Greetings and welcome to Friday!

Lots going on this weekend! Tonight is the Grand Opening of the new Port of Newport offices (at 5:30pm). It’s Depoe Bay’s 50th anniversary celebration on Saturday (12-4, in the park by the boat ramp). Jason and the PAC team will be hosting the second Bloom Newport festival (silent disco!) also on Saturday – full info here: https://coastarts.org/events/bloom-newport/

Here’s our weekly staff update:

Business Development::

On Tuesday, Leslie, Sarah and I trekked to the “Newledo” farm (an old dairy farm) on Fruitvale Road just outside of Toledo. The owner was one of our CO.STARTERS graduates. They are looking to do a bio-restorative farm project there with some wetlands restoration, a value-added farm incubator and other innovative projects. We were all able to offer some suggestions and guidance, and Leslie had SO many connects and connections to share with them. – Paul

Broadband::

This week was both the Broadband Action Team meeting and our regional Benton, Lincoln and Linn County EDA grant advisory team meeting. We received the first deliverable from Solarity on regional broadband – a “Current Assessment” report on the state of our regional broadband. We also received preliminary results from the business internet-usage survey. We also got a first look at the mapping and Excel planning tool that will be utilized to do county-based “rapid design assessments” that should give a good look at the potential projects worth pursuing with the upcoming funding (an AMAZING tool!). I’ll be reaching out to other key stakeholders to get everybody aligned over the next few weeks. EDALC was also named as a potential applicant in an RFI call from the Oregon Broadband Office for future BTAP grant applications – this would be to support the continued good work of our regional BST. – Paul

Community Connecting::

(this came in yesterday) I’m reporting early this week because of my Thursday evening plans to support Lincoln City’s bilingual Community Café with Public Safety and Emergency Service folks (similar to the one held in Newport on April 20th). Then on Friday (my usual report day) I’ll be back up in Lincoln City with the Danone grant group, touring 4 of the 5 community gardens that have been supported by that trilingual, collaborative effort. My fingers are crossed that the OSU Extension van gets back to Newport in time to join the Port’s celebration Friday evening!

Leslie’s full, detailed and fascinating report is linked here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F7FqoQzTJ-yIiM9jCrsSTift1xlDYSyCF23WG7aaNyY/edit?usp=sharing

Creative Economies::

This week for ART Toledo, I sent out some more invites to be vendors at Art, Oysters & Brews to some regional artists, worked on the new website, and attended the meeting Thursday morning. – Sarah

On Wednesday night, I was able to give another one of my Creativity Boot Camp classes in Lincoln City as part of the OCCC’s Community Education program. An awesome, full class of engaged “creative explorers!” – Paul

Organizational Development::

On Tuesday, Paul, Leslie & I had our team meeting in the morning and in the afternoon, we went out for a tour of the Newledo farm in Fruitvale. – Sarah

Project Work::

On Monday and Tuesday, I updated the entrepreneur slider on the EDALC website with the Oregon Coast SBDC Summer courses and a few from the state SBDC. I also worked on my Leadership Lincoln community project video and my leadership growth presentation for the final class in June throughout the week. On Thursday and Friday, I updated Oregon Prospector entries. Lastly, I worked on the Major Employers report throughout the week as well, including a record breaking 27-minute hold with Fred Meyer HR! – Sarah

Rural Opportunity Initiative::

Late last week (after the update went out), I was able to connect with Laura Anderson (Local Ocean and the Yaquina Bay Food Lab) about using some ROI funds designated for “entrepreneurial kitchen” efforts to help in her commercial kitchen work. It looks like we’ll have the funds to support the purchase of a commercial dehydrator for prototyping new dehydrated fish products. – Paul

Supporting and Connecting with Partners::

Depoe Bay – Next week, I’ll be running the sound for the Fleet of Flowers event in Depoe Bay. This week, I met with Public Works directer Brady Wiedner to review the sound equipment, talk through the “podium book” event script and pull together the various military themes for the flag presentation. The event itself will be Memorial Day morning. – Paul

Newport Chamber – This week, we had two of three final interviews for the Executive Director position at the Chamber (the last one will be Monday night). All very solid candidates, and the Chamber board should be ready to make a job offer next week. – Paul

Samaritan – (upcoming) Next Tuesday, Jalene Case and I will be facilitating a day-long workshop for the north Lincoln County Samaritan leadership team (about 40 folks) at Spanish Head. I’ll be assisting Jalene in the morning and then running a professionally-focused Creativity Boot Camp to end the day. Looking forward to it! – Paul

SBDC – This afternoon, I participated in an in-person meeting of the SBDC Advisory Committee. It was a facilitated session at the Newport OCCC campus. It was great to help provide some guidance for such a great and essential local resource! – Paul

YBEF/EDALC Annual Meeting – The YBEF board is fully supportive of a combined annual meeting on June 30th at the New Port of Newport offices (mark your calendars!). I put together a first pass event planning document and got that off to the event organizational team. – Paul

As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:

This is probably old news to most of you, but I’m pretty excited! I’m embarking on my first foray into elected public service – Tuesday’s special election saw me elected (Unopposed! So can I call it a landslide victory?) to the Oregon Coast Community College Board of Education for Zone 3. Eager to serve and support that great organization that aligns so well with my personal and professional priorities and interests. And I didn’t have to resort to negative campaigning!

Have wonderful weekend! 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 🙂