Greetings and welcome to our first update of the 2024-25 fiscal year!

 

Let’s welcome our FY24-25 EDALC officers (it was, we’d like to point out, a seamless transition of power):

 

President: Carrie Lewis

Past-President: Bob Cowen

Vice-President: Majalise Tolan

Secretary: Lesley Ogden

Treasurer: Michael Smith

At Large: Jason Holland

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • PIER Selection Committee – This week, our local PIER Selection Committee met in person with a number of the state folks from Oregon Housing & Community Services. One application (Highland Estates) is moving through the grant process (it’s already been approved by our committee – still more hoops for them to jump through) and another has come in from LCSD. Both together could use up the majority of our Lincoln County funds – though there is a 30% holdback that might allow a smaller project further down the road.
      • YBEF/EDALC Annual Meeting – Stacie, Paul, and Leslie unpacked and wrapped up payments with vendors.
  • ART Toledo – Paul created a poster for Art, Oysters & Brews, Sarah worked on an Art, Oysters & Brews press release and an event promotion mailchimp email to the entire ART Toledo mailing list. In addition, she sent out another mailchimp email to the artist mailing list trying to recruit more artists to be vendors at the event and made a promotional video for the event that is up on our Youtube page: https://youtu.be/Ot5MPs4IPAw?si=LqrDVvSLTACPnVPy
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
    • NOAA Economic Impact Report – Mark Farley and Paul met with the folks from the Eastern Research Group to preview an initial presentation slide deck and discuss presentation logistics. We’re still looking at dates, but we hope to do two in-person presentations of the results – one to the Port of Newport Commission and the other to an in-person EDALC/YBEF meeting (with some additional invited guests). We’ll keep you posted as the schedule is firmed up.
    • NOAA Climate Accelerator – Mark Farley and Paul spent some time this week evaluating our potential participation on the Phase 2 NOAA Climate Change Accelerator grant with Washington’s Maritime Blue. A few red flags popped up and the funds coming to Oregon would be significantly less than originally stated (and not really enough to do the work). There were also some red flags raised by our federal delegation. At the moment, it looks like we’ll be stepping back from that and exploring other opportunities.
    • DoE ETIPP Grant – This week, with the assistance of Challenger Biosciences, we applied for a DoE Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project grant. The technical assistance program works to help communities to transform their energy systems and increase energy resilience through strategic energy planning and the implementation of solutions that address their specific challenges. The grant is for $250,000 to work with energy-focused laboratories, plus $50K of funding directly to EDALC and Challenger Biosciences. We’re looking to use it as a tool to further our green methanol research project.

  • Entrepreneurship
    • We were contacted by the Oregon Lottery – they provide some of the funds for the Rural Opportunity Initiative program through Business Oregon. They will be producing a few video features on select ROI communities and their good work and we were picked as one of the region’s to highlight

  • Community Connecting (from Leslie)
    • Today, I’m attending the second of a 2-day course being piloted by Lisa Norton, CAO of CTSI, and Victor Villegas, Broadband and Digital Technologies Adoption Coordinator of OSU Extension. The first session, on June 26th at Lincoln City OCCC, was a thoughtful introduction to CTSI storytelling and history, and the wide range of AI platforms available. Our group’s homework was to experiment with the platforms to create a story to share in today’s class. I’m excited to see what others have created, and I’m interested in others’ feedback on the video I created on https://invideo.io/. 
    • Here’s a link to Leslie’s full update: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JpLcYSCoUsbvcGkV2u_GjH9lF2mAwj7Dg-oQwCfcpMQ/edit?usp=sharing

  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
      • Stacie added takeactionlincolncounty.com links to social media profiles and posted launch announcement/donation opportunities to IG and FB.
      • Stacie and Paul finalized an ad for Lincoln City Chamber of Commerce guide.
      • Stacie created the outline/first draft of the summer newsletter with updated branding with the goal of sending out next week. Team is working on assigned sections.
      • Stacie shared Reinventing Rural co.starters info on LI, FB, and IG and posted weekly roundup to IG and FB stories.

  • Project Work
  • Intern planning
        • Sarah worked on developing the project structure for the new intern Sam Laurel that will be starting next week. Sam is from Newport and is going to be a junior at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. We’ve got him for a short month to do some research on our Economic Vitality Report Card project.
  • Major Employers Report
      • Sarah continued to reach out to local businesses for their employment numbers for the Major Employers report.

  • Admin
    • Funding from Lincoln City – Paul presented to the Lincoln City Council on Monday night for our annual formal ask for EDALC operational funding. We were able to deliver a strong presentation and for the second year in the row, we received unanimous support for funding (Paul remembers the first presentation to the Lincoln City Council, when they discussed whether they wanted any economic development at all – we’ve come a long way!). 
    • Stacie and Paul met to go over organizational coordinator priorities for the next month.

 

As a reminder, our first Board of Directors meeting will be Thursday, August 1st at 3:30pm via Zoom. Paul will send out the complete year-long meeting schedule next week.

 

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! Looking down the road, Paul will be out from the 19th to the 29th – he and Susan are heading to Minnesota’s boundary waters to spend a long week on Lake Vermillion (with a pontoon boat!) with friends.

 

Cheers,

 

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