Greetings and happy Friday! Can you believe that we are already in October?! That was the fastest summer on record, to be sure. Looks like it’ll be a gorgeous weekend.
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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O2IH/EDA Build Back Better, Phase 1 (internal deadline is today) – Nearly all of my week was spent on working with our core team (Mark Farley from Hatfield and Rachael and Sherry from Sequoia Consulting) on finishing up the base grant narrative and appendices. Bob also did a read through and offered some insight on the narrative and Birgitte’s team has been pounding away as well. I also put together a scope of work, budget and budget justification for EDALC’s Phase 1 work (with substantial help from Mark). That was submitted to OSU earlier today. I also spent a ton of time drafting letters of support for the grant and getting those out to partners. Next week, I present an overview of the work to Pacific Seafood’s legal counsel (a pre-cursor to getting a signed LOS) as well as attending city council meetings (upcoming: Lincoln City, Newport and Yachats) to get municipal letters signed. At the first of the week, everything goes to OSU’s office of sponsored programs for review, though we still have time to get in some more letters next week. It’s been an epic heavy lift, but as I’ve said before, this could be a true game changer for the entire Oregon coast.
Cascades West Economic Development District – This week was the quarterly board of directors meeting and we tackled two main items. The first was a change to the CWEDD bylaws to allow for the creation of a five-person executive committee to help guide and direct the work forward between meetings. Kate Porsche (the “me” in Corvallis and Benton County) and myself were the two economic development practitioners selected to the committee. The second item was to look at existing regional goops and how some of those (such as the Broadband Action Team) can serve as working groups to coordinate and help move the work of the regional comprehensive economic development strategy (CEDS) forward. I think it’ll be a great thing for EDALC to be heavy involved in those larger regional efforts around us.
CWEDD Strategic Plan Viewer Grant – If you remember, we received a grant to develop a custom WordPress plugin to allow multiple organizations to share their strategic plans of work online (it’ll be the first of its kind and something we hope to share with the Ford Family Foundation when done). This week, I got a chance to see the work that developer 1Design has done so far, and it’s looking awesome. Another week or two of coding and then Leslie Palotas and I can start taking it through its paces.
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Reminder: the October EDALC Bard of Directors meeting is next Thursday, October 7th, at 3:30pm via Zoom. Here’s the meeting info:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9178104987?pwd=bVJDN0VlUEM3aG9EaFhJQUZjcDJHUT09
Meeting ID: 917 810 4987
Passcode: 0NyksK
Don’t forget that the Oregon Coast Jazz Party is today and tomorrow at the Newport PAC. Susan and I are heading over there tonight for the show.
Have a wonderful weekend! Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂