Greetings and welcome to Friday! Looks like a wet weekend – sounds like a great time to make a batch of chili!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Oregon Business Plan – On Monday, I attended (virtually) the Oregon Business Plan Leadership Summit. It was a pretty strong event (with some of the usual and expected talking a lot without actionable steps) that included Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and Governor Brown. I did get to learn a bit more about mass timber opportunities and also the potential dangers of our current levels of inflation.
Planning Retreat – I spent most of Wednesday this week doing planning for 2022, and made some solid progress. One of my main focuses was to really get a sense of minimum and maximum bandwidth we have to spend on various aspects of our work, so that we don’t over-commit. I did realize that it’s essential that we get a half-time staff person in here early in the year if we want to be truly effective. I have a little refinement to do on my “mega-mind-map” and hope to share it out with the Board next week.
Rural Opportunity Initiative – We are still waiting on the contracts from Business Oregon to officially kick off this program – they were radio silent this week, but will give them a nudge early next week.
Water Planning Partnership – We held our meeting with the water partnership and Oregon Kitchen Table on Tuesday – this was focused on the business and industry sector. We had a lively conversation and got some great information from Pacific Seafood on their water usage and also potential waste water recycling opportunities. We also heard from Laura Anderson of Local Ocean, not only on challenges in restaurant water usage, but also her challenges building an efficient potable/salinated and gray water system for her new seafood incubator.
If you haven’t taken the Oregon Kitchen Table water survey yet, here’s the link:
https://bit.ly/midcoast_water_plan
Community and Economic Development Grant – I shot off the aggregate scores (thanks Curt!) and the SME scores to Asia at the county, and I’ll be on the Wednesday morning Board of Commissioners meeting to go over the scores and the Board’s thoughts on this round of the grant program. Thanks to all for your hard work pulling this together!
Chamber Directories – As part of our advertising in the local Chamber directories, we get a little presence in their upcoming online video pieces as part of their marketing push – so today, we had a videographer swing by the office for some shots of yours truly, hard at work (and talking on a fake phone call) – you’ll be pleased to know that I donned a sport coat for the occasion!
O2IH/Blue Economy – Next week, I’ll be working on a two-pager summarizing the core concepts of O2IH and the Build Back Better projects – the first audience for this will be the Siletz Tribe, to get them up to speed on this work. I also had a good conversation with one of the candidates for the Blue Economy catalyst position.
Some Miscellaneous Stuff – I did some market research and had a meeting with two business partners who are looking to start up a service business in Lincoln County. I also had a good conversation with a person the county has engaged to improve the impact of the county’s social services grant program – we talked about our experiences with the Community and Economic Development Grant program. I also had a nice phone conversation with a leading candidate for the county administrator position. Finally, I pulled together a first pass website for Newport’s Community Vision awards (amazingly, the URL “comunityvisionawards.com” was available) – I’ll polish it up a bit when I get some more info from Leslie Palotas.
Super-Duper High Five – Most of you probably already know this, but if not – On Dec. 3, Birgitte was presented with the Howard Cherry Award for Outstanding Administrator by the Oregon Community College Association. The Howard Cherry Awards honor and celebrate the contributions that local community college advocates, administrators and board members have made to the benefit of community colleges. Huzzah and congrats to Birgitte for her amazing work and this well-deserved honor!
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Have a wonderful weekend! Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂