Greetings and welcome to Friday!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Project Associate Search – I’m pleased to announce that I made a job offer to our leading candidate for our half-time Project Associate position, and she accepted! Her name is Sarah Buddingh – originally from Philomath but living in Siletz. She’s young, but whip-smart and came in with some amazing references. She’s got a degree in economics and is deeply interested in rural economic analysis and rural economic development. She currently doing part-time economic data analysis for Wallowa Resources. Through her family, she’s been involved in both the timber industry and commercial fishing. She be coming in next week to get her paperwork filled out and will probably start in earnest on or around March 1.
Rural Opportunity Initiative – Turns out the check was in the mail! And then it was on my desk – our initial ROI payment of $30,000 arrived, and we’re off to the races! The official state-wide ROI kick-off meeting will be on February 28th.
CO.STARTERS – After a meeting with Brad Attig (Foundry Collective) and Misty Lambrecht (SBDC and CO.STARTERS), I decided to push the “go button” on funding a CO.STARTERS cohort (out of ROI funds) in Lincoln County. I think the course will be great and it doesn’t really duplicate things being done here by the SBDC. My big hold-up was the timing – I wanted to have a little more ROI network-building in place first. BUT Brad answered that hesitation by committing $5K of his BizOR TA funds to the cause to do TWO cohorts – one this Spring and one later in the year or early next year (when I’ll be in better shape with my ROI network). Dave Price will help by advertising it in the OCCC’s Catch The Wave for Spring.
O2IH – Today, I ran the O2IH meeting and we started to get our partners ramped up for Regional Innovation Hub Planning Grant application. OSU will be the applicant, and Mark Farley and I will be the main cat-herders, with Rachael in a support role. There’s also some meaty out-of-the gates work for new-hire Sarah. Always good to throw them right into the fire! Mark is also having me do a little boning up on what a coastal (Newport-based) Marine Hydrogen Hub might look like.
EDA Good Jobs Challenge Grants – So just an update – we supported two EDA GJC grant applications – one submitted by Northwest Oregon Works, with a partial focus on maritime careers, so we were able to share some of our past O2IH work to help make that ask stronger. The other was submitted by the National Restaurant Association for restaurant and hospitality sector workforce training along the 101 corridor from Washington state down through Lincoln County. We worked to coordinate the Oregon business letters of support along the coast.
Lincoln County Economic Report – I did receive a proposal today from Shannon Davis on updating the county’s 2014 economic report. Looks like it would be $25,000 for the update (with some assistance of EDALC staff), and could commence this summer.
A Hearty Huzzah – High fives out to Dr. Karen Gray for receiving the Outstanding Administrator award from the Oregon Music Education Association! We are so lucky to have music education such an integral part of our local school system. The brain pathways that learning music stimulates are vital to both creativity and more logical, analytical thinking – for me personally, learning blues guitar as an adult has helped my brain do a better job doing “brain things” in my professional career. Way to go!
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Last weekend, Susan and I completed the demo of our kitchen – we just get the plumbing fixed and then rip it all out again! This weekend is patching the drywall where we took off the tile backsplash and then on the 21st, the new stuff starts to get installed.
On Wednesday, we stayed up to watch our friend (from the U.P.) Nick Baumgartner compete in snowboard-cross at the Olympics. He’s the oldest US competitor in the Olympics and one of the last of the “blue collar” athletes. He didn’t make it out of the quarterfinals – one split second decision he made bled off to much speed (he was one spot away from medaling in the last Olympics) – heartbreaking to see years of work end up that way!
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 🙂