Greetings – and can you believe I’m going to say “Welcome to October”? Holy cow, September just flew by!
Here’s our update for this week –
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Suzan’s week:
* Daily/ weekly routine tasks
* Cut checks
* Post P/R & Gusto in QuickBooks
* Get checks and form signed
* Turn in signed form to bank
* Deposit checks & post
* Process membership
* Thank you card
* Financial report & distribute
* Create documents for board
* Distribute board packet
* Pay rent
* Board meeting
* Take minutes
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Paul’s week:
Learning About Toledo – I got a chance to deep dive into Toledo this week. Bud Shoemake gave me an in-depth tour of the port, their new building (VERY big!) and their new welding training center (I also got to talk to the welding program director as well). I also had a tour of American Ground Systems – truly the kind of small, high-tech manufacturer that we want more of in Lincoln County (so cool that they do grounding straps for the SpaceX rockets!). I also spent some time this week with Mayor Rod Cross and City Manager Judy Richter.
Leadership Lincoln – This Wednesday was the Leadership Lincoln kick off at Newport’s OCCC campus. I think that program will be a great way to expand my local network even further (and learn some new professional tricks and tools). During day one, I was able to get to know our new local county Extension director as well as Newport’s new associate planner.
Wildfire Recovery – This week there were two meetings/Zooms relating to wildfire recovery. One was statewide and focused on the FEMA and SBA resources available to Oregon businesses. The other was with Sarah Means from the governors office and focused on the Echo Mountain fire – with most attention focused on getting an accurate count of displaced families and longer term temporary housing options.
Marketing – This week, I attended a two-hour deep-dive training on GoogleAds (and linking those ads to Google Analytics) presented by Racheal McMahon from Anvil Digital Media. We’ll be doing an initial GoogleAds campaign focused on remote workers once our new website (and a few support materials) is launched (and we’ve got that bonus $500 from OregonRAIN to get us started). The next step will be a one-on-one consultation with the Anvil folks in the weeks to come.
BusinessOregon – I spent most of my time early in the week preparing, researching and pulling together information for our site proposal that I talked about at yesterday’s board meeting. Many thanks to Bob, Mark Farley and Paula Miranda for their hard work as well. All in all, we had a submission packet of two properties and about 15 supporting documents. As a side benefit, the BusinessOregon set me up as the county-wide manager for OregonProspector, their business lead and commercial site database (and in a stroke of good luck, it’s based on ZoomProspector, the platform I used in Michigan). Going forward, I can now add and edit commercial sites and respond directly to any leads generated by BusinessOregon.
Broadband – We had our monthly four-county Broadband Action Team meeting this week. Most of it focused on how the wildfires affected broadband projects (the supply chain has slowed down and project labor is hard to come by). We are still waiting on word on the EDA/CARES grant application for a feasibility study – hopefully some good news will come down in the next week or two (we know it has been reviewed by the EDA).
Water Planning – This week, the consultants pulling together the final stages of the comprehensive water plan for the mid coast delivered a webinar to all stakeholders on the process (I’m the economic development person on the smaller coordinating committee). Final development and delivery of the plan is still about ten months out.
CEDS – With the wildfires hitting this month, the Cascades West Council of Governments cancelled their online feedback session (for the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy) and instead moved to provide online support and research documents and then pull in feedback via a survey. I was able to spend a few hours this week reviewing the recommendations and information and offering some (hopefully insightful) thoughts of my own on the plan and process.
Have a great weekend! Thanks for all that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Cheers,
-Paul 