Greetings and welcome to Friday – the day before Winter Solstice. Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year – a good day to be lazy and cozy! Then on Sunday, we begin the march back towards more daylight!

 

This will be our final staff update of 2024 – the team will be in and out over the next two weeks, so we’ll shoot for our next update to be Friday, January 3rd.

 

Our holiday “Year in Review” newsletter will be going out on Monday morning – look for that in your inboxes. We all wish you a wonderful, peaceful and safe holiday season! And if you celebrate Festivus, may the annual “airing of the grievances” be cathartic, and may your aluminum pole be ever shiny!

 

Here’s our update for the week:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • Policy and Funding Committee – Paul attended this meeting that is part of the larger Lincoln County Homeless Advisory Board. The goal, for early 2025, is to determine specific funding gaps in the “Shelter to Housing” continuum and then determine a methodology to do equitable local funding asks to bridge the anticipated gap.
  • Strong Responses to Hate-Filled Anonymous Letter  – Our team is thankful for the measured, kind and inclusive responses from the community addressing the anonymous letter that was sent to several local municipalities.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Grant Prospecting – Paul met with Rural Prosperity Partners (RPP) on O2IH grant prospecting. Staff prepared five projects for them to explore, and this meeting was to review potential grants to pursue. Paul and RPP will be meeting with Wes Cochran of the EDA soon to discuss one potential application. Paul also has a bit of “research homework” to do on another two potential grant programs.
      • ColPac – Paul met with Sarah Lu Heath, the acting director of the Columbia Pacific Economic Development District. They discussed possible upcoming partnerships and projects (some that might fit into RPP’s prospecting work). She was also looking to get a little clarity on OCVA’s Ocean Cluster Initiative work.
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Cascades West Innovation Hub Groundwork  –  The team joined fellow subcontractors from Collaborative Economic Development Oregon, Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN), Willamette Innovators Network (WIN), and Spark Towns, LLC for the virtual project kickoff led by Susan Patterson from the Oregon Coast Cascades West Council of Governments on 12/18. Sarah, Stacie, and Paul took some time following the meeting to adjust the timeline for EDALC’s governance and operating framework deliverables based on the time constraints of the other groups. Leslie will be our point person when it comes to reviewing the DEIJ recommendations from Spark Towns. Paul also assisted OEN with booking space for their Innovation Hub kickoff deliverable because he’s nicer than Stacie, who would rather take control of the entire project. 
  • Broadband
      • Pioneer – Paul met with Pioneer Telephone Cooperative this week to talk through EDALC sending a letter of support to the Oregon Broadband Office (OBO). OBO awarded Pioneer $12M from a $20M request, but OBO still wants them to serve the same number of locations – the letter was to ask OBO to rescope the locations to match the grant award. Paul submitted the letter to OBO on Tuesday.
  • Core Economic Development Services
  • Economic Summit
        • Sarah worked on the pillars of the local economy videos and event logistics. She also worked on the Lincoln County Civic Lexicon and completed a save the date promo video here: https://youtu.be/GbZ97zDoQjo?feature=shared
        • Stacie, Paul, and Sarah met to align on the marketing plan.
      • Q1/Q2 EDALC Update – The whole EDALC team has been contributing to the development of a Q1/Q2 update of EDALC’s activities (for funders, etc.). It was decided to create a new and flexible layout template (to move away from the awkward and buggy iStudio page layout program), that fits with our branding guidelines. Paul developed a draft outline for the report, and the team is refining it before we build-out the whole report. This looks to be a valuable resource going forward.
  • Research – Sarah put together a report of major employers figures across the past 3 years and what city each business is located in. 
  • Oregon Prospector – Sarah worked on a better Oregon Prospector tracking spreadsheet and put together some listings data for Lincoln City. She also checked old listings to see if there were any price changes, and which listings were sold or removed. 
      • Community and Economic Development Grant Program – Per our Board’s request, Paul queried Commissioner Jacobson and Administrator Johnson on the questions about the eligibility of the Samaritan House grant application. There have been a couple of email exchanges back and forth. Paul is also working with Tim to get a BoC meeting agenda slot (for the recommendations) in early 2025.
  • Community Connecting
  • This week Leslie is grateful for Oregon’s Sanctuary State status (since 1987) and the availability of reporting methods and resources with Oregon State’s Department of Justice Civil Rights team. Thanks to September’s Café Resources in Newport and Lincoln City, community members and multiple Social Service Organizations met one of the DOJ Civil Rights team members and learned about these support systems.
  • If you’d like informational videos or printable, multi-lingual resources to promote Standing Against Hate in your organization, business, or networks, visit:
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
  • The team completed the EDALC holiday newsletter. Stacie scheduled the holiday social media posts, and shared county-wide goings on our FB and IG stories today as per usual.
  • Admin
      • We had our team meeting turned staff holiday party at The Wilds on Thursday with Paul playing the part of Santa. We have a game plan for the next few weeks, and a plan to hit the ground running when we return to our regularly scheduled programming in January.

 

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)