Greetings and welcome to Friday! Also, welcome to Memorial Day weekend, the official kickoff of the summer tourist season. No left turns on 101 from Thursday through Sunday!

 

Tonight is the Aquarium’s big kick-off event for their Amazon exhibit (the river, not the online shopping monopoly). May the crowd be huge and the piranhas well-behaved!

 

This weekend is also the 110th running of the Indianapolis 500 – the grandstands are sold out – the event is expecting 350,000 fans on race day (Sunday). For those of you into the race, 2025 winner Alex Palou is the polesitter, with a qualifying speed of 232 mph.

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • AOB – Sarah reached out to last year’s vendors about signing up again this year and began working on the necessary event permits. Stacie completed and shared volunteer needs and signup form draft with Toledo City Manager and Toledo Chamber.
      • NAO – Sarah attended a Nonprofit Association of Oregon board training at the Newport Performing Arts Center on Tuesday. She learned a lot and came away with many ideas and tasks!
      • Newport High School – Paul was interviewed by a senior in the International Baccalaureate program – her final project is a report on how globalization and tariffs are impacting Lincoln County businesses. Sarah put together some supporting info and data about which Newport fisheries export their catch.
      • OCCC – This Wednesday evening was the OCCC’s budget committee meeting, and once again the college’s Robin Gitner delivered a masterclass in how to prepare and explain a budget. The budget passed the committee unanimously.
  • SRF – Sarah attended a Strengthening Rural Families board meeting Monday evening.
    • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • NOAA RFI – Paul met with Paula on Tuesday to talk about the recently released Request For Information. It seems like it’s a surprisingly low lift, information-wise. EDALC stands by to offer whatever assistance might be needed (such as drafting template letters of support for our electeds). Paul also pulled together some additional information put together by ERG (after the Economic Impact Report) and sent that off.
    • Economic Mobility
      • ICMA EMO – Paul and Allyson attended an ICMA EMO Special Assistants Program Virtual Meeting on Wednesday. These meetings are an opportunity for all the partner communities to share their work, best practices and ask questions of the larger group. This was the first meeting since the initial grant reports were submitted by the cohort.
    • Broadband
      • BEAD & ACP – Oregon BEAD recipients (there are three in Lincoln County) have received draft contracts, with construction potentially starting by year-end. Contracts must be signed by the end of September. Bipartisan support is growing in Congress to inject about $7B into the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which previously served 23M households, helping provide cost subsidies for broadband Internet access.
    • Core Economic Development Services
      • Community and Economic Development Grant Program – Paul spoke with Walter Chuck on Thursday and Walter informed him that they put $250,000 in the 2026-27 budget (which still needs to pass) for the ComEcDev grant program (anticipating additional TLT dollars from the legislature’s allocation change). Already the team is planning to ramp up early marketing for this grant program. Walter also got some historical background on the program – he was going to present it as an example of positive and innovative TLT usage to the Association of Oregon Counties.
  • Major Employers Report – Sarah continued working on the Major Employers Report and sent emails to over 50 businesses this week.
      • Opportunity Zones – Paul had meetings with Newport, Lincoln City and Toledo on the upcoming Opportunity Zone 2.0 federal incentive program. Stacie, Paul and Sarah spent much of the week putting together and submitting two tract nomination applications for Newport (with some much-needed information from Derrick Tokos). Lincoln City will be submitting two applications of their own, and EDALC helped provide some information and verbiage for them. The submission deadline is 5pm today. The governor can designate up to 58 census tracts as Opportunity Zones (the application process is being managed by Business Oregon).
    • Community Connecting
  • Oregon Humanities Participatory Discussion Facilitation Training and Next Opportunities – Oregon Humanities (OH) and Center for Women’s Leadership (CWL) funded Leslie’s participation and lodging in last week’s 2-day training in Bend. In addition to building understanding and practicing participatory discussions in small groups, this training expanded and strengthened Leslie’s network of multi-sector leaders throughout Oregon (including Liora Sponko, Senior Program Manager at Oregon Cultural Trust, who remembered EDALC from previous collaborations such as the AEP6 project). This training also makes Leslie eligible to pitch future OH Conversation Project topics, which can help grow and sustain future in-person visits and learning exchanges with her statewide rural networks. This step would create opportunities to share replicable, scalable CC concepts such as the Expedition Lens and CC Support Options applicable to other communities’ complex challenges. The CWL supported Leslie’s lodging for this training as a next step towards her potential co-facilitation of this year’s Turn Up Your Voice Cohort with RDI (currently in planning discussions with CWL and potential funders).
      • See Leslie’s full 2-week update here: May 22, 2026 EDALC CC Weekly Report
      • Community Connector Weekly Report Archives 2024+
      • Check in with The Ford Family Foundation – Paul and Leslie had a check-in call with TFFF’s Max Gimbel on Thursday. They discussed the current grant wrap up and next year’s funding (still at the 50% level) – though it does sound like EDALC can close this grant out early and immediately apply for the next round of funding.
    • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
        • Stacie started work on the Q1 media report and started a new “Economic Development in Progress” social media series with a recap of the OZ work. A Memorial Day post has been scheduled.
  • Project Work
      • Stacie prepared her presentations for (and attended) her last Leadership Lincoln class. Graduation is June 3rd!
      • Stacie finalized and sent out the annual meeting invitations.

 

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)