Greetings and welcome to Friday! It looks like another rainy weekend, so it’s once again cozy-cooking time! There will be no weekly update next week because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family (or a wonderful Turkey Day without your family, if that’s how you roll)!! We’ll see you in December!

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • Leadership Lincoln – Paul was part of a Blue Economy business panel at Hatfield this Wednesday for Leadership Lincoln. Other panelists were Chuck Toombs (Oregon Seaweed) and Angee Doerr (OSU Extension/SeaGrant).
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Ocean Cluster Initiative – The EDALC team attended a number of meetings and presentations this week with Dr. Alexandra Leeper, CEO of the Iceland Ocean Cluster. OCI (funded though OCVA’s grant funds) has hired her as a consultant to see what aspects of IOC’s “100% fish utilization” work could translate here to Oregon.
      • Katchi Precision Fishing – Paul and Mark Farley met with one of the owners of Katchi Precision Fishing (Halifax, Nova Scotia). They are a startup that has an approach for precision trawl net depth control that can offer significant fuel savings. They are currently testing on the East Coast but are looking to make some connections with Oregon folks. The introduction was made by Don Gerhart of Challenger Biosciences.
  • O2IH Web – After reviewing 15 proposals a vendor has been chosen. Paul and Stacie will meet with the (local) finalist on Wednesday 11/27 to review the proposal and confirm that it’s a good fit.
  • Entrepreneurship
      • Cascades West Innovation Hub – Paul, Sarah & Stacie met yesterday with Susan Patterson (the COG’s grants and program manager) to discuss our contract with them and the next six-seven months of work on the Cascades West Innovation Hub operating framework. There are five economic support organizations, including EDALC, collaborating on this initial work. EDALC has the largest, foundational “chunk,” and it looks like they want us to lead the process as well.
  • Broadband
      • Broadband Action Team – This week was the region’s monthly Broadband Action Team meeting. Two items of note: the Oregon Broadband Office (OBO) revised their Broadband Deployment Program (BDP) awardees – there were complaints that the reduction of some awards made entire projects unfeasible. The reworked figures see Pioneer Cooperative’s award moving from $9M to $12M, but CTSI’s $3M award is just below the new cut line. There may be some additional adjustment, but at the moment, CTSI will not receive a BDP award. On the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, the OBO still has not opened up prequalification. Paul asked about some of the challenges with either LCSD or Lincoln County being a lead applicant and Joe Franell talked with OBO officials on Wednesday – their suggestions: LCSD and Lincoln County should go through pre-qualification, but they don’t have more specific answers beyond that. Paul will work to set up a meeting with LCSD and Lincoln County.
  • Core Economic Development Services
  • 2025 Economic Summit Paul and Sarah met with Marty Alvarado about being the keynote speaker at this year’s economic summit. Marty has two decades of experience working with education and workforce development systems and will have a fresh perspective on workforce development and employer practices. Her bio is here: https://sova.org/our-team/ Sarah continued planning for the summit and worked on the Lincoln County Civic Lexicon.  Stacie completed updates to the project board on Monday.com.
  • Community and Economic Development Grant Program – Sarah confirmed grant applications on Monday, put the application and budget documents together and uploaded them onto the website. Paul put together the scoring matrix and assisted applicants who needed some extra support. Sarah also verified the applicants’ nonprofit status, evaluated them for the unincorporated bonus, and confirmed the chief executive of the organization supported the application. To review the grants, please visit the webpage linked here: https://businesslincolncounty.com/board-of-directors-grants/

If you could please submit your scoresheets to Paul by December 10th, that would be much appreciated!

  • Community Connecting
  • Café Resource Lead Partner Meeting – On Wednesday, Beatriz Botello led a review of the Café Resource Report she’s compiling. Maria Eliosa (Conexión Fénix), Alex Llumiquinga (Arcoíris Cultural), Emily Blume & Jennifer Pettit (OSU Extension) joined to share feedback. It was wonderful to see that the attendance and number of gatherings exceeded the team’s original estimates. Leslie looks forward to working on the report with Beatriz on Monday and sharing it when it’s complete. 
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Stacie shared relevant community posts in fb/ig stories on Friday and boosted partner posts across all platforms.
  • Admin
      • Our biweekly team meeting was held at Myril in support of their one year anniversary celebration. 

 

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!

 

Cheers,

 

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