Good afternoon and happy Friday! Paul is off to the GDW conference in Austin today through Monday.

This past Tuesday marked the official start of Fall, and boy does it feel like it out there today! Whether you celebrate with pumpkin spiced lattes, watching football all weekend, or simply enjoying the leaves change, I hope you all enjoy this wonderful time of year on the coast. It also marks the start of one of the busiest times of year for the EDALC team, and we’re working away at getting prepped and ready to tackle it all! 

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

  • Partner Support/Community Support 
    • City of Toledo – On Tuesday, Paul met with Toledo City Manager Rich Huebner in Newport to discuss future funding and some potential future economic development project contracts.
    • Cascades West Economic Development District – Paul continued work with the CW COG and the Lane Cog in logistical planning and lining up speakers for the November 3rd “Ignite Economic Vitality Summit” in Albany.
    • CPR – Sarah took a CPR training class on Friday at the Samaritan Center for Health Education.
    • Newport Chamber of Commerce – Paul presented an update on our local economy at Wednesday’s Chamber luncheon in Otter Rock. He also walked through a “big picture” overview of current economic challenges and opportunities at the national, state and local/regional levels. The entire EDALC team was on-hand to cheer him on.
    • Strengthening Rural Families – Sarah attended a Strengthening Rural Families board meeting.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
    • Paul, Mark Farley (Hatfield) and Don Gerhart (Challenger Biosciences) met for a working dinner on Tuesday evening and another Wednesday morning meeting to discuss the status of current projects (nitrogen removal) and lay out a potential long term strategy for another, much longer-term coast-wide Blue Economy project.
  • Economic Mobility
    • Economic Mobility: City of Newport & OSU Business Trainings in Spanish – This week Allyson, Gia, and Leslie continued marketing outreach for Victor Villegas’ October 6th “Inteligencia Artificial para Crecimiento de Pequeños Negocios” free training. Click here for the Spanish flier for Victor’s training, and please share with your Spanish-speaking business owner (or aspiring business owner) networks. Leslie emailed PDFs and delivered printed copies of the flier to Tuesday’s Tacíta de Café audience and to Arcoíris Cultural’s office for distribution at their upcoming community events (see Leslie’s full update for Sunday’s event details). Stacie created social media posts for the class.
  • Entrepreneurship
    • Youth Entrepreneurship Program – Sarah filmed an interview with the owner of FTC Grading for the YEP program. She also went to their location in South Beach to get some additional b-roll.
    • OEN 10/14/26 PubTalk @ Primaltones – Stacie wrote and distributed a press release and coordinated marketing efforts with the OR Coast SBDC.
    • Fail Fest 11/12 @ Primaltones  – Stacie continued to recruit speakers as replies from the first round of invitations came in. Emcee + 4 speakers confirmed so far!
    • ROI – Stacie worked on the 2025-27 Rural Opportunity Initiative Interim Report which is due Sept 30th.
  • Broadband
    • Broadband Action Team – Paul attended this month’s BAT meeting on Thursday. All of Oregon’s BEAD contracts are now signed (totalling $587 million on broadband infrastructure projects). That’s about 85% of Oregon’s broadband allocation. Those projects are 63% fiber connections, 22% low Earth orbit satellite and 15% fixed wireless. Most states have some BEAD allocation funds left over – there is now talk at the NTIA of using some of those funds for enhancing broadband access and education (formerly called “Digital Equity” – all of those funds we cut by the new federal administration.
  • Core Economic Development Services
    • Community and Economic Development Grant Program – The whole team has been fielding queries from potential applicants during this first week of the grant program being open.
    • Lincoln County Economic Summit – Sarah reached out to a couple event locations for quotes for hosting the 2027 Lincoln County Economic Summit.
    • Oregon Prospector – Sarah updated Oregon Prospector listings.
  • Community Connecting
      • Center for Women’s Leadership (CWL) and Rural Development Initiatives (RDI) Leadership Cohort Co-facilitation – Leslie sent out a draft contract for CWL’s review this week. As an Alumni of last year’s leadership cohort, Leslie was invited to co-facilitate some of this year’s cohort sessions, under a contract with EDALC for her services. This marks another step ahead in EDALC’s contract-for-CC-services plan, where local, regional, and statewide partners contract EDALC for Leslie’s presentations, co-facilitations, or other supports that help forward their community-improving goals and ongoing efforts. This specific co-facilitation will be customized for this year’s cohort group, on a foundation similar to the popular “Power With” session that Aniko and Leslie co-led in April’s Regards to Rural Conference. See examples of other contracted support options in the Community Connector Menu of Services.
      • See Leslie’s full update here: September 25, 2026 EDALC CC Weekly Report
  • Organizational Management
    • Marketing & Communication – Stacie managed social media and boosted posts for OR Coast SBDC SBM programs and the Oregon Tourism Industry Partner Survey per requests from the OR Coast SBDC and OCVA. She also worked on concepts for future social media campaigns to highlight EDALC’s work.
    • Admin
      • Stacie finished the September meeting minutes.
      • The team met for an extended team meeting at Flying Dutchman winery following the Newport Chamber lunch.

 

Reminder:

Next week is our October Board of Directors meeting. Based on the survey sent out by Stacie, this meeting will be in-person (non-hybrid). We’ll be meeting at the Central Coast Food Web on the Bay Road at 3:30pm on Thursday, October 1st. We’ll have snacks, beverages, and we’ll be getting a tour of that awesome facility. We hope to see (many of) you there!

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)