Greetings and welcome to Friday – and welcome to December!! What?!?!
First and foremost – Bob and I connected this week and discussed upcoming EDALC board meetings. We decided that we will take a holiday break and have NO board meetings for December or January. Our February meeting (via Zoom on February 1st) will be our grant review meeting, and our March meeting (March 7th) will be in-person in Lincoln City.
We’ll be sending out ComEcDev grant applications and scoring sheets before Christmas. Sarah and i will also be reaching out for some ideas on our upcoming (March 14th) economic summit. Enjoy the freedom!!
Here’s our staff update for the week:
Broadband::
This morning, we helped to facilitate a kick-off meeting for a Lincoln County Broadband Task Force. We held the meeting at OCCC/Newport, with a number of folks Zooming in as well. This was the first step in putting together a local stakeholder advisory group that was one of the key discussion items at our last EDALC BoD meeting. Rachael Maddock-Hughes (Rural Prosperity Partners), Joe Franell (RPP) and Brittany Beyer (Solarity) all presented. It was a veery high signal-to-noise informational meeting that should lead to some positive next steps and deeper engagement. – Paul
Blue Economy::
On Wednesday, Mark Farley and I met with Rachael Maddock-Hughes and Nan Devlin (Tillamook). We learned about some innovative blue food web work being done at the Port of Tillamook Bay and also some opportunities at the Port of Garibaldi. There may be some opportunity for us to provide funds for some feasibility work to assist with their efforts. Sarah and I worked though putting together a general-purpose sub-grant agreement that will allow us to more easily (and with the required documentation) support coastal Blue efforts with our funding in 2024. I also met with three representatives from the Oregon Department of Energy to discuss our Blue economy work and the green methanol feasibility work we are funding. – Paul
Communication/Marketing::
I began to put together EDALC’s holiday MailChimp newsletter this week and posted on our Facebook page about the grant workshop. – Sarah
Creative Economies::
I attended the ART Toledo meeting Thursday morning. – Sarah
Community and Economic Development Grant Program::
This week for the grant program I sent out another MailChimp newsletter for the grant workshop, made a google form for the workshop recording, and updated the EDALC grant resources webpage. – Sarah
On Tuesday, Sarah and I hosted an online grant workshop. We had about ten attendees, plus several more who couldn’t make the time work but will be able to access it online. I think it was the best workshop we ran to date – we know the audience a bit better now, and we also pulled together a nice presentation to help frame the information. – Paul
Planning, Infrastructure, and Economic Revitalization Program (PIER)::
Sarah and I attended a PIER local selection committee meeting on Monday. Not many local folks were in attendance (it seems like the state folks had some wrong emails in the invite), so no decisions were made, though we discussed pushing back the grant application deadline to allow for more projects to get in the pipeline. Our state partners are still working to get the online application portal up and running. Lincoln County will be receiving about $2.7M in funding for infrastructure, planning, and economic revitalization recovery needs from the 2020 Labor Day fires. – Paul
Project Work::
This week I continued to work on the November board meeting minutes and reached out to some more resources for information to help the local bakery owner get into a new building. In addition, I updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider, reviewed an O2IH contract draft, and updated Oregon Prospector listings. – Sarah
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
Lincoln County Fair – Yesterday, I attended a facilitated brainstorming session at the county courthouse (at Administrator Johnson’s invitation) to help some Fair board members brainstorm options and opportunities for the 2025 fair if the fairgrounds are closed to to construction of new rodeo and event facilities. – Paul
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
From Sarah: I also took Wednesday off this week to go elk hunting, unfortunately I did not get an elk, although I did successfully “hunt” a big cauliflower mushroom – so it wasn’t a total loss!
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 🙂