Greetings and welcome to Friday! It looks like we might have another semi-dry weekend – time to go out and do some grilling!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Project Associate Search – We’ve had six applicants so far and after reviewing the resumes, I’ll be doing a first interview with one candidate next Tuesday. She’s got a degree in economics and has had several internships and part-time jobs in the area of economic development data analysis. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.
Rural Opportunity Initiative – This week, I met with both Brad Attig (The Foundry Collective) and Dave Price (SBDC – but does he need an introduction?). We had some great conversations on how we can collaborate through our ROI projects to support both our Lincoln County restaurant sector as well as our creative solopreneurs out there. Dave game me a few excellent follow-up contacts that I’ll touch base with next week.
Organizational Funding – I’ll be meeting with Toledo (Mayor Cross and Judy Richter) early next week to talk EDALC funding. I’m also working to set up a follow-up conversation with Spencer at the City of Newport. Also on my queue next week is crafting the “leave behind” document for funding asks – riffling off of our Organizational Summary document.
O2IH – We had a great O2IH team meeting today (the first since we had the bad news about the EDA grant). It really lifted all of our spirits – because there is so much great work going on, including a $750K grant going through OCVA for local food system development and a good chunk of that is for keeping locally produced seafood local – they’ll be partnering with Laura from Local Ocean. We should know next week if we’ll be participating in the NOW/Colpac Good Jobs Challenge grant – we’ll probably at least lend some of our narrative and coalition partners to the mix. On the Blue Economy sector survey, Melissa Murphy (BizOR) told us that there may be some funds coming out of the short legislative session for multiple sector survey research projects and one of those sectors might be the Blue Economy – she asked Commissioner Jacobson if they’d hold off on signing the BizOR funding agreement until we know if that funding comes through.
National Restaurant Association Good Jobs Challenge – We’re taking the lead in coordinating restaurant and hospitality letters of support for this grant for the portion of Oregon that’s included – the coastal counties of Clatsop, Tillamook and Lincoln. I created a shared Google spreadsheet that allows us to track the process of 30+ letters and ensure that we’re not doing multiple asks of these busy businesses. The NRA also lead a stakeholders Zoom meeting earlier in the week.
County Community and Economic Development Grants – On Monday, I met with Asia, Casey and Kristi at the courthouse to talk through the online grant portal technology used for this grant program, as well as the social services grant. The county team is trying to evaluate whether or not to enhance the Smartsheet application (used in 2020) or continue with the current system – with an eye towards future functionality, data retention and ease of use (for both admin and applicants). It sounds like they are leaning towards using the portal technology from this year’s grant cycle going forward (and perhaps also for some future external ARPA funding requests).
Shared Strategic Plans Project – I met last Friday afternoon with Leslie Palotas (Newport Vision 2040) to talk through next steps on the shared “plans of work” website tool we’re creating (through CWEDD grant dollars) – our next step will be to train Laura Kimberly at the Newport Library on the system for one more set of eyes before we bring all the initial stakeholders back together.
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
REMINDER: Our next BoD meeting will be Thursday, February 3rd at 3:30pm.
Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂