Greetings and welcome to Friday! And welcome to August – yowza, July sped by at record speed!
Thanks to all who could make it to our August Board of Directors meeting. As expected, we had a lively conversation and were able to make some key decisions and get our FY2022-23 budget passed. It was also great to feel the energy with our growing staff and the prospects of very exciting work in the year ahead.
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Sarah’s Update:
I started off this week by calling more businesses for the major employers in Lincoln county report. After I responded to some artists on etsy who were asking some questions about being vendors at the Art, Oysters & Brews events. Next, I called more businesses and continued leaving messages asking for their employee count. Later, I updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider with some new courses and wrote a promotion post for Art, Oysters & Brews event this weekend. Afterwards I read the materials for the board meeting and contacted more businesses.
On Wednesday, I continued to call more businesses. I worked on a formatting issue on the ART Toledo website for awhile and researched solutions but haven’t been able to figure it out yet. Paul and I met with Misty from Reinventing Rural about the upcoming CO.STARTERS course. Afterwards, I updated the EDALC website and registered for Reinventing Rural. I looked over their website and read through all their resources. I wrote some paragraphs describing the Reinventing Rural business resources and some additional business resources to add to the EDALC website. At the end of the day, I shared the promotional post for the Art, Oysters & Brews event.
At the end of my week, I went to the ART Toledo meeting in the morning and afterwards started building some bio profiles for the new Phantom Gallery artists. Afterwards, I worked on translating a business resource to Spanish for the EDALC website. Later, I worked on the new website additions for the EDALC website and went to the Board of Directors meeting!
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Leslie’s Update:
Happy August! It was wonderful to join my first Board Meeting with many of you yesterday. Thank you for the warm virtual welcome.
For those who know me, they’ve likely heard me say “short story long” more than once. I have a busy brain that is regularly making connections between aligned interests, dreaming up mutually-beneficial problem solving ideas, and aiming to understand more about folks’ life experiences and challenges. I’m driven to find and help build defunct-system-restructuring solutions on common ground. Finding succinct ways to communicate all that my brain is processing and constructing has yet to be my strong suit, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying. I genuinely appreciate everyone who keeps listening, asking clarifying questions, and sharing constructive feedback along the way.
My weekly updates will give me an opportunity to create snapshots of multi-faceted community topics. I also plan on sharing associated resources and calls-to-action for folks who want to dive into topics that intersect with their interests and work.
Lots more fascinating content in Leslie’s full report – read it here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iPkEHovc6tBH_w2_c5nIX9qOaQUaGibP6uxP32L-9Ko/edit?usp=sharing
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Mindy’s Update:
-Research on other websites and Facebook/social media presence of other EDOs in other areas for ideas and good resources.
– Added, liked, followed, and invited lots of new members to our page and got our face on posts in our community
– Wrote down ideas about new things we can incorporate in our media presence
– Shared new resources on our page and welcomed a new business to our area
– Found new community pages to join in Lincoln county
– Figured out how to manage a business profile on social media
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Paul’s Update:
Blue Economy – I learned this morning that we’ve had a change to our SBA grant officer (hmmm, I wonder what happened to the other one?)… so I made the connection and asked for an update. The last timeline I had from our previous grant officer was grant agreement to sign by the end of July (I haven’t seen it yet) and first disbursement in early August. So it puts us behind, but hopefully not too much.
I also met with Nicole Baker of Net Your Problem (https://www.netyourproblem.com/) today – she is a biologist who founded a company to recycle end-of-life plastic commercial fishing nets and lines. She started in Alaska, but now has multiple recycling locations in the US. She’s in Newport for a few days to explore opening up a location near or on the port for local recycling and to potentially find a local agent to manage operations.
Rural Opportunity Initiative – This week, I completed and submitted the required ROI reporting for FY2021-22. Business Oregon was slow on getting this program going, because the recipient organizations only got their checks in January, so it was really a partial year report. Report submission triggers the next funding drop, so we should see that soon. Also, over the next two weeks, Sarah and I will plan out our ROI activities for the remainder of the calendar year.
Potential Newport Hotel – As I mentioned previously, I’ve been working with Ferguson Hotel Development as they explore the possibility of building a new hotel in Newport. At first, I thought it was an early stage “kicking the tires” for this Kansas-based developer (they do Marriot, Hilton and Holiday Inn Express hotels – and their smaller sub-brands). But it looks to be more than that – they already have the property (a nearly perfect property) in the South Beach area. I met (virtually) with their CEO this week and we have a meeting scheduled at Newport’s city hall next week.
ART Toledo – This Saturday is the next Art, Oysters and Brews event in Toledo, and it looks to be a good one. There will be 20+ artists, multiple food vendors, a petting zoo and other coolness. I’ll be performing a blues set at noon, then working with the other bands for the rest of the day.
Regional Economic Developers – This Tuesday, we had our regional economic development practitioners (from Linn, Benton and Lincoln Counties) meeting in person (for the first time in person since I’ve been here) in Albany. It was awesome to see folks in person (some taller, some shorter than expected) and it really felt like we were a very cordial and supportive community of practice.
Economic Summit – Yesterday, I met with Robbi and Jeanette at the Newport Chamber to finalize the flow of our first collaborative economic summit that will be happening on October 20th at the Best Western. We’ll get the final confirmation of speakers locked in next week and then we’re off to the races – it should be an awesome event.
Movin’ On Up – At our BoD meeting yesterday, the Directors voted to move EDALC’s office to the Waldport OCCC campus – $0 rent, shared utilities and a true win-win for EDALC and OCCC. Birgitte and Dave Price will start working up an MOU next week. I’ll let our landlord know on this end, and on Thursday we’ll be trekking over there to measure the space and make some decisions on what we’ll move to our new home and whet we’ll donate. Very exciting!
Paperwork Party – Today was one of my occasional “paperwork party” days, when I dive in and deal with all of that minor-scale annoying paperwork, organizing and filing (and throwing stuff out). The physical inbox isn’t yet empty, but it’s close, and I’ve got a clean desk once again!
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Susan and I will be heading up to the north valley for a couple of days to explore some of the wineries up there (including some she has a connection with from her days owning Market Alley Wines). We’ll be staying in a 1969 Airstream at the Vintages RV park outside of McMinnville – SO looking forward to that. So both Susan and I will be out on Monday and Tuesday (and rockstar Sarah will be house and pooch sitting for us).
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 🙂