Greetings and welcome to Friday and the end of the first full week of 2025 – yowza, that was a long five days! Next Monday, Stacie begins working full time for EDALC – her position title is shifting to “Project Manager” – Sarah’s new position title will be “Rural Economic Research & Engagement Manager.” New job descriptions (and contract modifications) are in the works.

 

Here’s the team update for this week:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • Cascades West Economic Development District – This week, CWEDD held its first full board meeting of 2025 – about 30 folks in attendance. The main talking points were an update on the regional Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy update (2025-2030), selecting the strategic committee members for the CEDS project and an update on the work on the Cascades West Innovation Hub.
      • CWCOG – Paul reviewed a business loan modification (previously approved) as part of the Loan Review Subcommittee.
      • Yachats – This morning, Leslie and Paul met with Yachats City Manager Bobbi Price. They discussed developing and facilitating a “gamified” community engagement event focused on building awareness of the municipal budgeting process (happening in mid-April). Another topic was Leslie’s idea of engaging community organizations during Yachats’ February “State of the City” event. We also discussed onboarding Yachats as an EDALC funder – which looks like it will happen in FY25-26 (which is awesome news).
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Central Coast Food Web – Sarah and Paul had a meeting with Executive Director Jim King to review their current CDS subgrant and talk about the potential for some additional funding in the coming months. Also, today Sarah was elected Board President of CCFW – way to go! As Spiderman’s uncle once said “with this power comes great responsibility.”
      • Grant Prospecting – Paul met with Rural Prosperity Partners to discuss the possibility of going for a competitive Travel Oregon grant (LOI due next week) to help provide electric boat charging stations at coastal recreational marinas. While the project is solid, it was decided that it didn’t fit into this particular grant – since the key success metrics are bringing in new overnight visitors. Boat charging is still new enough that the “new visitors impact” would not be significant enough.
      • STTR – Challenger Biosciences received word on Monday that they did not receive a Department of Energy Phase One STTR award (the green methanol project). It’s a frustrating head-scratcher – it was an amazing proposal and the four reviewer comments were all positive. Next steps will be evaluated soon.
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Cascades West Innovation Hub – Sarah, Paul and Stacie attended the subcontractors work session 1/8. Next steps include refining the list of current innovation hub task force members (from the planning stage work) in preparation for a virtual meeting on 2/4 where the plan will be presented for review/feedback. Concurrently, Paul and Sarah will continue researching operation frameworks (they met with the Oregon Frontier Innovation Hub this week as part of that process).
  • Broadband
      • Broadband Deployment Program (BDP) – EDALC received word this week from Pioneer Cooperative that they are still waiting on a decision from the Oregon Broadband Office (OBO) on whether or not they are allowed to lower the number of broadband households served to match the reduction in funding.
      • Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) – The OBO said this week that the BEAD program should begin to open up with formal pre-qualification by April (it was supposed to be last August). This is the big money infrastructure program.
  • Core Economic Development Services
      • Q1/Q2 EDALC Report – Early this week, the staff finished our Q1/Q2 EDALC Biannual Report. The new format was built from the ground up, but still utilizing our brand guidelines and the general visual feel from our last few annual reports. The goal is to not only provide an overview of what EDALC has accomplished, but also to provide information to our funding partners and potential partners. We also completed the Lincoln City supplement as well. Links are below:
      • 2025 Lincoln County Economic Summit – Stacie and Sarah worked together on summit save the dates which have been sent out via Eventbrite email and posted to social media. (please like and share!) Sarah worked on the pillars of the local economy videos, the eventbrite registration page, and coordinated speakers. She also worked on the Lincoln County Civic Lexicon. 
  • Oregon Prospector – Sarah added some new listings onto Oregon Prospector. 
  • Community Connecting
    • Conexión Fénix Community Gathering with Immigration Attorney in Lincoln City – Conexión Fénix, Dave Price, multiple Community partners, and community members coordinated an informative meeting with a US Immigration Attorney on Tuesday Night. Elected officials and local law enforcement joined to show their support for and desire to learn alongside the Latina/o/x/e Community. Leslie was grateful to attend and learn with Gia Jensen, Bilingual Outreach Coordinator for the City of Newport. Since Tuesday night, they have been busy supporting Conexión Fénix to bring the popular concept to Newport to educate and prepare our community on human rights, laws, family plans, and recommended preparations for the incoming Administration. 

  • How You Can Get Involved and Help –
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
        • Stacie shared relevant community posts in fb/ig stories on Friday and boosted partner posts across all platforms.
  • Project Work
        • Stacie updated the multiple ongoing projects in Monday.com
  • Admin
  • Self Evaluations – Paul updated and simplified EDALC’s self-evaluation form and the whole team is going through the process for the first half of FY24-25 (which makes sense given Stacie and Sarah’s shifting and expanding roles).
  • Job Descriptions – Stacie and Sarah met to adjust assigned duties based on Stacie’s moving into the full-time project manager role. Stacie and Paul finalized the updated project manager duties.
  • Funding – The team met yesterday to talk through the feasibility of applying for the Travel Oregon Competitive Grant to partially fund future iterations of Take Action Lincoln County/Leslie’s work. Ultimately, we decided that the tight turnaround, competing priorities, and our inability to demonstrate the value proposition with the confines of the grant requirements mean that moving forward would not be a good use of our time right now.

 

That’s it for this week. Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Keep us posted if you have anything you want us to share, and don’t be stingy with your ideas – we love hearing from you! Have a wonderful holiday!!

 

Cheers,

 

-The EDALC Team (Paul, Sarah, Leslie and Stacie)