Greetings and welcome to Friday – it’s a rainy and damp Friday the 13th! Watch out for those black cats and rickety ladders!

 

Thanks to all the board members who could make it to yesterday’s grant scoring Board of Directors meeting. The EDALC staff is always amazed by the innovative projects that get submitted through the Community and Economic Development Grant Program. The team is always impressed by the level of discussion and commitment of our Board during the annual review – thank you all for your time, wisdom and insights!

 

Paul had an email come in during the meeting that he didn’t get a chance to check – Director and LCSD Superintendent Majalise Tolan wanted to share a website with some LCSD bond information during the board updates, so here’s that link:

 

https://lincoln.k12.or.us/bond/

 

And here’s the team update for the week (a little shorter than usual since Sarah is off snowboarding in Bend this week):

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • Stacie attended the Affordable Housing Capacity Building meeting (Housing 101)  facilitated by the Community Services Consortium on Monday.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Challenger Biosciences – Paul met with Don Gerhart of Challenger Biosciences on Wednesday. They discussed next steps should the Department of Energy Phase 1 STTR application (a $250,000 award) get funded. There have been signs that the DoE is doing a little extra due diligence on the application, which could be interpreted as positive news. The formal award announcements for this round will happen on January 6th.
  • O2IH Website Project – Project work has officially begun. Paul and Stacie met with web developer Shawn Livengood today to review the project plan, confirm phase 1 website structure, and define the key audiences for the site. Biweekly project meetings will begin on 1/3/24.
  • Broadband
      • CTSI – Business Oregon just sent out a release announcing an additional tranche of BDP infrastructure funding. $3,359,260 will be awarded to the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians’ project, “Expanding Broadband Access for the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians.” It will provide 100/100 service to 81 currently unserved locations in Lincoln County. If you remember, they were initially going to receive an award, then fell below the cut-off line after the Oregon Broadband Office adjusted funding levels. Great to see them back in the awarded column!
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Cascades West Innovation Hub – Stacie and Paul met with Susan Patterson from the COG on Wednesday to review the agenda for the Cascades West Innovation Hub Groundwork Stage project kickoff on 12/18. Susan agreed to our using Monday.com as the shared source of truth for the overall project plan as we will be helping coordinate the work of 5 subcontractors (including EDALC) as well as CWCOG translation services. 
  • Core Economic Development Services
      • Data – Placer.ai – Paul had an updated demonstration of the Placer.ai “big data” meets AI tool. He was trying to evaluate potential use cases for EDALC’s upcoming economic development work. For the demo, Placer.ai compared the traffic coming into three grocery stores (this was prior to the news that the Albertsons/Safeway/Kroger merger was off): Newport Fred’s and Safeway and the Lincoln City Safeway. Over the past year, the number of visits to each were:
        • Fred’s: 1.5M
        • Newport Safeway: 491K
        • Lincoln City Safeway: 1.3M
      • LC Economic Development Grant Program  –  Team re-reviewed applications in advance of board meeting + Paul made sure everyone got their scores in (and assembled the master scoresheet).
  • Community Connecting
      • Leslie’s back from Thanksgiving Holiday break and a rejuvenating Vacation.
  • Meeting with Beatriz Botello and Laura Kimberly – Leslie caught up with Beatriz to assist her Café Resource series report. Beatriz will soon be visiting family for a well-deserved vacation, so Laura Kimberly joined Leslie to celebrate Beatriz and her inspirational years of volunteer work as Newport City Councilor. Leslie looks forward to continuing more community-improving work alongside Beatriz, without her elected official hat, when she returns from vacation.
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Stacie continued work on the EDALC holiday newsletter and shared relevant community posts on Friday. 

 

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)