Greetings and welcome to Friday! It’s SuperBowl weekend, so grab those avocados and pretend that you can make some tasty guacamole. It’s also the one time of the year when the commercials can actually be worth watching! Go (insert name here) team!

 

Thanks to all who could make it to yesterday’s EDALC Board of Directors meeting. We had great conversations, and acknowledged that we’re all in the “realm of the unknown” with regards to federal funding. We also bid a bittersweet goodbye to Kaety Jacobson as the county’s ex officio member of EDALC’s board. She will be missed both for her insights into EDALC’s work and for her impactful legacy of great work at the county.

 

Registration for the 2025 Economic Summit (Thursday, March 13) is open! Directors can use promo code EDALCBoard to reserve their spot for free at tinyurl.com/2025LCSummit.

 

Here’s our team update for this week:

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • Yachats – Paul did some follow-up design work and some code testing for our “budgetting game” we’re developing for a City of Yachats community engagement budgeting event in April. See Leslie’s update below on her work with the Yachats State of the City event.
  • Creative Economies Playbook for Lincoln County (funded by Northwest Oregon Works) – We kicked off this project today and work is expected to be completed by the end of summer 2025.
      • Coast to Cascades EV Network – Paul sat in on an update meeting for this effort. He learned that yesterday, the federal government rescinded all plans for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, effectively putting the larger-scale EV program (part of the Infrastructure Act) on pause nationwide.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • NOAA Economic Impact – Paul, Sarah and Mark Farley met with the team from ERG. With some funds remaining from the Economic Impact study, ERG did a deeper dive into some data points to better prepare us when it’s time to respond to a NOAA RFI (these included Access to airports, Availability of service capabilities and supplies, Access to quality medical care, Cost of living, School quality and childcare). With a few more hours left in the contract, they are going to draft some language on regional assets that can be directly used as part of our upcoming NOAA response.
  • O2IH Website Project – Stacie, Paul and Sarah reviewed another round of logo options and provided feedback to the graphic designer on Thursday.
  • Entrepreneurship
      • Cascades West Innovation Hub – On Tuesday, EDALC’s entire team facilitated an online post-mortem of the Phase 1 Cascades West Innovation Hub work (done by Venn Collaborative, SparkTowns and a regional stakeholder committee) that was completed at the end of 2023 (a followup was never done immediately after the report was submitted). The original stakeholders were all invited. In the near future, Paul will be traveling to Eugene to meet with Tina Guldberg (Vice President for Economic Development and Strategic Relations for the UofO) to get her perspective on supporting regional innovation, as well as Business Oregon’s (nonpublic) response to the Phase 1 work. Stacie created (in collaboration with Susan Patterson) and sent a follow up survey to inform our next steps around Advisory Team recruitment and framework recommendations.
  • Broadband
      • BEAD – Paul will be meeting with Jim Rennard of Pioneer Cooperative early next week to discuss a potential Lincoln County application before the pre-qualification window opens up.
  • Core Economic Development Services
      • Community and Economic Development Grants – This week, Paul worked with Lola Jones of Samaritan House to refine their budget for their Impact grant application. At Wednesday’s Board of Commissioners, the Commissioners approved modified award amounts (note: in past years, Paul would present EDALC recommendations to the BoC at one meeting, with a vote on award amounts at the next meeting). The EDALC team will be working on a press release on the winners next week (Paul is coordinating with County PIO Ken Lipp).
  • Lincoln County Economic Summit – Stacie sent out a press release and posted registration announcements to FB, IG, and LI. She also drafted a partner marketing request which Sarah sent out. This will hopefully lead to more cohesive promotion of the event over the next month. The team met Wednesday to iron out swag, panelist recruitment, and program details. Sarah worked on the pillars of the local economy videos and got some additional b-roll of CTE day at OCCC on Friday. She also worked on coordination of speakers, municipal representatives, and resource tables. 
  • Oregon Prospector – This week Sarah provided some background information to the City of Albany Mayor, Alex Johnson, on Oregon Prospector and getting started utilizing that site in his city. Mayor Johnson reached out to Dave Price, who referred him to EDALC. 
  • Community Connecting
  • Yachats State of the City Collaborative Volunteer Opportunity Social Hour – Monday night’s oncoming freeze didn’t keep away a full room of Yachatians at the Yachats Commons. The City Manager and Mayor’s presentations and Committee lead panel gave a powerful example of how to transparently educate the community about a municipality’s prior year’s achievements, current goals, budgeting processes and public resources. Leslie was thrilled to be a concept instigator and one of the 11 Partner Organizations sharing their collaborative efforts and volunteer opportunities for the community around the room. Delicious food and a NA bar from Beach Daisy enhanced the event for all attendees. City Manager, Bobbi Price, shared that the new Community Partner Organizations addition to The State of the City concept was a hit, and Leslie looks forward to working with Bobbi to improve the interactive social concept for next year. 
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Stacie boosted partner posts across all platforms throughout the week and shared community posts to stories today. 

 

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)