Greetings and welcome to another damp and chilly Friday! Boy, was there a lot of hail today! And welcome to March!
As you saw yesterday, we cancelled our March BoD meeting… we had ten directors who couldn’t make it yesterday, so it was the right thing to do – and we do have economist Erik Knoder rescheduled for our April 6th board meeting – you might want to get that on your calendar now – his economic report will be VERY interesting and insightful!
Here’s our weekly staff update:
Blue Economy::
This week, I put the final touches on a draft afterward document from the “Ocean Resources and Blue Economy Steering Committee.” It then went back out to the committee for final comments. Today, I incorporated those comments and had Mark give it a look over (he gave it a thumbs up), and then polished up the look, added in organizational logos and shot it off to Business Oregon. I also pulled together a letter of support for Paula and the Port’s upcoming Congressionally Directed Funding request. – Paul
Broadband::
This week, Lincoln County broadband stakeholders came together for a short meeting to touch base on the data needed for an FCC “fabric challenge” that directly affects the amount of ARPA broadband money the State of Oregon will receive. As usual with a federal process, it’s cumbersome and non-intuitive. Lane County took the lead to pull down the FCC’s address data for all counties in our economic development district (that, in itself, was a complex licensing process). The data then went out to the respective counties to do address matching of local data against the FCC data (generally handled by each counties GIS departments). The goal is to find any “lost” addresses that are unserved – because each one of those can mean over $4K of additional funding coming into the state. There were about 100 addresses found in Lincoln County. The data then goes back to Lane County, who will submit the official “challenge” off these addresses to the FCC for all of our EDD counties (Benton, Lane, Lincoln and Linn). – Paul
Communication/Marketing::
I posted on Facebook about the upcoming Oregon Coast SBDC business courses and worked on the Spring newsletter throughout the week. – Sarah
Community and Economic Development Grant Program::
On Wednesday morning, I presented our Board’s funding recommendations to the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners at their regular meeting. They were very thankful for EDALC’s continued work with this program and our extra efforts this year. It will go before the Commissioners again at their 3/15 meeting as an action item to formally approve the awards. Great work team!! – Paul
I attended the Board of Commissioners meeting Wednesday morning and watched Paul present the community and economic development grant recommendations. – Sarah
Community Connecting::
A snippet from Leslie’s report:
Like most rural challenges, solutions will never be a one-type-fits-all approach, however, I’m encouraged by the amount of gathering and collaborative efforts underway that can, at a minimum, share many stories of folks’ efforts so that others facing similar situations can learn about their options and meet folks who can help them.
Challenges remain – how do we learn from what has gone well AND the challenges or patterns that have blocked progress in the past? What can be done with those lessons to avoid repeating the same mistakes? How do efforts and organizations with minimal bandwidths collaborate when they are too busy with their own work? How can efforts involve folks who haven’t been historically included so they can gain more insight from different lived experiences?
– Leslie
Here’s a link to Leslie’s (always fascinating) full report:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RjXM6tKpTAayn16QG4j8iydIEXok5no9kxVA7YrYGRc/edit?usp=sharing
Creative Economies::
I added more artists to the ART Toledo newsletter audience and sent out another invitation to them to be a vendor at the Art, Oyster, and Brews events. Thursday morning, I attended the ART Toledo fundraising subcommittee meeting and then the regular meeting afterwards. – Sarah
Events:
I resent out the invitation to the EDALC event on March 16th, please RSVP if you can! Thank you! – Sarah
Organizational Development::
I spent quite a lot of time last week and this week making sure the transition from Columbia Bank to 1st Security Bank went smoothly (remember, Umpqua acquired Columbia, and along the way, several branches, like the Newport branch, were not transitioning to Umpqua but were instead moving to 1st Security – who knows why). It looks like the accounts moved over, and I have access to our new online portal (and EDALC’s funds are in there for all three of our accounts!) and online bill pay. Top priority next week is to bolt the new accounts into QuickBooks and get that buttoned up. – Paul
Per direction from the Board, our team has been reaching out to prospective board members to gauge interest and time availability. Karen reached out to incoming superintendent Majalise Tolan, and I followed up with some information on time commitments. Leslie has been talking with several CTSI leaders to gauge alignment and interest. I’ve reached out to new SBDC director Gregory Price, Oregon Coast Council for the Arts executive director Jason Holland and also Alison Robertson from Lincoln City. We are also inviting potential board members to our March 16th social event. – Paul
On Monday I worked on the prep for my leadership Lincoln team presentation and attended the group meeting. – Sarah
Project Work::
On Wednesday and Thursday I updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider on the EDALC website. I updated the average rent for commercial buildings in Lincoln county on Monday and Friday. I updated Oregon Prospector on Tuesday and Friday. I finished the board meeting minutes on Monday and Tuesday. – Sarah
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
Newport Chamber – I am currently working with Jalene Case to develop a program for the Chamber’s Executive Committee (which is serving as the hiring committee for the new director) to deep dive into the executive director position to get a better sense of the organizational priorities and goals for that position. It is my goal to take the setback of the last director and turn it into a genuine opportunity for the Newport Chamber to up its game. – Paul
Upcoming:
Remember that Thursday, March 16th is our EDALC celebration event for the board, staff and friends. We’ll be taking over the Barge Inn Tavern on the Bayfront for a good old fashioned crab boil. It should be a ball!
You can RSVP to the event here: https://tinyurl.com/34szfvet
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Last Saturday, Susan and I volunteered at Seafood and Wine, slinging Rogue’s tasty craft cocktails. What a great event that was just packed on Saturday!! Not sure if it was SF&W fallout or some other source, but on Tuesday morning, Susan tested positive for COVID. We’ve been working remotely all week. She’s been feeling cruddy, but is still functioning. I feel fine so far – on Sunday, we’ll retest and see if we can once again rejoin polite society.
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 🙂