Greetings and welcome to Friday. Might be a damp weekend, but it’s still refreshing to see all the Spring bulbs popping up!
Here’s the EDALC update for the week –
====
Paul’s week:
Project Associate Search – I’ve got one final interview on Monday. So far, there are several very solid potential candidates based on my interviews – I’m collecting references and will reach out to those folks early next week.
Enterprise Zone – This week, I met with CJ Hurtt from the County Assessor’s office. We discussed several EZ application documents and came to a consensus on some questions we had – he’s checking with the assessor on our interpretation and if all looks good (it should), we’ll be doing our required meetings with the applicants soon. I also provided him with a GIS map of the exact boundaries of our very non-contiguous zone and he’ll be getting me a list of taxing bodies and contacts so we can plan our informational re-designation meeting in early April.
Toledo ART – With just over five days left for applications, over 23 artists have applied for the Toledo Phantom Gallery initial showing (which will run from April through June) – pretty darn awesome numbers out of the gates. We had a meeting in Toledo City Hall yesterday to discuss artist selection criteria. We were also joined by Kate Ali, the Public Art Director for Eugene. She spoke on their amazing 20×21 public mural project, their Urban Canvas mural program and ways to provide business professional development to emerging artists as part of growing a vibrant creative ecosystem – wonderful stuff!
YBEF – Work is underway on a new logo for YBEF. Carrie, Chris Chandler, Judy Kuhn and myself comprise the logo committee, and we’ve got two local artists working on potential designed based on a project scope. This week, I also met with YBEF President Anne Armstrong and John Lavrakas to discuss ways to better integrate online technologies to deliver YBEF resources to its members. I spent some time coding up a Javascript routine that allows for a username/password “barn door” to protect not-for-public online resources (without folks having to create yet another online account). This approach might be useful for us to create a BoD resource section on our own website as well.
Mid-Coast Water Planning Partnership – As part of developing a regional and multi-stakeholder water plan, the partnership has developed an online water “story map” to explain and illustrated local water issues. You can see the draft story map here: https://storymap.midcoastwaterpartners.com/. I have the honor to serve as the economic development representative for the partnership’s Coordinating Committee.
Regional Economic Development – We had our monthly call with the economic development practitioners serving the Cascades West Economic Development District (EDD) – those monthly 90-minutes working-lunch meetings always have a high signal-to-noise ratio. This was the first meeting since EDD board of directors formally approved the regional’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy and we were joined by quite a few COGs staff members. There are already some potential positive projects in the work, from developing some state-wide business data sharing rather than individual municipalities and counties having to develop their own local business registry. Also, there may be some funds available to help EDOs in our region input and manage OregonProspector commercial property listings (not difficult, but very time consuming).
Commercial Rent Relief Grants through Business Oregon – The Oregon Legislative Emergency Board allocated $100 million to Business Oregon for a new program to provide financial assistance to small businesses and commercial landlords impacted by the economic hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The program is intended to help small business tenants that have 100 or fewer employees. The program will open for applications on Monday, March 8. Here is a link for more information: https://www.oregon4biz.com/dev/www/BOR/Coronavirus-Information/CRR/
In a final note, since we’ve been talking about remote worker recruitment from time to time, I thought you might get a kick out of this short piece on the booming “job market” in Remote, Oregon:
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 🙂