Greetings and welcome to Friday – and the ramp up to Halloween! So, a quick poll:
Candy corn: Love ’em! One of the nastiest candies ever!
Horror movies: Love ’em! No way!
A slightly shorter update this week – we were at the OCVA People’s Coast Summit event Monday afternoon through Wednesday in Astoria. A great event – awesome networking and great sessions for professional development!
Here’s our staff update for the week:
Broadband::
This week was our monthly Broadband Action Team meeting. Much of the meeting focused on several published NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING (NPRM) documents for upcoming Broadband Programs (including BTAP, BEAD, and ARPA Capital Projects). We also had our regional EDA planning grant team meeting and received word that the grant period was extended through summer of 2024 and that each of the participating counties will receive a number of ours of direct consultation time. The Solarity team will also be in the area in late November and we’ll work to set up a key stakeholder meeting at that time. – Paul
Creative Economies::
We put together and submitted today a “creative economy entrepreneur” variation of our “Launch Lincoln County” pocket-booklet. It’s got the same feel as our “Launch Lincoln County” booklet, but with a more art-centered approach and entrepreneurial “manifesto” inside the front cover. We should have those in hand for Jason’s “economic impact of the arts” event on November 7th. – Paul
Community and Economic Development Grant Program::
Looks like we have a handle on the rules for the 2023-24 grant program after some back and forth last week. We’ll pull that all together over the next week and coordinate with the county PIO to get the announcements out there and the applications live. – Paul
Economic Report::
Today is our deadline to receive “letters of interest” for consultants to work with us on revising the 2014 Lincoln County Economic Report (funded by an ARPA grant from Lincoln County). So far, we’ve got three in (all exceeding the budget) – we’re waiting on one more that will hopefully come in within range – if that happens, then I think we can finally get this project rolling! (just-in update – fourth and final letter of interest has arrived and is “on budget”!) – Paul
Organizational/Professional Development::
Paul, Leslie and I went up to Astoria Monday afternoon and attended OCVA’s people’s coast summit through Wednesday. It was a fun few days and I attended presentations on boosting social media, building a strong tourism workforce, advocacy for tourism development projects and more. I also read our previous year’s ROI narratives in preparation for putting together the new application. – Sarah
Project Work::
This week I edited the “friend of the local arts” guide and the MailChimp event promotion, I fixed the old board meeting minutes, and began to work on the October board meeting minutes. I worked on the youth entrepreneurship video, updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider and made Oregon Prospector updates. – Sarah
Rural Opportunity Initiative::
This week saw us continuing to work on our ROI application (which will be submitted to Business Oregon next week). The “Launch Stage” funding range is significantly higher than when we applied last time, so we may have some wiggle room to do a little more innovative project work. We’re also getting letters of support coming in to bolster our application. – Paul
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
Yaquina Bay Economic Foundation – At the request of YBEF prez Dave Price, I’ve set up a demo of the amazing (and pretty scary) Placer.ai online data tool at next Wednesday evening’s YBEF meeting. We’ll work through a few locally relevant data deep dives (the Aquarium, the Lincoln City Outlet Mall, the Seafood and Wine Festival and Lincoln City’s summer Kite Festival) to evaluate the utility of this tool to key Lincoln County stakeholders. – Paul
Upcoming::
Next week, Leslie and I have a Zoom meeting with some key folks from the Ford Family Foundation to hopefully get us one (or more!) step closer to bringing back Leslie full-time into her Community Connector role with EDALC.
Reminder: Our November Board of Directors meeting (November 2nd) will be IN PERSON, hosted by Bob at Hatfield’s Gladys Valley Marine Studies Building.
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
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 🙂