Greetings and welcome to a sunny and chilly Friday! It’ll be a chilly weekend as well, but hopefully still sunny. Pull on your hoodies and head for the grill!

 

It’s also a holiday weekend with Martin Luther King Day on Monday – and also the national college football championship game between Notre Dame and Penn State. There’s also something else going on in Washington DC on Monday as well…

 

This week also marks Stacie’s first week as our full time Project Manager. Sarah has moved into her new role as our Rural Economic Research & Engagement Manager.

 

And next weekend is the third annual Big Blue Film Festival – if you haven’t got your tickets, grab them soon! Friday is nearly sold out! Here’s the link to the tickets:

 

https://coastarts.org/events/big-blue-25/

 

Also, a HUGE shout out to Lincoln County Commissioner Kaety Jacboson. She announced at the end of last week that she’ll be stepping back from her commissioner role in mid-February. She has truly been a Lincoln County hero and was the guiding light we needed during the pandemic and the wildfires. She will be missed!

 

Here’s our weekly team update for this week:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • Lincoln City – On Monday, Paul participated in Lincoln City’s Brownfield Advisory Committee meeting.
      • Regional Practitioners Luncheon – On Tuesday, Paul, Sarah and Stacie carpooled to Corvallis for the quarterly regional economic developer practitioners luncheon. It’s a great opportunity to connect with our regional peers to share projects and best practices.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
  • Website – Paul and Stacie met with Shawn Livengood today to review his design plan for the website. We’ll take a week to think through content ideas and familiarize ourselves with the layout before signing off on the plan next week. 
      • OCCC DACUM – Yesterday was the official kickoff meeting for a dual DACUM (Developing a Curriculum) process covering potential Marine Technician and Aquaculture Technician certificate programs. The process is being facilitated by Own Smith of Worldwide Instructional Design Systems. EDALC was able to fund this work as part of our Blue Economy CDS grant.
      • EDA – This week, Paul and Rural Prosperity Partners met with our regional EDA representative Wes Cochran. We discussed the reauthorization of the EDA (and upcoming program changes – such as the removal of any “equity” requirements for grants), plus grant programs that could support some future Blue Economy work.
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Cascades West Innovation Hub – The team worked to curate the list of current innovation hub task force members in preparation for the virtual taskforce meeting on 2/4 where we’ll discuss recommendations from the planning stage and how to move forward in a way that supports a successful Regional Innovation Hub. We also provided the invitation messaging and agenda which will be hosted by the CWCOG but facilitated by EDALC. 
  • Stacie created a stakeholder spreadsheet for all subcontractors to utilize when collaborating on the invite lists for subsequent events to avoid some of the confusion generated by the creation of multiple copies being made by each subcontractor. We also provided feedback on the Asset Inventory Landscape created by Spark Towns during the planning stage.
  • Next steps: Paul and Sarah will continue researching operating frameworks, Stacie will be drafting the monthly project report which will also support Susan Patterson’s quarterly reporting to the Oregon Innovation Council, and preparing for feedback collection during the upcoming meeting.
  • Broadband
      • BAT – In this month’s Broadband Action Team meeting, we learned that not a single Broadband Deployment Program grant has been finalized by the Oregon Broadband Office. Those “in the know” think that the OBO was unprepared for the scale of the grant management tasks. The BEAD prequalification is still several weeks or months away
  • Core Economic Development Services
  • 2025 Lincoln County Economic Summit – Stacie updated the summit web page and Sarah continued to field responses from tabling organizations and work on filming the pillars of the local economy videos. 
  • Community Connecting
  • Know Your Rights Gatherings, Webinars, and Resources – There are MANY online resources to help educate, inform, and share “Know Your Rights” and Immigration Law information widely. It helps ALL people in this country to know their rights and practice them. This makes it harder for organizations and individuals who do not follow the laws to succeed in illegal searches, detentions, and deportations. 

 

In a Know Your Rights webinar this week, Leslie learned there are many stories of communities who knew and practiced their rights so well that they ultimately delayed or deterred ICE and ICE supporters from pursuing folks in their communities. We are fortunate Oregon has Sanctuary State status, AND being educated and prepared will help folks here and elsewhere in the country.

To help, Leslie created a Know Your Rights Resource Sheet she will continually update with new & updated Public information. The Sheet currently includes English and Spanish scripts from last week’s well-attended presentations in Lincoln County, Links to Educational Videos, resources from Thursday’s Online Webinar presented by Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), and so much more. Dive in, educate yourselves, and help educate others in your networks. 

  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication – Stacie shared relevant community posts in fb/ig stories on Friday and boosted partner posts across all platforms throughout the week. She also made some progress on Winter 2025 newsletter content.
  • Admin – Paul put together new contracts for Sarah and Stacie this week. He also met with Teresa from Bryan’s office to review changes to the OregonSaves program and to help unify how EDALC manages the payments in a more unified manner. Our team began working on self-evaluations, and Stacie attended the USDA’s What Can the United States Learn from International Cooperative Ecosystems webinar on 1/15.

 

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)