Greetings! Welcome to the weekend – I hope everybody survived the lurch back into a full week of work after the Thanksgiving respite.
Here’s our update for the week –
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Suzan’s week:
* Daily/ weekly routine tasks
* Post P/R in QBO
* Minutes (Nov)
* Complete financial report/distribute
* Process membership
* Bank deposit & post in QBO
* Edit issues in QBO
* Pay bills in Bill Pay, solve problems
* Find reports/documents for Paul
* Create 2021 meeting date list
* Distribute Board packet
* Research tax notice
* Board meeting
* Take minutes
* Scan tax notification letters to Fitzsimmons
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Paul’s week:
Stakeholder Listening Sessions – As a followup to the listening sessions, we had a call today with Commissioner Hunt, Frank Burris (OSU Extension and “emcee” of the sessions), Greg Wolf (Association of Oregon Counties) and myself. We reviewed the data from the polls as well as other notes. It was clear that the top three priorities for the attendees are workforce housing, broadband and childcare. I also argued that another top priority is local business development writ large (business retention and expansion program, entrepreneurship, attraction, site development, technical support, Blue Economy, enterprise zone, etc.). That last priority is what I see through the lens of a professional economic development practitioner. We discussed approaches to help the rubber meet the road in these key areas, and the next step is to present this work (and suggestions for future steps) to all the commissioners in one of their upcoming meetings. Commissioner Hunt will reach out to Wayne Belmont to get a sense of the other two commissioner and who should deliver such an update (me? Frank? Greg? All of us?). I’ll keep you posted.
Meet and Greets – While I feel like I’ve met the lion’s share of folks in the county and the region as they relate to economic development, some direct connects have taken a while to materialize, due to crazy work schedules. This week, I head the pleasure of having a long conversation with Superintendent Gray and how economic development, the workforce development pipeline and education intersect. It seems that we are of like minds and she’s wholeheartedly behind our current approach and wants to get even more involved with the EDALC. I also had the chance to meet with CJ Drake of Georgia Pacific and discuss their challenges, the long-term stability and viability of their plant in Toledo and what he sees as our challenges going forward.
Lawson Property – I met with Paul Lawson, owner of the 30 acre certified shovel-ready property in north Newport. They had an option to purchase from ODOT for a seismic-resilient maintenance facility (in partnership with the forest service), but that option passed during the pandemic. I’ll be reaching out and assisting him to get a final answer from ODOT and if it’s a hard “no,” then I’ll work with him to get the property on OegonProspector and see if we can find another higher-best use for that very rare flat and large industrial property.
Blue Economy – The smaller team focusing on the Innovation and Entrepreneurship pillar of the Maritime Innovation Center (the MIC) had a great working meeting this morning and outlined some initial projects and work areas. I had to bail a tad early, so Bob, I hope you guys didn’t dump too much on my plate while I was AWOL! What a great project that will be – I’m thrilled to be involved.
BusinessOregon PPE – Several weeks ago I was asked to connect the local Chambers with BusinessOregon in a program to get additional PPE into our community (first responders first, then available to businesses). Looks like those boxes arrived today, and I saw that at least the Lincoln County chamber was pushing those out the door already.
Broadband – We had a Broadband Action Team meeting this week – it looks like the EDA grant for doing a year-long broadband feasibility study for Benton, Lane, Linn and Lincoln Counties will be approved and it should be soon that the contracts will be delivered. That’s awesome news!
Website Project – Most of my week was spent on a hard final push to get our new EDALC website ready for a soft launch – hopefully by the end of the day on Monday (Tuesday at the latest). I’ve still got some hours to put in over the weekend, but we’re getting there (only three more pages to flesh out)!
On that front, I’ll have to call a few of you out for pictures and short bios to be used on the About Us page. Here’s what I still need:
Tracy: picture and short bio text
Zack: short bio text
Bryan: picture and short bio text
Doug Holbrook: picture
Kerry: picture
Michael: bio text
Please email those off to me if you can – many thanks!
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 