August 30, 2026
“A free press is the guardian of a free society”
Art by CONTRAAugust 30, 2026 · by Nixie Worthington
Somewhere in America this month, a parks board approved a mile of mountain bike trail in eleven minutes and the local paper gave it a paragraph. In Ashland it is a war — and the war is an inventory of everything this town could do if it aimed half this effort at the problems actually eating it. Names named, jazz hands included.
Read →Aug 27 · Alan Decault
Five roll calls on the flag drive ordinance. Three of them tied. The Ashland Planning Commission rejected the staff language, rejected doing nothing, rejected a 20 percent cap, rejected a shorter steep run, and then voted 5–1 to come back on September 8 and try again.
Aug 25 · Nixie Worthington
Nine people got one minute each on herbicides. The eighth had spent fifteen years earning the policy she was defending. A letter this week asks where the real Tonya Graham went; the answer is in the packet, and it is worse than the question.
Aug 24 · John Stanislaus
Ashland's city manager was evaluated in July by seven elected officials, thirty-four staff members and one scoring rubric. The council's own instrument returns 151.6 points out of 250 — an average of 3.03 out of 5, which the form itself defines as meeting expectations. The three things it orders cured come due in November. The clause that protects her job starts in January.
Aug 20 · Nixie Worthington
At 9:31 the council suspended its own end-time rule so two councilors could deliver a hand-drafted rewrite of the land use code — sixteen amendments, due at the state in a month, for a planning department with a quarter of a person to spare. Also: neighbor notice eliminated, the parks fee's third near-death experience, a $50,000 childcare sneak, and the city manager's empty chair.
The long pieces — it is always Sunday somewhere
August 23, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
George Kramer says the city manager has to go, and he has chased the case further than anyone else in town has been willing to. This paper spent two months with the full record — the hiring she stabilized, the wildfire work, the money, the process failures — and arrived where he did by a different road. The reasons matter more than the verdict, and the 180-day clause in her contract matters more than either.
Read →Aug 18 · Nixie Worthington
Monday's Council study session: the police chief credits the vibe for falling crime, a former dispatcher out-prepares the department on its own data, the building division gets the dedicated fund the hospital money can't have, and $4 million sits in a drawer.
Aug 14 · Alan Decault
Ashland wrote single room occupancies into its code for the first time — six to a single-family lot, and triple density in multifamily zones. In the same ordinance, mailed notice shrinks to a hundred feet and the only person who may appeal a housing decision becomes the developer. Recommended 5-0.
Aug 13 · Nixie Worthington
The joint Parks–Council session on the parks fee: the chair discovers what the money is for, a councilor's mental model is executed on live television, no decision is reached — and then everyone stays another ninety minutes for pickleball.
Aug 18 · Nixie Worthington
Ashland charges you a parks fee. Ashland does not have a parks fund. It has not had one since 2024, when the city's auditor told the finance department that a separate parks fund could no longer be maintained and the money was folded into the general fund like an egg into batter.
Aug 14 · Nixie Worthington
The room at the Parks Commission study session on April 1 was full in a way that parks meetings are not usually full. What they were fighting over was eight tennis courts at Hunter Park — and a shortage nobody has budgeted to fix.
Aug 11 · Nixie Worthington
Six studies, eighteen years, 351 pages, a 159-person survey, and a civic campus the Council declined nearly unanimously — while the buildings Ashland is keeping still have no costed plan.
