Greetings and welcome to Friday! Just two weeks until Halloween – are you prepared? Also, what is your favorite trick or treat candy from when you swerve a kid? Paul remembers one of the older neighbors down his street always giving away leftover little bags of stale Kiwanis peanuts – the opposite of a neighborhood favorite!

 

Big news this week: the 2025-26 Lincoln County Community and Economic Development Grant Program is now live! Go here to check out all the info: https://tinyurl.com/LC2025grantpage

 

Next week, Leslie will be heading to Reedsport for the 2025 OCVA People’s Coast Summit. She and CTSI’s Lisa Norton will be presenting on Take Action Lincoln County as part of the Gathering with Purpose: A New Wave of Coastal Events keynote panel. Next Tuesday, Paul will be presenting at a Career Connected Learning lunch, talking to Waldport high school students about pursuing a career in computer game development.

 

Also next week, EDALC’s Fall newsletter will go out – reach out to Stacie by end of day Monday if there’s something you want added to the list of upcoming events!

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • CCFW – Sarah attended the fall board meeting for the Central Coast Food Web.
  • CWEDD – Sarah filmed an interview with Paul Egbert, the Director of Community and Economic Development at the OCWCOG at their Albany office to start off key interviews for the CWEDD video. She also coordinated additional interviews for next week.
      • Georgia Pacific – Paul met with Andrea Formo of GP to catch up and talk about GP sponsoring both FailFest and EDALC’s 2026 Economic Summit.
      • Newport – Paul participated in a third interview for the Economic Mobility Manager position with the City, with a fourth virtual interview scheduled next week and in-person interviews soon after that.
  • Leadership Lincoln – Sarah and Leslie participated in a panel discussion on Workforce Challenges for the Leadership Lincoln class.
      • OEDA Annual Conference – Paul and Stacie attended the OEDA conference committee planning meeting on Thursday, and together learned new words to describe frustration – last week, the committee decided not to charter buses for the Adventure Day activities on October 28th – letting attendees drive themselves (and not letting our team know). What could go wrong with up to 120 vehicles trying to park on Newport’s bayfront at exactly the same time? The entire team is working on gentle meditation and breathing routines to stay calm…
  • Entrepreneurship
      • CWIH – Paul is reviewing EDALC’s subgrant agreement and future funding MOU as one of the key partners in the Innovation Hub over the next two years. Paul also met with Rachel, the RAIN Catalyst CEO, to start preliminary planning for a winter CWIH event in Lincoln County.
      • Community and Economic Development Grant Program – This week, Stacie and Paul put the finishing touches on the press release, mailchimp email, and social media announcements. Stacie sent/shared far and wide. Details can be found on the county’s website HERE.
  • Broadband
      • BAT – Paul attended the Thursday Broadband Action Team meeting. There were no new updates on the BEAD awards in Oregon (those are now being vetted by the federal NTIA). Most of the discussion revolved around potential changes to the FCC’s Universal Service Fund and continuing broadband equity work being done in Oregon (the new term is “Digital Navigation”).
  • Core Economic Development Services
      • Major Employers Report – Sarah continued to reach out to local businesses for their employment numbers for the Major Employers Report.
  • Community Connecting
      • Local Woods Networking with the Oregon Coast Community Forest Association – For the past two weeks, Leslie has been talking to local organization leads, artists, entrepreneurs, and educators who may have interest in inventing a Local Woods network – with the goal of connecting locally felled trees to local wood processors, transporters, wood-product creators, and sellers. Think of a local foods ecosystem, but applied to wood products. Leslie has already received interest from an arborist, a high school CTE class, and Lincoln County Habitat for Humanity (and I just sent out this inquiry email with available lumber details yesterday). The email includes links to aligned models in the PNW and the history behind the local effort. If you, or someone you know, may be interested in this effort, please read and share the email!
      • What the Constitution Means to Me Play at the PAC – Leslie treated herself to this incredible performance last Saturday evening, and she’ll be volunteering as an usher again tonight. She can’t recommend this (Tony-nominated and Pulitzer finalist) play enough. It’s playing for two more weekends, and while there are themes of domestic violence, murder, and abortion that may make it not ideal for all audiences, Leslie thinks anyone who has concerns about the Constitution’s resilience and historical impacts will enjoy it as much as she did. 
      • See Leslie’s full week update here (buckle up, this week had a LOT going on): October 17, 2025 EDALC CC Weekly Report
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Stacie shared relevant partner/regional posts on various social media channels – as well as the usual Friday roundup of central coast goings on. She also completed the bulk of the fall newsletter which will go out next week and updated the chamber logos graphic on the website’s Business Resources page.
  • Project Work
  • Admin
  • Carryover – Paul is getting perilously close (it’s taken months so far) to getting the carryover from one fiscal year to the next to work with QuickBooks budget reports. There will be a celebration.
      • Stacie attended week 2 of Leadership Lincoln.  Jalene offered to let Leslie take the Leadership Lincoln Assessment for free so that we can understand our DISC styles as a team!

 

A reminder to save the date (November 6th, 3:30pm) – this will be our first in-person meeting of the new fiscal year, and we’ll be holding it at our Waldport offices. There will be some tasty treats, plus also some Pacific Sourdough bread for those who make the trek! We’ll be inviting some prospective new Directors to the meeting as well – Nina Vetter and Lisa Norton have both confirmed. Come and join us and see where we work!

 

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 – we love hearing from you!

 

Cheers,

 

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