Greetings and welcome to Friday and the last few days in February – wow, the month just few by!

 

Paul is working to onboard EDALC’s new Directors. This week, he met with Nina and Lynlei and will be meeting with Lisa on Monday afternoon. Paul also updated the Board Resources page on EDALC’s website (great for review!): 

 

https://businesslincolncounty.com/board-of-directors-resources/ 

 

Sarah was off for a few days this week to visit a friend (and her new baby) in Idaho, so this update is mostly Paul, Stacie and Leslie (though rest assured, Sarah is cranking hard on the Economic Summit!).

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

 

  • Partner Support/Community Support
    • Career Connected Learning – On Tuesday afternoon, Paul trekked to Toledo high school to deliver a Career Connected Learning talk on working in the software industry – about 20 kids were in attendance.
    • CWEDD – On Thursday, CWEDD held its quarterly Executive Committee meeting to plan out the March 19th full board meeting in Lane County. One of the agenda items was the slate of new officers for the coming year (March – Feb27) and Paul was again nominated to continue in his role as chair of the CWEDD.
    • GP – Paul and Marshall attended the Community Advisory Panel meeting at the GP plant on Monday. The panel learned about the science of paper making from the plant’s General Manager. Paul met with Communications Director Andrea Formo before the Panel to discuss the Summit and the GP presentation.
    • LCSD/OCCC – On Tuesday, LCSD and OCCC held their annual joint Board of Education meeting. Topics included bond construction updates for both institutions, the impact of college credit courses for high school students, new initiatives across the board and the announcement of a partnership that will allow OCCC to have classroom facilities in Toledo (to better serve east county) in the LCSD-owned Arcadia facility.
    • Take Action Lincoln County – Stacie completed website updates for the 2026 Neskika Illahee Pow-Wow sponsorships, Paul confirmed PayPal details were correct, and Leslie successfully completed order testing. Leslie will send details to CTSI stakeholders on Monday and they will have 2 weeks to review and provide feedback. Sponsorship will be open to Tribal members only for the month of April, and will open to the public in early May.
    • YBEF – At Thursday’s YBEF meeting, the membership continued the discussion of designating the Yaquina Bay Road (a county road) a scenic drive, plus signage needs if that was in place. Prior to the meeting, Paul talked with the County road department to see how that might happen – and was told there was no historical process and no one had ever asked about that type of thing before. By serendipity, the Lincoln County Historical Society Board President was at the meeting – and today they tracked down a county resolution from 26 years ago – it’s already designated a Lincoln County Scenic Loop (with no expiration)! Paul shared the resolution with the County’s Public Works Director.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
  • Economic Mobility
    • Paul and Allyson met to discuss her project work and planning, and how this Economic Mobility and Opportunity grant program is signalling an interesting change for small municipalities by expanding the programs they offer to directly support and enhance the lives of their citizens. Next week, they will attend (virtually) a training from the Urban Institute on their Upward Mobility Framework.
  • Broadband
    • BAT – Paul attended the monthly BAT meeting. In the past few weeks, the NTIA approved Oregon’s BEAD application for $689 million. Now the NTIA and Oregon will have 60 days for contract negotiations for the individual applications. Nearly 50% of the Broadband Serviceable Locations in the state are set to be served by low-Earth orbit satellites – though right now, setting those up requires a working cell phone and cell service. The Oregon Broadband Office is unsure how that will limit those deployments. The Oregon Broadband Office has JUST launched the ARPA Capital Projects Fund (CPF) Digital Connectivity Technology Program, making $6.8 million available to expand access to internet-enabled devices and public Wi-Fi infrastructure across the state – we’ll fill you in as we learn more.
  • Core Economic Development Services
    • Lincoln County Economic Summit – Work continued on Summit planning – locking in final speakers, final marketing pushes, gathering final supplies,  working with GP on a table activity and more. As of today, we are one ticket from being sold out!
  • Community Connecting
    • Siletz Valley School Family Science Night – Leslie was invited to join Cape Perpetua Collaborative’s table at Siletz Valley School’s Family Science Night yesterday evening. It was a fun community event for all ages (including dinner from Siletz Culinary students), and two Cape Perpetua Collaborative Partners tabled next to CPC. Leslie loved seeing the increased overlaps between the CPC network and the Siletz community. It was an ideal event to debut the CPC-catalyzed experiential education resource list Leslie created this week (as detailed in her full weekly report).

The gathering was also an ideal way to meet more teachers and students, and hopefully, there’ll be some new tidepool field trips with Cape Perpetua Collaborative as a result. CPC Young Wavemakers’ lead, Brianna Bowman (who’s also KLCC’s weekend morning show host), interviewed folks for an upcoming story, and Chelsea from Documentary NW (the nonprofit that partners on the OMSI Summer Documentary camp) was filming B-roll for the Siletz students who work with OSU grad student, AJ Mallozi, in the H2O program, to use for future research project reports and press. Leslie’s already looking forward to participating again next year, as this is an ideal way for students of all ages to share their science projects and passions with their community. 

    • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Stacie managed EDALC social media and updated the EDALC website to include this year’s Community & Economic Development grant awards.
  • Project Work
        • Stacie provided feedback on Leslie’s Local Wood fliers
  • Admin
      • Stacie used this week’s team meeting to walk the team through our known grant deliverables/commitments, timelines, potential projects, and outstanding event scheduling decisions for the next year. The decisions made will inform her efforts to build out a more robust grant management scaffolding in Monday.com while also creating capacity for new opportunities as they arise.

 

Reminder: EDALC’s March Board of Directors meeting will be next Thursday, March 5th at 3:30pm, via Zoom. Agenda and packet to go out next week. Here is the Zoom link:

 

Topic: March EDALC BoD Meeting

Time: Mar 5, 2025 03:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9178104987?pwd=bVJDN0VlUEM3aG9EaFhJQUZjcDJHUT09&omn=89714415175

 

Meeting ID: 917 810 4987

Passcode: 0NyksK

 

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! Have a wonderful weekend!

 

Cheers,

 

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