Greetings and welcome to Friday! Have we (finally) arrived at our coastal summer? Also, this weekend marks the return of the Summer Kite Festival in Lincoln City – anyone on the Board remember those weird old Puffer Kites from the 70’s? Inflatable kites!
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Sarah’s Update:
This week I started off with emailing Ms. Noble about music for Art, Oysters & Brews and confirmed her son as an act. Afterwards I updated the entrepreneurs slider on the EDALC website and began creating our July newsletter. Later, I wrote a promotional post for AOB and emailed some potential art vendors asking them to participate in the events. Next, I went to the first Siletz Farmer’s Market and handed out fliers inviting them to register as vendors for the AOB events. At the end of the day, I messaged more local potential vendors on Etsy and gave them links to the application and posted the AOB promo on our Facebook page.
On Wednesday I updated my Oregon Prospector project hours log and created an invoice for that project and worked on the ART Toledo website. I also continued to write a few paragraphs for our upcoming newsletter and responded to more questions from potential vendors on Etsy. Later, Paul and I met with some folks from the Secretary of State’s Office of Small Business Assistance and had some interesting discussions about economic development with a guy who does Investment Promotion for the city of Da Nang, Vietnam who is over here on a fellowship.
Thursday morning, I began by trying to find more possible properties for Mr. Christian’s upcoming restaurant. Afterwards I went to the ART Toledo meeting and had some good discussions about the Chalk the Block event happening July 16th. Later, I updated some things on the ART Toledo website and continued working on the newsletter. On my way home, I stopped at the Siletz Library and gave them some promotional brochures for the Chalk the Block event.
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Paul’s Update:
Blue Economy – This week, the Oregon Department of Ag announced a grant program aimed at providing reimbursement funds to seafood processors affected by COVID. It’s pretty limited in its scope, but there might be a few local fits – I reached out to Pacific Seafood and to Laura at Local Ocean to let them know about the opportunity. We received our small grant check from the COG for our CDS precursor project of developing a coastal Blue Economy asset map. With the funds in hand, I spent some time putting together an initial taxonomy of the “players” that will be involved in our O2IH work and passed that off to Sarah, who will be fleshing out the details.
ART Toledo – Logistics look all set for the July 2nd kick-off Art, Oysters & Brews event next Saturday (and I’ll be opening it up with a short set of blues). Another mural is in progress currently with another set to start in the next month. ART Toledo is also hosting a “Chalk the Block” chalk art event downtown on Saturday, July 16th, which also coincides with the “van life” invasion of Toledo that weekend: https://www.holytoledogathering.com/
Faster Internet Oregon – We’ve been working to help promote this program I mentioned last week. If you haven’t yet done it, give your home Internet a speed test and add to our local data – here’s the link: https://www.fasterinternetoregon.org/
Newport Chamber – Looks like we’ll have a new Chamber Director on board to take up the reigns in early July – I’m sure the Chamber will send out an announcement in the next week. I’ll also be the emcee for the Ace of Spades raffle at the Chamber banquet tonight. On Monday, the Newport City Council voted unanimously to support the proposal I submitted to create a grant-funded position at EDALC for Leslie Palotas, with the funds coming from the Ford Family Foundation and the city. We’ll get those logistics rolling in the next week or so. It’s for a year-long position, with potential for it to continue longer (the FFF is very interested in this unique public-private approach). There is also a great opportunity for Leslie to help us with some O2IH DEI work (I’ve built some of that into our CDS budget).
Office of Small Business Assistance – On Wednesday, we were anticipating a visit to the EDALC offices from the Secretary of State. Seems like we were ALL misinformed! It was actually with a representative from the SoS’s Office of Small Business Assistance and Hoa, here on an international economic development fellowship from Da Nang, Viet Nam. You can read about their work here: http://investdanang.gov.vn/en/web/english/home. We had Melissa Murphy, Alison Robertson and Dave Price also in attendance. It was actually very informative both ways – we shared how things work here in rural Oregon and we learned how VERY differently they do things in Viet Nam. Hoa was very interested in our local focus on small businesses – they do none of that in Viet Nam – and provide no support services or technical assistance to those businesses.
Accounting – I met this week with Misty from Byran’s office to talk through how we’ll manage our Congressionally Directed Spending funds (short answer: separate physical bank account and using classes in QuickBook to make reporting crystal clear). We’re also looking to implement a MUCH simpler entering and reporting approach for payroll taxes (we’ll start that on July 1). We also talked through adding several new income and expense categories to help us better track and budget going forward.
Communication – Sarah and I are beginning work on our early Summer newsletter. If there’s anything you’d like to see in that newsletter (either directly EDALC or more broadly related to Lincoln County’s economy), just let one of us know. I also finished writing and submitted my second monthly economic development column for the News-Times – I’m guessing that’ll appear next week.
Upcoming Next Week – I’ll be having a lunch meeting on Monday with Toledo Mayor Rod Cross. I also have a meeting set up next Friday to introduce myself (and EDALC) to the new Lincoln City manager Daphnee Legarza.
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
With a good-looking weekend, I am FINALLY out of dampness-related excuses and will need to get up on the ladder and clean our gutters!
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 🙂