Greetings and welcome to Friday and the middle of May – only a few weeks until the summer season officially kicks off!

This week’s update is a little shorter than usual – Leslie is off on vacation with her family and Paul and Marshall are in the Dalles yesterday and today (Marshall arrived on Wednesday for meetings with Oregon’s community college presidents) for the quarterly Oregon Community College Association Board of Directors meeting (they are both on the Board representing OCCC).

Wednesday night was the Youth Entrepreneurship Programs finale – the Pitch Night competition, held at Hatfield’s Gladys Valley Auditorium. Over 70 folks were in attendance to hear the five finalists pitch their business ideas, all vying for $6,500 in prize money. Sarah ran the tech (expertly!), Stacie grabbed video footage and Paul served as the event emcee. Such a great celebration of our young entrepreneurs! Huzzah to our award-winning Oregon Coast SBDC for delivering a third year of this transformative training to our local high school students.

Here’s our weekly team update:

  • Partner Support/Community Support 
    • Art, Oysters & Brews – Paul, Sarah and Stacie met with Toledo City Manager Rich and Toledo Chamber of Commerce Director Amber on Wednesday to discuss progress and next steps. Stacie updated the project plan and budget in preparation for the meeting, and  drafted a volunteer signup sheet as well as low-barrier “AOB Special” options for Main St. businesses who would like to be more involved this year. Sarah created a list of businesses and community non-profits to reach out to for potential booth registration.
    • Nye Beach Arts & Culture District – Paul met with Jason this week to discuss potential types of members and viewpoints that would make a balanced and insightful leadership group for the district.
    • Bloom Newport – Stacie attended volunteer orientation on Tuesday and will be helping with event setup from 12-3 tomorrow.
    • TALC – Stacie updated sponsorship categories as needed to hold awards for sponsors wishing to pay outside of the PayPal platform.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
    • Blue Economy Workforce Development Workshop – Paul participated in the all-day workshop last Friday (about 80 folks in attendance). It was put together by an OSU Oceanography professor with funds from an NSF grant. While much of the content was revisiting work and efforts already completed or currently underway, it did provide a great networking forum – especially between OSU folks and those out in the field, doing the real workforce development work. The slightly forced facilitation did provide opportunities for disparate folks to come together to discuss the Blue Economy, which was very valuable. Rep. Gomberg delivered a sobering (but in the end, upbeat) keynote presentation.
    • NOAA RFI – NOAA’s Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs issued an announcement mid-week that the RFI (Request for Information) for a potential NOAA MOC-P fleet relocation (or possibly remaining in Newport) will be posted on the government’s SAM website soon (probably today). Paul and Mark Farley have met several times this week to discuss the role our NOAA Economic Impact Report will play, and Paul and Paula will be meeting next week to discuss our local support team.
  • Entrepreneurship
    • EDA Grant Application – At long last (the grant was completed a few weeks ago, but the Fed’s EDA grant submission portal was down), our $327,000 EDA grant that is the first step in creating a Lincoln County business incubator was submitted on Wednesday night.
    • Stacie attended the second session of RAIN’s Rural CREATOR program.
    • YEP – Sarah put together the YEP program, pdf slideshow, powerpoint presentation (for backup), crowd favorite survey, sent out a marketing email through eventbrite and got event supplies together from the office.
  • Core Economic Development Services
    • Opportunity Zones – Paul is working with several municipalities (Lincoln City, Newport, Toledo and Yachats) to see if it makes sense for census tracts in those cities to be nominated for OZ 2.0 status. At minimum, EDALC will be submitting a two-tract nomination application for the City of Newport – any other participants should be locked in by Monday. The deadline is next Friday, so this will be an “all hands on deck” push next week.
    • Major Employers Report – Sarah continued to work on the Major Employers report. 
    • Oregon Prospector – Sarah updated Oregon Prospector listings.
  • Organizational Management
    • Marketing & Communication
        • Stacie managed social media, updated the media tracker and posted a YEP recap to all channels.
    • Project Work
        • Stacie worked on the annual meeting which is set for July 1st from 5:30 to 8:30 pm. Invitations with request for R.S.V.P. will be sent out once YBEF reviews the guest list.
    • Admin
      • EDALC Annual Report – Paul completed a draft of the new annual report, and had the team proof it (twice). With just a few tweaks, it should be ready to share out next week.
      • Visioning – Paul received a report on our Vision brainstorming on Thursday. He’ll send out some info to those Directors who couldn’t make the Board meeting on Monday to capture their thoughts and ideas.
      • Stacie completed the May BoD meeting minutes.

 

REMINDER: Our joint EDALC/YBEF annual meeting and celebration will be Wednesday, July 1st at 5:30pm at Myril’s. Mark your calendars and invites will go out soon!

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)