Greetings and welcome to Friday and… (wait for it)… welcome to Fall!!
First off, a not-so-gentle nag to take our Rural Opportunity Initiative impact survey (maybe five minutes) – it’ll really help us narrow down our project list as we work to refine our “Launch Phase” application in the coming weeks – here’s the link (please and thank you!):
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/N7DHDMT
Here’s our staff update for the week:
Blue Economy::
This week, I received a notice from the U.S. Government Accountability Office that we were randomly selected for a site visit to check in on our Congressionally Directed Spending Blue Economy grant. Lucky us! They’ll be on-site on October 11th for a few hours and Mark Farley will help with the dog and pony show. We’ve got all our ducks in a row – I just need to comb and primp said ducks. – Paul
Broadband::
This week was our monthly Broadband Action Team meeting (BAT). Not all that much new to report as all are just waiting for the various funding opportunities to go online. Solarity also completed their broadband strategic plan for Lincoln, Linn and Benton counties (I may have said that in an earlier update). All Cascades West counties have agreed to contract with Rural Prosperity Partners (formerly Sequoia Consulting) to continue running our regional BAT – and we’ll be working with them to do a BTAP grant for additional BAT funding and monies to help actually write broadband grants in the region. I’m working to connect with Commissioner Miller to get a sense of how we want our Lincoln County partnership to move forward as we prepare for potential BB infrastructure projects. – Paul
Communication/Marketing::
I posted on EDALC’s Facebook page about Reinventing Rural’s Spanish business courses and the SBDC’s course on federal contracting for small businesses. Paul and I also discussed plans for an upcoming youth entrepreneurship promotion video. – Sarah
Community and Economic Development Grant Program::
This week, I had a working lunch with Commissioner Jacobson and Administrator Johnson at the Gyros Guys (and we ran into Linda there as well – small, wonderful world!). We talked through the schedule and some application and rule tweaks (such as an organization only being able to be awarded one grant a year from either Social Services or ComEcDev and excluding organizations that already receive direct, contracted funding from the county). We’ll put together a rules summary, draft schedule and application changes for Kaety and Tim to review and then we’ll loop in County PIO Ken Lipp to light this candle and get the process rolling. – Paul
Economic Report Update Project::
It took us a little while, because we’ve been swamped these past few weeks, but we got together a Request for Interest document on the economic report update project, and got it out to four firms for evaluation, including The Research Group, who *should* come back with the most comptetive bid. Once we get those back in mid October, we can work with the office of the Lincoln County Legal Counsel to finally wrap up the contract and get that project well and truly rolling. – Paul
PIER Selection Committee::
This week, Sarah and I attended (via Zoom) the bi-weekly PIER selection committee meeting (that grant program for wild fire recovery projects – $2.7M is coming into Lincoln County). Looks like applications will open up in early October with a January 2nd due date. The Oregon Housing & Community Service team that’s assisting with the process is taking quite a bit of time getting an online application and FAQ in place, but hopefully it’ll come together soon. We’ll keep you posted on progress, in case you know of some possible projects out there. – Paul
Project Work::
This week I worked on the September board meeting minutes, sent out invoices to some members of the board, and updated the entrepreneur slider. I began working on the Startup Blue newsletter and reached out to a Portland research company about doing the economic report update. – Sarah
Rural Opportunity Initiative::
Sarah and I met with Gregory this week to discuss youth entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystem building through the next ROI grant (with an eye towards not duplicating efforts). It was a great and energized meeting, and it seems like we can have an awesome collaborative partnership on the youth piece (and other efforts as well) with EDALC taking the lead on putting together and running the final event – a pitch competition (we’ll look at possibly doing this for non-youth as well). – Paul
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
Business Oregon – On Monday, Sarah and I met with our BizOR Regional Development Director Laura Engstrom and their Small Business Officer Jeff Stell. This week they were “doing the rounds” in Lincoln County – I know they met with Greg and Paula and perhaps a few other Directors. – Paul
LCSD – Yesterday, I had a short meeting with Majalise on the Enterprise Zone rule changes from HB2009 – specifically, one that allows school. districts to collect some potential lost revenue directly from incentivized businesses (only those going after the five-year exemption) if they preset a rate. It’s a pretty questionable stipulation, because the way the law is written, ODE will subtract the revenue received from the monies they pay out to the district – thereby providing zero benefit and more paperwork for the school district and the EZ manager to do. Word on the street is that portion of the new law could be stricken in the short session. – Paul
Upcoming::
Next Tuesday, I’ll be in Albany for a regional Economic Development practitioners lunch. On Thursday, Sarah and I will head to Corvallis for day two of Business Oregon’s Infrastructure Summit (we received “scholarships” from BizOR).
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 🙂