Greetings and welcome to a super-lucky Friday! Best not walk under any ladders today just to be sure… Way back when (1998, I think), I was trying to schedule a back surgery for a herniated disc – and the only date I could get in without a huge wait was on a Friday the thirteenth. I guess folks didn’t want to go under the knife on that day – I remember I had almost the whole Texas Back Institute to myself!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Rural Opportunity Initiative – Earlier this week, the official RFP for Business Oregon’s Rural Opportunity Initiative went live. I spent a good amount of time this week researching the other successful ROI programs and started developing a project list (the goal is 3-5 two-year projects) as well as our own EDALC “metrics” for how we should approach this program. I also met with city counselor and entrepreneur Riley Hoagland in Lincoln City this week to discuss the program and what’s really needed for Lincoln City entrepreneurs, as well as Jalene Case to discuss entrepreneurial network building.
Paycheck Protection Program – I finished up our reporting and submitted the PPP loan forgiveness application this week. I also submitted our mandatory employment reports to the State of Oregon and the workers comp. payroll report to our insurer (they are essentially the same report – wonder why they don’t feed into each other?).
Mid-Coast Water Planning Partnership – The draft water plan is in the review process (you can see the draft here: https://www.midcoastwaterpartners.com/draftwateractionplan). Upcoming will be a second round of community surveying done in partnership with Oregon Kitchen Table, and this round will focus more on business water users. I’ll be working with their planning coordinator to determine the best businesses to invite to participate.
EDA Travel, Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Grant – I attended an informational meeting on this ARPA-funded grant program hosted by the EDA and had several other calls and meetings to see if the grant program might be a good fit for an EDALC application (with other local stakeholders). We’ll be having a second local stakeholder meeting next Friday as well. This grant program looks awesome on the surface, but it’s quite limiting – most of what can be done in this program is infrastructure development relating to tourism and travel. The EDA wants multiple organizations to collaborate on the grant, and one they they are pushing is trail development, BUT they require that the applicant physically owns all of the land that work is done on – so multi-organizational trail work just won’t work. Hopefully, we’ll get some clarity soon, and I’ll keep you posted on this.
Mini Speaking Tour – I gave my second “22nd Century Economic Development” presentation to the Lincoln City Rotary Club this week too a warm reception (Bryan was in attendance – he can let us know if I was informative or sounded like a crazy man!). I’ll be presenting on Tuesday morning on EDALC to the BizNet Lincoln County networking group – working on getting the word out there!
Technical Assistance – I continued to work with a number of local businesses in various capacities this week, including a new business exploring the market here. I’m working to schedule a meeting with Representative Gomberg and Paul Lawson (who owns the 30 are industrial parcel on the north edge of Newport) to explore options for that property and if the ODOT development there is truly dead.
Update to the County Board of Commissioners – Bob and I delivered a solid update to the commissioners on Monday afternoon, and overall, it was very positive and we had an active dialog. I did get the opportunity to stress how important an economic development strategic plan of work is county-wide and that we need the commissioners help to get it done. We also talked about the upcoming grant cycle and specifically, splitting the pot into one large $60K grant and then the remaining $70K working as before. I was tasked with drafting some guidelines, and I sent off my initial thoughts to Kristi Peter and Commissioner Jacobson this morning. We had some great support from Alison Robertson (Lincoln City) and Rod Cross (Toledo) in the public comments after the meeting and Rob once again reiterated their commitment to financially help support EDALC!
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
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https://www.facebook.com/EconDevLincolnCounty
This weekend, I was scheduled to do a little solo tent camping in one of the Siuslaw campgrounds, but with the fire ban, it’s hard to imagine it’ll be any fun without a campfire to cook over and hang out around, so while I was going to be off on Monday camping, I think I’ll just make it a creative personal day and do some painting and guitar playing. One day soon, back to the woods!
Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂