A HUGE thanks to all of you for your hard work in scoring the 2023-24 Community and Economic Development grant applications! It was a great Board of Directors meeting filled with lively and insightful discussion and the recommendation consensus feels solid. I’ll coordinate with Administrator Johnson to get a slot in an upcoming Board of Commissioners meeting to share your recommendations for funding.
Here’s our staff update for the week:
Blue Economy::
This week, Drummond Wengrove (iLab), Mark Farley and myself had a planning meeting with Don Gerhart of Challenger Biosciences. Yesterday, the DOE SBIR-STTR Program Office that confirmed receipt of the Letter of Intent from Oregon Maritime Energy (OME), an LLC set up to pursue this green methanol opportunity. For the LOI, the title of the proposed Phase I STTR research project was the following: “Co-Development of a Regionally Tailored Marine Bio-Fuel/Engine Retrofit Platform to Decarbonize the World’s Most Dangerous Fishery.” Keep your fingers crossed and we’ll keep you posted!
Also, this morning Sarah and I met with the Eastern Research group in a close-to-final planning meeting before they dive in full speed on their NOAA Economic Impact research project. – Paul
Friday afternoon Leslie and I volunteered at the Winter Waters event at the Central Coast Food Web. The purpose of the event was to celebrate and encourage sustainable and local seafood efforts. – Sarah
Broadband::
Today, Sarah and I proofed the Broadband Technical Assistance Program grant application prepared by Rural Prosperity Partners for a submission from EDALC (to serve Lincoln, Linn and Benton counties). They did a yeoman’s job on what ended up being quite a complex application. Many thanks to those of you I reached out to for 11th hour letters of support. Around noon, I pushed “the big red button” to submit the $435K application to the Oregon Broadband Office. Missiles away! – Paul
Economic Summit::
For the Economic Summit this week, I put together a promotional graphic for the event and sent it out with the registration information to the local chambers, the SBDC, our local WorkSource office, and the OCWCOG. I also created the event on our Facebook page. – Sarah
Entrepreneurship::
The main project I worked on this week was putting together the Youth Entrepreneurship Program founder videos. I put captions on the Skosh video and continued editing the Hearth & Table video. I also reached out to some other local businesses about scheduling an interview. – Sarah
Organizational Management::
Paul, Leslie and I conducted second round interviews with our three organizational coordinator candidates on Monday and Tuesday! – Sarah
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
OCCC – On Monday, we had a kick-off meeting for the BOLI pre-apprenticeship program with regional stakeholders. – Paul
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Wednesday was my last day of “jury duty call” for January and I was selected to sit on a short, but nasty trial of an alleged online predator of underage girls (as part of the Lincoln City police’s online sting operation). The jury elected to stay late to get the job done – guilty on all three counts!
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 🙂