Greetings and welcome to a gorgeous Friday! Looks to be a gorgeous but windy weekend!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Cindy’s week:
* Proofread grant documents
* Worked on updating Board Commitment Statement
* Sent out ART Toledo press release and photos (should be a nice article in Travel Oregon/Beach Connections by the semi-famous Andre Hagestedt)
* Managed EDALC FB page
* Mailed all required EZ Tax District info to Government Affairs
* Put together Member Spotlight: Double Feature for the June Newsletter (featuring our two new Board members who are fascinating!)
* Wrote a newsletter piece on how to curate FB posts to grow your business
* Provided the usual support, collaboration, and comic relief
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Paul’s week:
Enterprise Zone Re-Designation – On Tuesday night, the Port Commission of the Port of Toledo voted to support a resolution for the re-designation of the LC Enterprise Zone. Same also for the City of Toledo on Wednesday night (after a nearly three hour meeting!) and the Port of Alsea yesterday afternoon. The only two votes remaining are Lincoln County and the Port of Newport and those are both scheduled for their meetings on Monday, June 28th. Other than that, we just need to pull together the maps and GIS files and this epic project will be good to go! I also did some research for Rogue Brewery on an amended exemption application (they are investing more and creating more jobs than originally anticipated) and made sure they are good to go.
COGs (Council of Governments) Grant Program – I submitted our two grant applications on Monday (for the OregonProspector project with the City of Toledo and for the county-wide, multi-organizational online strategic plan viewer with the City of Newport). This is a quick turn around application cycle, so we should hear back in the next week or two.
Newsletter – Cindy and I wrapped up our June EDALC newsletter this week – we’ll give it one more read through early next week and get it sent out on Tuesday.
Letter of Support – I drafted a letter of support for OCVA in their efforts to apply for a USDA ARPA-funded grant to support the local food sector in our region.
Meet and Greets – This Thursday, Michael took me as a guest to the Newport Rotary meeting, and it was awesome to meet some new folks and connect with some folks I’d already met (more than I’d thought). It’s been over four years since I’ve been to a Rotary meeting (I’m a past president and Paul Harris Fellow from the Monmouth, IL club), and I was able to remember the four-way-test! I also met with the new Chamber director in Waldport (Tom Fullmer) at the newly updated Alsea Bridge Interpretive Center, which is scheduled to re-open on July 1.
News-Times Economic Development column – I’ve got my first column done and the next two nearly complete – it’ll be appearing soon in the News-Times (not sure when – publisher Jeremy Burke is wrestling with getting their press set up to print two additional regional papers this week).
Leadership Lincoln – We had our graduation ceremony on Tuesday night (via Zoom) – it was a “black tie” affair, and I wore the tuxedo shirt I was married in – a great culmination to a wonderful nine month professional development program.
Co-starters – Brad Attig of the Foundry Collective and Riley Hoagland (Lincoln City Council and also an entrepreneur) had a great call on Tuesday to see how we can energize the Lincoln City entrepreneurial community – I’ll be following up with Riley next week as we look to create an initial roadmap.
Short-Term Engagement Plan – Cindy and I solidified our action plan for the next few months (based on what we talked about at the last BoD meeting), slotted all the tasks into Trello (our project management tool) and have hit the ground running.
An Interesting Read – About the challenges restaurants are facing getting their staff back – as told from the perspective of a career server: https://www.grubstreet.com/2021/06/why-restaurants-are-struggling-to-find-workers.html
Yesterday, I checked my calendar and saw that I had *nothing* scheduled for Monday, so I decided that I’m taking the day off (Susan has the day off as well, and we both worked on Memorial Day) – it’ll be my first actual “day off” I’ve taken since I started back last June – whew!
This weekend, we’ve got Juneteenth on Saturday (so wonderful this is now a federally-recognized holiday) and Father’s Day on Sunday (I’m doing some slow cooked BBQ pork ribs – yum!).
Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂