Greetings and welcome to Friday! It’s also Super Bowl weekend (San Francisco vs Kansas City, for those of you who avoid such knowledge) – be sure to stock up on your avocados and tortilla chip!

Here’s our staff update for the week:

Blue Economy::

I looked through our virtual and physical files at the office for NOAA related records and read through some past news articles about the pacific fleet relocation. – Sarah

Communication::

On Wednesday, I met with Kristian Foden-Vencil from Oregon Public Broadcasting for an interview on the Newport airport commercial survey we ran in January (236 responses!).

Data::

This week, we also finished the report on the airport survey. While the nature of the survey itself tends to tip towards those in favor of commercial air service from Newport, we were surprised at just how many potential business flights businesses said they’d utilize. Our next step is to dive into that data, as well as the price-point data to get some potential income numbers for the service. You can see the overview report here:

Click to access airport_survey_results_overview.pdf

Economic Summit::

This week, Sarah and I met to review criteria and reach out for both the business panel and the data panel for the upcoming summit. Next week is locking those down, selecting the event menu and putting together the ramp-up marketing plan. – Paul

For the Economic Summit this week, I reached out to some chambers, local businesses, and support organizations for speakers and resources at the summit. I also started building a MailChimp newsletter, sent tickets to our resource table participants, and wrote some promotional Facebook posts. – Sarah

Entrepreneurship::

I finished the Hearth & Table video for the Youth Entrepreneur Program and sent more emails asking some local businesses to participate in an interview. If any of you have ideas of interesting local businesses for either video interviews for the YEP program or Economic Summit speakers, please let me know! – Sarah

Organizational Management::

For our Organizational Coordinator position, the team felt that we may not yet have “our unicorn” yet from the final three interviews – so we’re reaching out to some of the more recent applicants to see if there might be some other key candidates. We’ve had well over 40 candidates apply via Indeed (with over 13,000 job views!). Sarah and I identified two other potential “unicorns” and we’re trying to line up initial Zoom interviews next week. – Paul

PIER::

This week, we *tried* to have a PIER selection committee meeting to evaluate an initial proposal for the wildfire recovery funding coming into Lincoln County. As it turns out, the entire team was not getting the required documents from our state liaison – so we were all in the dark. Fortunately, we used the meeting time to deduce the problem and get things back on track (moral of the story – don’t blindly send out emails with 42MB of attachments!).

Project Work::

I updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider on the EDALC website and Oregon Prospector listings, reviewed some resumes for the Organization Coordinator position, and filmed the DEQ source water protection workshop in Newport. – Sarah

Supporting and Connecting with Partners::

CWEDD – I travelled to Albany on Thursday for the quarterly Cascades West Economic Development District board meeting. During the meeting, I had the honor to be elected Chair of CWEDD – it’s the first time in quite some time that the chairperson has come from Lincoln County. For me, this is a true career highlight and I’m looking forward to working with the COG (and the Lane COG) and the University of Oregon’s Institute for Policy Research and Engagement in the development of the 2025-2030 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy for the region.

OCCC – This Thursday, Alison Robertson, Chris Chandler and myself met with Birgitte and Joy Gutknecht (HR Director) to start getting a “lay of the land” for an upcoming presidential search. Our small committee is not making recommendations, but rather exploring options and approaches to present to the full board in March.

As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:

Board of Directors Resources

Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all. Have a wonderful weekend! Enjoy the Super Bowl! We’re making traditional Bavarian pretzels (with the lye dip and all!) and beer cheese for the big game.

Cheers,

-Paul 🙂