Greetings and welcome to Friday. It’d be awesome if this weekend could be the full-scale Seafood & Wine Festival, but at least we have a virtual festival that looks quite compelling (we’re picking up our basket today) AND we’ve moved to the lower risk COVID category as of today – which is amazing news!
Here’s the EDALC update for the week –
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Paul’s week:
Project Associate Search – I’ll have more details to share at our BoD meeting next week, but the job listing is posted (Indeed, Newport and Lincoln City Chamber sites and Craig’s List) and qualified applications are coming in. I had one virtual interview this week and probably several more next week.
Getting the Word Out – I’ll be speaking at the April 9th Newport Chamber Ambassadors event, introducing our organization and talking about Lincoln County economic development.
Meet & Greets – I connected with the new Lincoln City Director of Planning and Community Development Sungman Kim this week. He’s a distant transplant like me (coming all the way from Mississippi!) and has significant experience in coastal communities (Daytona, South Padre Island, etc.). It looks like we’ll be doing a lot of collaboration in the future. He was also very complementary of the Lincoln City staff – both their work ethic and their smarts. Always good to hear!
Enterprise Zone – I’ll be meeting with CJ Hurtt at the County Assessor’s Office next week to talk about several EZ applications and also the re-designation process. To re-designate, there doesn’t need to be a public hearing, but I need to do at least a Zoom info meeting and invite folks from the local taxing bodies (this is more for the smaller taxing bodies rather than the sponsors and consenting government agencies) and CJ will help me pull those contacts together.
Toledo ART – With a little help from yours truly, Rachael Wallace and the Toledo Digital Media CTE students completed the first version of the ART Toledo website (which we are hosting for them). You can find it here: http://arttoledo.com/. Applications for the Phantom Galleries are open until March 8: tinyurl.com/ToledoARTApplication. So far, there are quite a few applications – many more than there is space for, which is the best kind of problem to have.
Blue Economy – I worked this week to finish up a White Paper for YBEF (with Bob joining me as a coconspirator) requesting both a letter of support and financial contribution for the Oregon Ocean Innovation Hub’s Burning Glass Blue Economy Workforce Sector Analysis Project (total price tag: $180,000). Discussion and evaluation of the White Paper will take place over the next two YBEF meetings. I also submitted a letter of support to O2IH for upcoming grant applications to the Oregon Community Foundation and the Ford Family Foundation.
Cascades West COG & CEDS – Dave Price and I met yesterday with Jenny Glass, the new Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy Director at the COG. We had a great conversation on local and regional economic development priorities, challenges and opportunities for collaboration and true regional project development.
Brainstorming Planning Access – Leslie Palotas (of Newport 2040) and I had a great brainstorming meeting this week on ways we might be able to leverage the Ford Foundation’s Community Website Partnership technology (built off of WordPress). We explored ways we might connect that tool, via an Application Programming Interface (API) with a project planning/tracking tool like Bascamp, Monday or Trello – as a way to link multiple organizations’ strategic projects to create both a unified public information tool and a shared tracking resource – early stage brainstorming, to be sure, but some exciting possibilities!
Upcoming Meeting Reminder:
March EDALC BoD Meeting
Time: Mar 4, 2021 03:30 PM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/9178104987?pwd=bVJDN0VlUEM3aG9EaFhJQUZjcDJHUT09
Meeting ID: 917 810 4987
Passcode: 0NyksK
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 🙂