Greetings and welcome to September! Thanks to all who could attend yesterday’s board meeting – great discussion and I’m very excited that the Board voted to support an active relationship with O2IH.
Here’s our EDALC update for the week (not so much verbiage here since I gave a lot of my updates during yesterday’s board meeting and we’re focussing mostly on two main projects in the coming weeks):
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Rural Opportunity Initiative – This week I met with Lincoln City, Dave Price at the SBDC, Melissa Murphy from Business Oregon and Mayor Cross and City Manager Judy Richer from Toledo (who were able to formally pledge funding right then) – all to shore up our coalition partners in our upcoming ROI grant application, which is due on September 20th. I plan to pull together a draft of the formal application next week and to meet once again with the program coordinator to make sure we’ll deliver the strongest application possible for this six + year program.
O2IH/EDA Build Back Better – I participated in over a dozen Zoom meetings this week with potential O2IH partners (perhaps a personal record?), getting them up to speed on both phases of the Build Back Better EDA grant program – with probably as many going on next week (as well as a call with Wes at the EDA on Tuesday morning). Soon, work will switch over to actually drafting the phase one application. We also met with three grant support specialists from OSU who will assist with the management and reporting requirements as this very large project moves forward.
ART Toledo – Tomorrow is the year’s final Art, Oysters and Brew event in Toledo from noon until five pm. This time (due to COVID), Main Street will be blocked off to provide more room for social distancing. I’ll be doing another set of old-school blues guitar at 2pm, if you want to help me live my rock-star (or old bluesman) dreams!
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Have a wonderful (and once again socially-distanced) holiday weekend!
Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all. I’ll be back at it on Tuesday after several days manning the grill with a glass of wine in my hand!
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂