Greetings and welcome to Friday! A gorgeous but cold day out there! Last night, I was driving north from Waldport to the Newport Chamber After Hours (at the La Quinta Inn) and the sunset was stunning – one of the most amazing I’d event seen off of Seal Rock. Other folks thought so too and were swerving off the road to take pics… nearly a handful of fender benders!
Here’s our weekly staff update:
Broadband::
Thursday was the “day of broadband” with numerous Zoom meetings. We held our monthly Broadband Action Team (BAT) meeting and learned about some key legislative bills (including SB 1603), the need for a statewide cohesive strategic broadband vision (before the ARPA funds start flowing) and some challenges with the newly released FCC broadband map. It seems like Oregon’s Broadband Office did not respond with a unified challenge to the FCC map (as the state of Utah did), leaving counties on their own to mount their own challenges to the map.
We also had an update with Solarity (actually, two meetings) to discuss the ongoing EDA planning grant for Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties. We also made the call to change the Broadband 101 date away from January 25th, since that’s when most municipal partners will be in Salem meeting with legislators on that day. – Paul
Communication/Marketing::
I posted an ad for a childcare class on our Facebook page and updated our page’s cover photo with the new banner they put up at our office! I posted an ad for Paul’s Creativity Boot Camp on our Facebook page. I added marketing/communication ideas onto our marketing Monday.com page in order to start building a marketing calendar for the year. – Sarah
Community Connecting::
Leslie is off (with Lisa Norton, Assistant GM of CTSI in tow) to Portland today for a Foundations for a Better Oregon Legislative Summit, so no update from her, but we’ll get the 411 on her meetings next week. – Paul
Community and Economic Development Grant::
I’ve got about half of the grant reviews in from the Board – if you can get the rest of them to me early next week, that would be awesome! I’ll combine into a master score sheet and get it out to everyone. Thanks so much for your work on this! – Paul
Creative Economies::
Mayor Cross and I were on a call this week with the Oregon Arts Commission and Business Oregon. It looks like there is a house bill in play for $25M to support Arts & Culture in the state – the Arts Commission is hoping to get a “slice” of that to tap a few proof-of-concept communities with some funding over the next two years to then make the case for a well-funded state-wide program to support Arts and Culture Districts (logistics based off of how Main St. communities work and are certified and funded)… They want Toledo to be one of those communities, based on the work that ART Toledo has done thus far. – Paul
I attended the ART Toledo meeting Thursday morning. I worked on a fundraising list and plan for ART Toledo on Friday. – Sarah
Innovation::
I was part of a focus group today hosted by Onward Eugene and facilitated by Venn Collective (a consulting firm). They have one of the Business Oregon Innovation Hub planning grants (11 total were given out to each of the State’s economic development districts). It was a wonderful, in-depth two hour conversation on what a high-performing innovation hub would look like supporting the Cascades West Economic Development District. The end goal is to prepare a plan to compete for one of the five Innovation Hubs that will be formed in the state (I’d think we have a great chance since our EDD has both major research universities in the state) – Paul
Organizational Development::
Both Leslie and Sarah finished their six-month FY 2022-23 self-evaluations. I’ll be doing mine early next week, then I’ll sit down and discuss with the team. – Paul
The OCCC staff got our large banner installed over the entrance of the Waldport facility (many thanks to Dave Price for the design) – swing by our Facebook page to check it out: https://www.facebook.com/EconDevLincolnCounty
Our Communities::
Lincoln City – Last Friday and this afternoon we had two great working Zooms with the Lincoln City economic development team (Alison and Seth) and myself. I think we’ve got a great plan going forward – so awesome to work with such passionate, smart professionals! – Paul
Project Work::
I created and shared my group’s presentation planning document for our upcoming group presentation for Leadership Lincoln on Wednesday. -I updated Oregon Prospector listings on Wednesday and Friday. I updated the average rent of commercial buildings in Lincoln Count spreadsheet on Thursday. I updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider on Wednesday and Friday. – Sarah
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
Economic Resilience Team – This was formerly the “Covid Call” meeting that Dave Price started up in early 2020 (my notes show that the first one I attended was on April 1, 2020 – almost two months before our move out west!). This was the first meeting of 2023 and it has switched back to Zoom-only for maximum participation. It was a full house, with updates on the legislative session from Senator Anderson and Representative Gomberg, plus numerous municipal and organizational updates – always a meeting with a very high signal-to-noise ratio! – Paul
Upcoming::
January 24th – The Yachats Chamber will be hosting their first mixer with Bobbi Price at the helm at the Adobe in Yachats.
January 27th – EDALC and the OCCC ill be hosting the Q1 Northwest Oregon Works board meeting in Waldport on January 27th. It’ll be a hybrid meeting with an anticipated 30+ folks in physical attendance.
January 27th & 28th – Hatfield will be hosting the Big Blue Film Festival (https://hmsc.oregonstate.edu/big-blue-film-fest) – it truly looks amazing! The entire EDALC staff will be checking it out.
February 15th – OCCC and LCSD will be hosting a CTE day at the OCCC Newport campus. We’ll be helping out doing some mock interviews with the student-attendees.
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Remember, there will be NO EDALC BoD meeting in January, as per past tradition. Our February meeting will be on Thursday, February 2nd (3:30pm, via Zoom) and it will be our grant review meeting. Here is the Zoom info for that meeting:
Topic: February EDALC BoD (grant review)
Time: Feb 2, 2023 03:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9178104987?pwd=bVJDN0VlUEM3aG9EaFhJQUZjcDJHUT09
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 🙂