Greetings and welcome to Friday!

 

First and foremost – the 2026-27 Lincoln County Community and Economic Development Grant Program is now open (deets below)! Here’s the link to the program page: https://co.lincoln.or.us/1301/10187/Community-and-Economic-Development-Grant.

 

Secondly, per the survey results, our October 1st board meeting will be in-person at the Central Coast Food Web at the usual meeting time.

 

This Thursday, we held our day-long annual team retreat at the Little Whale Cove library. We covered topics such as our DISC assessments, reviewing job descriptions, reviewing our work for the fiscal year, initial 2027 Economic Summit brainstorming and looking at changes to the way we communicate externally (riffing off of our discussions from the last BoD meeting). We wrapped the day up with yummy snacks and a wine tasting.

 

Paul will be off to the annual Game Designers Workshop in-person annual conference in Austin from Friday through Monday next week. This is that funky conference that’s limited to 30 of the top (computer) game designers in the world, and it’s all held under NDA (what happens in Austin stays in Austin). Each of the 30 participants must also run and facilitate a 45 minute session – Paul is still sorting out which of two possible topics he’ll be presenting.

 

Here’s our team update for the week:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • Dock Walk – Sarah put together some Oregon fisheries data for a dock walk she is giving next Monday.
      • Waldport Chamber – Paul set up and ran the sound for the 5th annual Beach, Bike & Blues festival last Saturday (the Waldport Chamber rented EDALC’s sound system for the event). The event historically hits on days when the weather is challenging (though not on purpose) – Saturday was gray, cold and there were some pretty intense afternoon rainstorms – but four awesome bands powered through and delivered some amazing blues music for the faithful and shivering!
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Stacie created the September blog post.
  • Economic Mobility
      • Cohort Meeting – Allyson and Paul attended the monthly virtual ICMA national Economic Mobility Cohort meeting on Wednesday. They heard a presentation on how to involve multiple municipal departments into economic mobility project work.
      • City of Newport Co-Design Team Session 2 – On Tuesday, Allyson, Gia, and Leslie led the second in-person session to share out the first “sprint” interviews and plan the team’s next round of sprint interviews. 
  • Entrepreneurship
  • OEN 10/14/26 PubTalk @ Primaltones Paul introduced speakers to OEN. 
  • Core Economic Development Services
  • Community and Economic Development Grant Program  – Stacie worked with Lincoln County staff, Paul, and Sarah to put the finishing touches on program materials and coordinated the official launch of the 2026-27 grant at noon today. The press release and Mailchimp campaign have been sent, social posts are live, and websites for both parties are up to date.
      • Newport Facade Grant Program – Paul, Sarah and Stacie met with Nina at City Hall on Tuesday morning. They reviewed EDALC’s program design and administration proposal, talked through details of the program and approaches to potential applicant engagement. Paul put together a draft agreement (at Nina’s request) for the work and emailed it off this morning. Stacie prepared the meeting agenda and began updating the project plan based on the conversation.
      • Major Employers – Sarah did additional reach outs again to the last couple organizations she needs employment numbers from. 
  • Oregon Infrastructure Summit – Sarah attended the Oregon Infrastructure Summit in Salem on Wednesday. There were presentations on energy, infrastructure needs from a city/county/special districts perspective, and infrastructure business needs. There was a lot of information and challenges discussed in one day!
      • Oregon Prospector – Sarah updated Oregon Prospector listings.
  • Community Connecting
  • Café Aquarium 2026 – The third annual event last Friday went amazingly – as far as all the conversations and the exit sticker voting chart shared. Stay tuned for more data and feedback on the event as Leslie’s busy compiling the passports into Qualtrics and reaching back out to organizations and volunteers for feedback surveys. Then she’ll dive into the incentive raffle and other post-event projects, as attendees have until the 22nd to fill out their online feedback surveys for an additional raffle entry. A HUGE thank you to all the event supporters, organizations, volunteers, and attendees for making this year’s event the best yet.
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication – Stacie managed social media.
  • Admin – Stacie, Sarah, and Paul prepped for the team retreat. Stacie reviewed the board meeting survey results and sent a reminder to those who hadn’t responded on Tuesday. Stacie also updated Monday.com to include all potential projects (to the best of our knowledge) for this 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 – we love hearing from you! Have a wonderful weekend!

 

Cheers,

 

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