Greetings and welcome to July – can you believe it? This weekend is one of those rare and wonderful times when the 4th holiday falls on a Friday, giving us all a long weekend of grilling and enjoying slushy drinks on the deck.Also, welcome to the first update of the 2025-26 fiscal year!

 

Thanks to all who could make it for our third joint annual meeting with the Yaquina Bay Economic Foundation. Hats off to all the staff, with an extra Hazzah out to Stacie for her heavy-lifting work on the event. Great food, great bubbly and great music! All hail Plankton!

 

Paul is going to be out on vacation (Paul and Susan are heading to Kona on the Big Island) through the 17th, so if you need anything, reach out to Sarah, Stacie or Leslie (Paul assures the team that he’s got things all set for the 7/15 payroll run).

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
  • Cascades West Economic Development District – Stacie met with Community and Economic Development staff from the Oregon Cascades West Council of Governments and and Chantelle Meyer from the City of Florence last week to discuss the most effective way(s) to publicize the public comment period of the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) for 2025-2030. She shared Lincoln County media and community contacts, and also provided feedback on the public comment survey, press release, and social media graphic.
  • Central Coast Food Web – Sarah met with Jim to prepare for the upcoming CCFW board meeting next Monday.
      • Newport Chamber – Paul and the Executive Committee met to start the Executive Director review process and set up a way to get feedback from both the Board and the membership (one of Paul’s last Chamber duties!)
      • OCCC – The DACUM (Developing a Curriculum) team met with the Worldwide Instructional Design Systems representative to review the two completed DACUM processes for the Aquaculture Technician and Maritime Land-based Technician certifications. The next step is a validation survey of industry professionals.
      • Rural Prosperity Partners – Paul joined a number of other nonprofits this morning as part of a focus group to talk through the “pain points” of grant researching, writing and reporting. RPP is developing a product called Grant Pilot that will blend their expertise with AI tools to have a web-based all in one grant tool for small organizations.
      • Toledo/Art, Oysters & Brews – Paul finished up the 2025 AOB posters and got those off to the printer. Sarah continued to coordinate the Art, Oysters & Brews event – sending out logistical emails, updating the website, and writing the draft press release.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
  • Website – Stacie and Sarah wrote the June blue economy story highlighting OoNee Sea Urchin Ranch which Stacie published to the website earlier this week. Stacie also added additional blue economy resources to the Resources Explorer.
  • Entrepreneurship
      • Rural Opportunity Initiative – Last week, Paul attended the “graduation ceremony” for the state’s 19 ROI communities. It’s always amazing and inspiring to learn of the diverse, impactful projects going on in rural Oregon. Paul will complete the final report later this month and then it’s time to gear up for the next round of ROI funding. So far, EDALC has brought in over $170,000 in support funding through this program. The team also received a first draft of the video produced by TZOM and will be submitting comments next week (this is funded by an additional grant EDALC secured through the ROI program).
  • Core Economic Development Services
      • Enterprise Zone – Paul is working with Business Oregon to get an answer on the “end date” for our EZ. Currently, there is no state employee directly overseeing the program, so we need to work through our regional BizOR rep, so the process is slow. A number of EZs in the state, including ours, has an end date in sponsoring resolutions of June 30, 2025 (because that’s when the state program was to sunset before the legislature extended the program). The official document we have from the state says it sunsets on June 30, 2025 UNLESS the state extends the program, which then pushes the sunset date out to 2032. The question is: which takes precedence? Local resolution or official declaration from the state? We’ll keep you posted!
  • Lincoln County Economic Report Update – Sarah met with Kelliane from the SBDC to try to utilize their PlacerAi tool to determine the commuting patterns of the employees of the top 10 largest employers in the county. In addition, she did some additional research on debt to income ratios to better understand the report.
  • Major Employers Report – Sarah continued to work on the major employers report.
  • Oregon Prospector – Sarah updated Oregon Prospector listings and added new ones.
  • Community Connecting
  • TFFF Funding Request Submitted! – Our EDALC Invite-Only Grant with TFFF was submitted today! A huge thank you to Susy Lacer for her in-kind support of the process, which helped Paul and me complete everything before he leaves on vacation tomorrow. 
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication – Stacie updated the BoD section of the website, scheduled 4th of July posts, started working on the summer newsletter and shared relevant partner/regional posts on various social media channels as usual.
  • Project Work – Stacie wrapped up the annual meeting project including leading the team through a short retrospective. Please let her know if you have any feedback!
  • Admin
  • Nonprofit SBM – Last week, Paul attended the second Nonprofit Small Business Management session. The session focused on Board management and recruitment. The facilitator was Allison Hart, a super-skilled nonprofit consultant. It looks like we’ll need to tackle some Board policies on Director recruitment in the coming months. Sarah will be attending the SBM later this month when Paul is on vacation.
      • Stacie created the agenda for this week’s team meeting.
      • Paul began planning organizational work that we should get rolling at the start of the new fiscal year.

 

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 weekend!

 

Cheers,

 

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