoln County survey and then I added an additional resource to the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider on the EDALC website.
I took the rest of the week off to camp for a few days at Loon Lake and had a great time! I hope everyone has a great weekend!
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Leslie’s Update:
My deep dive this week is into my collaboration with Foundations for a Better Oregon (FBO). I was connected with them initially through my participation in The Ford Family Foundation’s Community Building Collective Cohort (TFFF CBC Cohort).
What began as group conversations with many of the folks in our CBC Cohort (including Bri Goodwin and me) led to one-on-one interviews, which led to this follow-up report: FBO “Can We Start With the Story of Who We Are?
As a part of the next steps described in that report, I had another energizing meeting with Janet Soto Rodriguez this week, and I will likely be joining the planning team to work on brainstorming for “Envisioning Pathways to Systems Change.” I am very excited about this opportunity to use what I’ve learned from my years with the Vision 2040 and the TFFF CBC to dream big with other folks from around the state.
This week’s Vision Advisory Committee discussions reminded me of another resource to share from my past work with the CBC Cohort. The challenges of Vision plan implementation are not unique to the Vision 2040 effort. There are communities all over Oregon that are mid-Vision implementation, and to be completely honest, some have lost steam entirely. To dig deeper into this topic, we created “CoGoAT,” a Community Organizations and Government Action Team. We surveyed cohort members from multiple rural locations in Oregon about the benefits & challenges of working on Community Building efforts (such as Vision Plans) through the lenses of their experiences working within either Government Organizations or Nonprofit Organizations.
For a deeper dive into Leslie’s full report (always worth the effort!):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zL–aPVAY67Z7Yds_VU_PlgQ7eL8SjH95Ron8KLp29Y/edit?usp=sharing
Also, documents referred to in the update are attached to this email.
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Mindy’s Update:
* Multiple EDALC FB posts
* Met with Paul to review startups to welcome to the LC business community and “did you know” business facts
* Reached out to LC Chambers to get a sense of the new local startups
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Paul’s Update:
Rural Opportunity Initiative (ROI) – I received word this week that our initial report was accepted and approved and the next drop of funding is to be processed.
Potential Newport Hotel – The hotel meeting went well this week. Of course, the developers were wanting as much support (financial) from the City of Newport, as well as the Enterprise Zone incentive (a little tricky and maybe not applicable since they are a hotel). I’ve been following up with folks and need to do a little EZ research in the coming days.
ART Toledo – Last Saturday was the second of four Art, Oysters & Brews events on Main Street. It was a great event and more fully fleshed out than the July event. Susan always jokes that an economic developer is “always working” when out in public, and that was certainly the case on Saturday. I spent several hours talking economic development with Mayor Cross and city attorney David Robinson. I also had some great quality time with David and Susie Gomberg.
Waldport Office – Our office measuring trek will be moved to early next week, and we should also see an MOU from OCCC then. I’m holding off giving Mishey Real Estate notice until we’re comfortable with the MOU (which I’m sure we will be, but it pays to move slowly on these things).
Budget – I spent some time this week implementing our approved FY2022-23 budget into QuickBooks Online, adding a few categories I missed in the last go-round. I’ll review again on Monday to make sure I haven’t missed anything.
Business Technical Assistance – We continue to work with various businesses to help them solve problems or connect to resources. This week, we’ve been working with several businesses looking for commercial space and two Toledo businesses looking to solve some specific problems.
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Our wine country trek last Sunday through Tuesday was awesome! We stayed at the Vintages trailer park in Dayton, in a retro ’69 Airstream. We did a deep dive into four vineyards: Mayasara, Domaine Serene, Lemelson (same family as the Lemelson Foundation) and Torii Mor. All had some amazing wines, but standouts were the biodynamic wines of Mayasara (Susan had a connection because of her wine shop so we had the tasting comped – wahoo!) and the amazingly complex pinot noir wines of Torii Mor – including one that was made from some of the oldest vines in the valley, planted when Oregon wine making was a tiny, nascent industry. We also had their outdoor Japanese-style tasting room garden to ourselves and got to hang out with one of the owners and their French wine maker. It was like escaping to another world!
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 🙂