Greetings and welcome to Friday! Another busy week (and some long hours) but we accomplished quite a bit – looking forward to a few days of downtime this weekend!

Here’s our EDALC update for the week:

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Cindy’s week:

* Assisted with website Member page updates
* Worked on Annual Member Meeting planning
* Assisted with creation of Annual Report
* Proofed and sent press release for ART Toledo events

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Paul’s week:

EDALC Directors – The terms of four directors are up at the end of the fiscal year: Birgitte, Bob, Linda and Tracy. I reached out to them, and all have indicated their willingness to continue to as EDALC directors, which is awesome news! Also, with the support of the Strategic Alignment Committee, I reached out to Karen Gray (Superintendent, Lincoln Count School District) and Paula Miranda (General Manager, Port of Newport) about joining our board. Both are willing and excited to join our team, so we’ll put forth all six names at our member meeting on Tuesday.

Enterprise Zone – Late last week, the Waldport City Council voted to support their EZ re-designation resolution. On Monday, I presented an overview of the EZ re-designation process to the Lincoln County Commissioners at their 3pm meeting. I also presented to the Port of Toledo’s Commission meeting on Tuesday night. Next week will be the Port of Newport Commission meeting.

Listening Sessions Report – At last Monday’s County Commissioners meeting, Frank Burris (OSU Extension) presented on his report and recommendations based on the November listening sessions we did with Commissioner Hunt. I was also able to hit on some of the points in the report I authored and submitted on those sessions back in December. I was able to highlight vital economic development priorities that are essential to a solid county-wide economic development efforts that were *not* brought up in those listening sessions. Both of those reports together to provide a clear and compelling roadmap to the work that needs to be done. I’ve attached both reports to this update email.

Annual Report – Cindy and I spent quite a bit of time this week working on a draft annual report, developing a new layout and what we think is a more energized focus. I’ve attached that draft to this email – please look it over and let me know your thoughts and ideas on this new format report.

Website – As part of our member engagement work, Cindy and I are working on updating the member page of our website (that should be done on Monday). I also created an online member application. To allow us to take member fees online, I set us up with a PayPal business account and linked that to our Columbia bank account. I bolted all those together with a few new WordPress plugins and now we have a 100% online way for members to join or renew and pay their dues.

ART Toledo – Just something to put on your calendars – as part of the ART Toledo downtown revitalization work we’ve been assisting with, there is going to be a small event series called “Art, Oysters and Brews” happening on the first Saturdays in June, July and August. Here’s a link to the event info online: https://arttoledo.com/?page_id=848

COGs Grant Program – The COGs is putting together a small stimulus-funded grant program that will open up on June 1st. I’ll be submitting two applications (in partnership with local governmental units). One will be funding to get data entry services to begin building the commercial property (both sale and lease) inventory on OregonProspector. The other project will be to create a WordPress plugin that would allow multiple organizations to layer and share (in a public-facing way) action items in their individual strategic plans that could be searched and browsed through keywords – we’ll be working with the City of Newport on this.

By-Law Change – Just to follow-up on the by-law change proposed at our last BoD meeting (to allow more flexibility in setting the date of the annual meeting). Doug Holbrook drafted the by-law change and sent it out to the board for electronic vote. The votes are tabulated and passage was unanimous. Thanks so much for that work Doug!

Oregon Ocean Innovation Hub (O2IH) – In our morning meeting today, Rachael Maddock-Hughes announced that full funding was reached (around $200K) from multiple sources (Oregon Community Foundation, Ford Family Foundation, Business Oregon, USDA, NW Oregon Works, YBEF and Lincoln County) to have Burning Glass do a first-ever blue economy workforce sector analysis. That work will also lead to the development of new NAICS code for various aspects of the Blue Economy. It also looks like there is quite a bit of movement from the offices of both senators (Merkley and Wyden) to direct substantial funding to support Blue Economy efforts both for O2IH and for OCCC programs (welding, computer science and maritime technical core). Included in that potential funding are dollars for us to bring on a business attraction specialist, with a focus on the BE sector.

News-Times Column – I’ve pulled together a list of about ten economic development column ideas for the News-Times column I’ll be launching next month. I’m going to write up at least three columns so I have some extra content “in the hopper” before we launch the monthly column in June.

Annual Meeting – As you know, we’ve got a virtual event and our annual member meeting happening next Tuesday at 2:30pm via Zoom. We’ll begin with Jalene Case’s “First, Be the Leader of You” program, then move into our short annual meeting and we’ll wrap up with some informal networking time. For our very-short our annual meeting, here’s the agenda:

Call the Meeting to Order (Tracy)
Board and Staff Intro (Tracy)
Treasurer’s Report (Michael)
Election of Directors
• Expiring Terms: Tracy Baily, Bob Cowen, Linda Roy, Birgitte Ryslinge
• New Directors: Karen Gray, Paula Miranda
Short Update on Upcoming work in the next fiscal year (Paul)

I’ll reach out to Tracy and Michael on Monday to make sure we’re all in sync.

Meeting Reminders:

Annual Meeting & Event, Tuesday, May 25th at 2:30 pm

Time: May 25, 2021 02:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/94001471660?pwd=ZElxcDZJL0hxcGZWcjlFVEpHQVNwQT09

Meeting ID: 940 0147 1660
Passcode: 348106

June Board of Directors Meeting:

Time: Jun 3, 2021 03:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting (same Zoom link as past BoD meetings)
https://zoom.us/j/9178104987?pwd=bVJDN0VlUEM3aG9EaFhJQUZjcDJHUT09

Meeting ID: 917 810 4987
Passcode: 0NyksK

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 🙂