Greetings and welcome to Friday! Today is Valentine’s Day – are you prepared? Do you go all out or just grab a heart-shaped box of waxy Russell Stover chocolates? 

 

Today is also the 96th anniversary of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre – the murder of seven members of Chicago’s North Side Gang (mostly Irish) by Al Capone’s rival Italian gang – all part of Organized Crime’s competition to control the bootlegged liquor market in Chicago.

 

And one last history tidbit – today is also Oregon’s birthday! Oregon became the 33rd state on February 14th, 1859.

 

On that happy note, here is our weekly team update:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • OCCC – Paul participated in a panel discussion facilitated by OCCC’s OCATT architects – attendees were mostly leaders in the trades in Lincoln County. The purpose was to get an industry and hiring perspective on what kind of training would be the most valuable in the new CTE building. Out of those present, there is already a job demand that might be greater than the initial output of trades/CTE program – underscoring the absolute need for the CTE facility and training.
      • Newport Chamber – Stacie, Sarah, and Paul attended the Newport Chamber Lunch on Wednesday where Paul worked so hard as Board President he missed out on the lunch part.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Challenger Biosciences – Paul and Mark Farley met with Don Gerhart of Challenger Biosciences (CB) to determine next steps after the DoE STTR Phase 1 application was passed over. Oregon Maritime Energy LLC will go into hibernation mode at the end of Q1, and we’ll continue to work with CB as all parties try to determine a viable next step given the climate of funding uncertainty.
      • Rural Prosperity Partners – Paul met with Rachael and Sherry from Rural Prosperity Partners. They talked through materials needed for the end of February submission of a USDA RBDG grant application. They also discussed several other grant opportunities and how they might match up with EDASLC’s future Blue Economy goals.
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Cascades West Innovation Hub – The team met for a check-in with Susan Patterson before she goes on vacation. Stacie sent a survey reminder to the original CWIH leadership team with 14 responses received as of today and updated the project timeline in Monday.com to account for changes in timeline per potential state requirements.
  • Broadband
      • Pioneer Telephone Cooperative – Paul met with Pioneer CEO Jim Rennard to discuss broadband infrastructure programs (BDP & BEAD). The Oregon Broadband Office rescinded their BDP grant award to Pioneer because Pioneer could not deliver enough unserved households with the reduced funding they were given ($12M from OBO instead of the $20M requested). BEAD prequalification opened this week, and it will be challenging for rural regions to be able to access this funding if a school district region has multiple ISPs. BEAD funding also will not cover legal expenses or grant project management expenses, making it a non-starter for either Lincoln County or LCSD to be an overarching applicant. Paul sent off a summary of this information to Commissioner Hall and to Majalise.
  • Core Economic Development Services
  • Economic Summit – Stacie created and coordinated advertising with the Newport Chamber of Commerce and Yachats News and also helped with outreach to potential panelists. Sarah worked on the pillars of the local economy videos and sent out an eventbrite email campaign about registration for the event being open. She also worked on coordination of speakers, municipal representatives, and resource tables, including going to Foulweather Trawl to see if their manager would be willing to speak to their business story and developments in reducing bycatch for our local fishing fleet – fingers crossed!
  • Community & Economic Development Grant Program – Sarah sent an award notification email to all the grant recipients of the community & economic development grant this year.
  • Oregon Prospector – Sarah added some new listings onto Oregon Prospector and checked old ones.
  • Community Connecting
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
        • Stacie completed the Q4 2024 Media report, and posted to social media as usual 🙂. Presidents’ Day post was also created and scheduled for Monday.
  • Admin
      • Stacie confirmed the PAC as our location for the 3/6 BoD meeting. Next steps: food and beverages. She also completed the minutes for the 2/6 meeting.

 

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)