Greetings and welcome to Friday! The day started with snow and hail (snail?) – and it’ll probably end with a touch of rain for good measure – welcome to March!
Here’s our staff update for the week:
Blue Economy::
This week, we wrapped up a subgrant agreement with OoNee Sea Urchin Ranch as one of our five startup/incubator sites we’re supporting along the coast. We’ll be helping them create an urchin aquaculture demonstration system. We also had our bi-weekly call with the Eastern Research Group on the NOAA economic impact study – they are close to wrapping up tier 1 interviews. I also had a long Zoom meeting with the whole Colpac (the north coast economic development district) team on supporting them to take the lead on a north coast in-depth Blue Economy data project. – Paul
Broadband::
This week, Commissioner Miller and Administrator Johnson and I met to talk broadband and get caught up with all the programs, funding and stakeholders that affect Lincoln County and our local region. Administrator Johnson later shared some materials to review as we work towards tightening up a local work plan that hits on both infrastructure and digital equity. – Paul
Community and Economic Development Grant Program:
Next Wednesday, I’ll be presenting our Board’s funding recommendations at the Board of Commissioners meeting – I’ve still got a little report work to wrap up on Monday, and we’ll be ready for prime time. – Paul
Economic Summit::
For the Summit this week, I continued to reach out to potential speakers and coordinated with resource tables and speakers. I posted on our Facebook page promoting the event, worked through the agenda with Paul and Leslie, and began working on another Mailchimp newsletter. – Sarah
Entrepreneurship::
This week, I completed a video interview with Aaron the owner of Oo-Nee Sea Urchin Ranch and edited it for the YEP program business highlight videos. I also set up and ran the first Business is Brewing event Tuesday morning, it is a weekly zoom meeting of business courses that Reinventing Rural streams at multiple locations across the state that is free for anyone to join at our office! – Sarah
Organizational Management::
This week, we extended an offer (that was accepted!) to Stacie Keating to join EDALC as our new half-time Organizational Coordinator. She’ll start next week and will be on-hand for our Thursday Board of Directors meeting to introduce herself. Huzzah! All-in-all, we received over 60 applications for the position! – Paul
PIER::
This week, the Lincoln County PIER selection committee met to talk through program logistics and additional ways to spread the work or help facilitate some additional applications for the $2.7M available to Lincoln County. We also discussed the submitted Highland Estates application – we’ll be having an online public meeting on March 13th to formally vote on that application. – Paul
Project Work::
I finished the February board meeting minutes, did some coordination for the board meeting at the Pines Dines, and updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider on the EDALC website. – Sarah
And a refreshing update from Leslie:
What’s new on EDALC’s YouTube Channel::
I’ve made a few visual updates to EDALC’s landing page, as I’ve been busy editing and posting the presentations from February’s Central, South, and North Coast Drinking Water Protection Workshops. Thanks to Sarah for helping me improve my video/captioning editing skills!
Over the past year, I’ve been designing these workshops with DEQ’s Drinking Water Protection Team and the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts (COLT) to share community stories of drinking watershed protection successes and challenges overcome, as well as build understanding and relationships between communities and the support organizations who can help them with their unique drinking watershed protection situations. We hold workshops at times of year that give folks time to understand and prepare for upcoming grant opportunities, and we invite the grant-giving organizations to present and build local relationships for their application processes. Each session has been well-attended and are already creating positive ripple-effects coastwide and through the many government and nonprofit organizations involved. For one example, my DEQ counterparts are being sought out to share their workshop wisdom with OHA and aligned drinking water entities in Washington State. Turns out that providing delicious meals from local businesses gets people to show up and enjoy a 1/2 day workshop! The OCCC Facilities team said our Newport Workshop on February 6th was the biggest group they’ve hosted in their Community Room since before Covid. I think Cuisinako’s dumpling & bao bar played a big role in that success – I highly recommend Cuisinako for bayfront dining or catering! Thanks also to Margaret from McKenzie River Trust and Tyler from Lincoln Soil & Water Conservation District for their presentations – if you aren’t already aware of the impressive work those organizations do in our county, I recommend watching their presentations!
After the workshop presentation videos are approved by their presenters, they’re added to EDALC’s Coastal Source Water Protection: Workshop Presentations Playlist. I have 7 presentations posted so far, and there are at least 4 more in the works from February’s sessions. http://tinyurl.com/orcoastdswpworkshops
While You’re in Lincoln City on Thursday Evening::
The next bilingual Resource Café will be following our Board Meeting on Thursday, March 7th, at Lincoln City’s Cultural Center. This month’s topics are Finance, Business, and Entrepreneurial Support! A big thanks to Greg and SBDC for funding this month’s Café dinners! I’m excited to connect the growing numbers of participants with support opportunities from SBDC, Central Coast Food Web, and other business/entrepreneurial support organizations in our region. Fajitas will be served around 5:30, then we aim to start the multilingual presentations around 6.
My favorite part of the Café experience is the “Listen to Learn” opportunity because the questions, viewpoints, and interests of the families who join are extremely helpful for building understanding and relationships. Organizations that don’t yet have strong Latina/o/x participation and connections have benefited from attending, tabling, and presenting at previous Cafés. Because of the amount of expressed community interest in Financial and Business topics, we’re expecting large turnouts this month! If this Thursday evening doesn’t work for you, Newport’s Café will be held at the PAC, starting at 5:30 PM on March 21st. Newport’s sessions include both Spanish and Mam interpretations.
We will also be planning Cafés focused on Housing, Education, and Public Transportation later this year, so there will be more opportunities for organizations to join in. I highly recommend folks start by experiencing this month’s Cafés to get an idea of the format and brainstorm how their Organization can get involved in future Cafés. It’s an honor to assist Beatriz Botello of OSU Extension SNAP Ed, and the teams at Arcoíris Cultural and Conexión Fénix who are the lead partners of these events. I’d love the opportunity to connect any of your organizations with these popular gatherings. Carrie- your email about planning/scheduling a Fall event is still coming, I had to prioritize these quickly-approaching March events with Beatriz first.
– Leslie
Upcoming::
Next week, we’ll have our March BoD meeting IN PERSON at the Pines Dine Vin & Brau event space. Calendar invites went out earlier today and packets will hit your inbox next week. Looking forward to seeing you there!!
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Susan and I had a wonderful time with our friends Kay and Lars in Cabo – though I came away amazed at how aggressively anti-pedestrian the city was – especially odd since there’s over 200K people living there, nearly all of them supporting the tourism economy in some way.
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 🙂