Greetings and welcome to Friday! A chilly but gorgeous day out there (what a beautiful drive into the office this morning!). And welcome to December – yowza, where did 2021 go (and perhaps, good riddance)?
Thanks to all for a great grant-review Board of Directors meeting yesterday – so nice to see such quality applications this year!
Susan was on “press duty” last night when we went to the new Samaritan Clinic open house – what a gorgeous space and so convenient. That’s what boots-on-the-ground economic development looks like! Though I still find myself wondering what the instant water shut-off switch is for in the Occupational Medicine (drug testing?) bathroom – Lesley?
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Business Oregon North and Central Coast Forum – Business Oregon is developing a statewide recovery plan. Information and input provided in regional forums across the state will be taken together with other stakeholder feedback to draft strategies and actions the state can take to facilitate economic recovery. Our forum was held on Wednesday afternoon and there were about 36 folks in attendance (including our own Bob and Karen – and we shared a breakout room together). There was lively discussion and it was clear that there are very similar problems and challenges across the state, but the solutions are certainly not one-size-fits all. They anticipate a draft Recovery Plan to be available for review and comment by early January.
They presented some preliminary findings on recovery priorities, and I’ve attached the infographic to this update.
There is also a survey for stakeholders – honestly, I think our whole Board should chime in. Here’s the link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JVW5NPD
CWEDD Strategic Plan Website Grant – We are getting near the tail end of the technical portion of our CWEDD grant to create a single website for multiple organizations to share their strategic plans and projects online. Leslie Palotas and I have been testing the custom WordPress plugin for several weeks and I met with developer Mike Gribkoff OneDesign Development) on Thursday to go over the final issues (two items from the scope not yet done and a few bugs), and we should see a close-to-complete build next week. Once that part is done, Leslie and I will convene the initial stakeholders to train them on the tool and begin the initial data entry.
Planning Retreat – I’ve blocked off next Wednesday (at least most of the day – still two meetings) for a “planning retreat” for me to clearly identify all the balls to juggle and plates to spin in the coming months and to start planning for a successful 2022. This planning go-round, I’m trying out the online tool Miro, since it looks to play well with both right and left brain processes. It’s also the tool we’re looking to use to manage the big, hairy Build Back Better projects, should that get funded.
Rural Opportunity Initiative – We are still waiting on the contracts from Business Oregon to officially kick off this program. We expect those any day, and once I sign and return, the first payment will be processed right away. Once I have the paperwork in hand, I’ll start putting together our initial battle plan on this scope of work.
Chamber Directories – I put together a new quester page ad for EDALC that we’re running in both the north county (Lincoln City/Depoe Bay Business Directory) and the Newport directory. At least this go-round we have a bonafide logo and website – I remember the last ad we did had my lame little placeholder logo and only the “coming soon” web page!
Water Planning Partnership – The Mid-Coast Water Planning Partnership, along with the Oregon Kitchen Table, is holding a virtual event next Tuesday for the regional business and industry sector to talk about water usage and planning. I helped out by inviting some local businesses. If interested, the Zoom event will be at 10am on Tuesday – here is the link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89658396606?pwd=Y2NqVDhBWUJLbDZRcU1QMXg0NTl4Zz09
If you’d like to fill out the water survey (it’s really quite interesting), here’s the link for that:
https://bit.ly/midcoast_water_plan
Community and Economic Development Grant – A huge thanks to the Board for their careful review of the submitted grants! I’ll work to pull together the scores, recommendations and thoughts on the grant program for the presentation to the County Commissioners at their December 15th meeting.
O2IH/Blue Economy – We had our standing stakeholders’ catch-up meeting this morning and learned that the earliest we’ll hear back on the Phase One application to the EDA’s Build Back Better grant program will be on December 20th, which is about two weeks later than the EDA initially indicated. If we do get that Phase One grant, fingers crossed that the Phase Two deadline will be pushed out as well.
Holiday EDALC Newsletter – I’ve decided to do a nice wrap-up holiday newsletter for EDALC and then get back on our regular cycle (hopefully with help from some support staff) at the first of the year. I’ll be asking Tracy for a “Holiday Message from the President” and have quite a few stories and info tid-bits to share – is there anything that the Board would like to see me highlight in this end-of-year newsletter?
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 🙂