Greetings and welcome to the first Friday in April! So far, it’s a gorgeous Spring day out there – go out there and enjoy it!

 

Yesterday, prior to the BoD meeting, numerous community leaders met with the new CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting at Hatfield. She is on a listening tour around the state… gaining regional awareness (she’s new and not from Oregon – she did 10 years at CNN in DC)… so part meet and greet, part sussing out where stories might be – all in all, a pretty valuable event and it really showcased our local collaborative efforts. Some of the EDALC team and Board of Directors were in attendance.

 

Thanks to all who attended our shortened BoD meeting on Zoom yesterday. Susan Schuytema (yup, Paul’s better half) filled in for Majalise (who was stuck on a plane in Atlanta) and provided an update on the upcoming LCSD bond measure. The Board also decided once again (pending YBEF approval) to combine EDALC’s required annual meeting with YBEF’s and make it a fun and social celebration. Mark your calendars for Thursday, June 26th!

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
  • CCFW – Sarah met with Jim and Laura at CCFW to prepare for the quarterly board meeting next Tuesday.
      • Nye Beach Arts & Culture District – Paul met with Jason to talk about efforts underway to stand up an arts and culture district in the Nye Beach region and also what hindsight lessons have been learned from EDALC’s ART Toledo work.
      • OEDA – Paul and Sarah met with the conference planning team for the Oregon Economic Development Association to develop a schedule and local tour ideas for their annual conference which will be at Salishan this year.
  • Take Action Lincoln County – Stacie completed testing and final changes on 3/31.
  • Yachats – The team met on Wednesday to review the progress on the online budget allocation game we’ll be sharing with the Yachats community in late April. The team also helped to create (in a spreadsheet for now) budget “cards” that the players will get to help them make interesting budget decisions. Today, Paul finished up the core coding on the game to ready it for testing over the next two weeks.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • O2IH Website – Stacie and Sarah completed content tasks from last week’s check-in
      • NOAA Young Fishermans Grant – Paul met with Rural Prosperity Partners, Sea Grant, the Tillamook Coast Visitors Association and OCCC this week to discuss a potential collaborative grant application (due at the end of April).
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Cascades West Innovation Hub – Stacie completed and sent the March project report and reviewed agenda for the 4/29 event. Sarah and Stacie tested the state innovation hub website. 
  • Youth Entrepreneurship Program – Sarah met with Kelliane and is starting some initial event logistics and marketing work for the YEP event.
  • Broadband
      • BEAD Program – The Oregon Broadband Office is still pushing ahead on the BEAD grant program (in our region, Pioneer prequalified for the program), even though federal changes to the program are likely. Paul, CW COG and the Lane COG started coordinating on potential letters of support for upcoming applications (50% of governmental units in a school district region must support an application)
  • Core Economic Development Services
  • Oregon Prospector – Sarah updated listings on Oregon Prospector and added new ones.
  • Community Connecting
  • CC Grant Report for The Ford Family Foundation – Thanks to Paul’s help, EDALC submitted the report on Monday, meeting the deadline for the past year’s grant from The Ford Family Foundation (TFFF). It was incredible to look at how many collaborative efforts have started and evolved along Leslie’s Rural Community Building (RCB) path ever since she started collaborating with their network in 2018, but especially in the past few years as a part of the EDALC team. Thank you to everyone who’s worked alongside and supported Leslie’s journey! 
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
        • Sarah brainstormed some ideas and began creating a framework for the business resource video that EDALC won a Business Oregon grant for. Paul and Sarah will meet with the company contracted to do the videos, TZOM films, next week. 
        • Stacie posted Friday community roundup and shared relevant partner/regional posts on various social media channels and worked on social media planning/brainstorming.
        • Stacie began writing content for the Spring 2025 newsletter.
  • Project Work
        • Stacie created a project for YBEF/EDALC annual meeting. Preliminary queries went out on venue and entertainment.
  • Admin
  • Quickbooks – Paul continued his work shoring up QB reporting, based on recommendations from Fitzsimmons’ team. The goal is to wrap that work up in April.
  • Fund Development – Paul met with Nina Vetter, City Manager of Newport, about EDALC operational funding (looking good) and also spoke with Jason about OCCA potentially being a fiscal agent for aligned project work in the future.
      • Stacie completed minutes from the 4/3/25 BoD 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!

 

Cheers,

 

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