Greetings and welcome to Friday! Another busy week and looking forward to sliding into about five weeks of very intensive work on a pair of projects that could provide amazing impact for our region – exciting (and slightly terrifying) times!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Rural Opportunity Initiative – This week and next, I’ll be locking down our partners for this program (this week, I met with Mayor Wahlke in Lincoln City, Spencer and Derrick with the City of Newport and had conversations with Commissioner Jacobson, Dave Price and Alison Robertson) and our initial projects out of the gates. Have another set of meetings next week and then I can pull together a rough outline of an application and get it to Melissa at Business Oregon for her feedback. I feel very optimistic about the coalition we’re building, the projects we’re exploring and our chances for pushing this through successfully.
EDA Travel, Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Grant – It looks like this grant opportunity, while rich in potential, just isn’t a good fit for EDALC to pursue (too many limitations and too much of trying to jam a round peg into a square hole). Our local stakeholders will meet again next Friday to see if there might be another potential lead applicant and project (it has to be for a single project – not a cluster), and we would certainly support their work.
O2IH – Much of this week was spent on various aspects of O2IH, with a lot of effort spent on honing in the scope of an EDA Build Back Better grant application. I think I even broke a personal record with seven different Zoom meetings in one day on that topic. I also trekked to Corvallis for a meeting with Courtney Flathers (and another staffer) from Senator Merkely’s office to discuss the OSIH “earmark” (though we don’t call them that any more, do we?), the EDA application and other aspects O2IH. I also had a number of productive conversation with Bob and Mark Farley from Hatfield on both the grant and what our administrative and economic development role could look like down the road.
CWEDD Grant – Online Strategic Plans – Work has officially commenced on the development of the WordPress plugin that is the core of this grant project. I had several design calls and emails with Michael at 1DesignDevelopment as he is starting to lay out the MySQL database schema. So eager to see this coming to fruition.
ART Toledo – Next Saturday is the final Art, Oysters and Brew event in Toledo from noon until five pm. This time (due to COVID), Main Street will be blocked off to provide more room for social distancing. I’ll be doing another set of old-school blues guitar at 2pm, if you want to help me live my rock-star dreams!
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Also, please don’t forget to Like our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/EconDevLincolnCounty
Upcoming Meeting Reminder:
(Zoom only this time)
September EDALC Board of Directors Meeting
Time: Sep 2, 2021 03:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9178104987?pwd=bVJDN0VlUEM3aG9EaFhJQUZjcDJHUT09
Meeting ID: 917 810 4987
Passcode: 0NyksK
Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂