The Ashland Free Press — Rockin' the Siskiyous, Ever Since 2005

Collage on aged paper: the trail application and the opposition rebuttal flank a spiraling siege of binder clips, push pins, redacted comment slips, and pencil stubs, all ringing a small torn window of the actual dirt path, with City Hall in the background.

The Sunday Edition

The Smallest War Ends Two To Three

September 15, 2026 · by Nixie Worthington

The chair gave every speaker one minute, the interim director gave the commission six reasons, and after two years, 933 comments and about ninety seconds of roll call the Lithia Park bike trails were dead, two to three. Then the commission voted four to one to send the author of the proposal off to find another hillside. What the record shows about the evening, including the man who came to talk about a statue.

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The Latest

Civic BeatPlanning Sep 8

The Ceiling Goes Back On

Sep 12 · Alan Decault

A twenty percent cap on flag drive grades failed three to three on August 25. On September 8 the same commissioner moved it again with eight conditions bolted to it and it carried five to nothing, with two commissioners absent and one of them the one who had voted it down. Ashland's Planning Commission has now sent the council an ordinance the city's own lawyers advised against writing.

The Sunday Edition

The Secret History of Ashland's Red Scare

Sep 6 · Derek DeForest

An archival discovery sheds light on the broader history of radical politics and repression in Southern Oregon. A newspaper columnist the city council once commended for her faithful service had, before she came to Ashland, been secretary to the most active fascist in Southern California. Reprinted by permission of the author from Oregon Humanities magazine.

Opinion

I Voted Yes and I Am Still Mad

Sep 3 · an Ashland water customer

A guest piece. I voted for the water treatment plant and I would again. What I have not been able to get out of anybody at City Hall in almost two years is what it costs, when it will be done, or what the loan came to, and I have watched a great many council meetings trying.

The Sunday Edition

The Smallest War in Oregon

Aug 30 · 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.

The Sunday Edition

The long pieces — it is always Sunday somewhere

The Word They Stopped Using

September 13, 2026 · Alan Decault

In February the superintendent retired the word consolidation and replaced it with Transformation. Everything underneath it stayed the same, including the committee charter that still says school consolidation, school mergers, grade level reconfiguration. Ashland's schools have lost roughly a fifth of their children, and the district has been telling us so one building at a time.

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Access, Incorporated

September 9, 2026 · Nixie Worthington

The nicest word in American land politics is 'access,' and the outfit that built the nicest door in the business is closer than ever to its founding goal: the Roadless Rule is being rescinded, comments close September 21, and the BlueRibbon Coalition has a form that will file your outrage for you. Before you touch it, come meet the people holding the door — their documented corporate past, their untraceable present, and a portfolio whose only across-the-board beneficiaries do not ride.

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Civic Beat

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Planning Aug 25

The Motion Is To Do Nothing

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.

Council Aug 18

Full Tilt Boogie

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.

Council Aug 17

The Vibe Theory of Law Enforcement

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.

Planning Aug 11

Sixty Units An Acre

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.

Parks + Council Aug 12

With All Due Respect, That Was All Wrong

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.

Parks Aug 5

A Mile of Trail, a Hundred-Year Plan

Aug 6 · Nixie Worthington

Ashland is deciding whether bicycles belong in Lithia Park: a mile of trail, $30,000, 390 comments, a master plan nobody on the commission can agree on, and the four real questions under the jazz hands. The long treatment arrives in our next Sunday Edition.

Council Aug 4

Terrible Resolve

Aug 5 · Nixie Worthington

Seventeen citizens get one minute each, a committee is un-cut in real time, City Hall discovers it has violated its own window code for twenty years, and a ballot measure most of the dais opposes sails to November anyway.

Council Aug 3

Funny Money

Aug 4 · Nixie Worthington

The city manager's official term for the $4 million Asante hospital settlement is 'funny money.' Three groups pitch three futures for it and none brings a budget; the SERJ committee's anti-detention proclamation passes by acclamation in a session that cannot vote.

Council Jul 21

Eight Signatures to Spare

Jul 22 · Nixie Worthington

The Council amends a citizens' petition over its author's objection, on the night the recount found it qualified by eight signatures nobody can lawfully verify. Also: the tenant-protection ordinance passes 6-0, and a resident's EMS allegations sit unanswered.

Opinion

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The Map With The Black Spots

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.

Five Dollars and Fifteen Cents

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.

The Pickleball Wars Were Never About Pickleball

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.

Where Are The Commas

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.

The Reason Keeps Changing

Aug 4 · Nixie Worthington

A $6,000 rafter, five explanations for one locked City Hall, a roofer with a live warranty who never got a call, a police car in a journalist's driveway, and thirty Helman heirs with four lawyers.

A Patterned Mess

Aug 1 · Nixie Worthington

Three public buildings you cannot go into, six unwritten rules that put them that way, and the short list of people who came out of the year with their record intact.

Ninety-Eight Words

Jul 10 · Nixie Worthington

On December 3, 2025, the director of Ashland Parks and Recreation stood up in front of his commission and made a joke about painkillers. That was the last time the public saw him do his job. Nobody has ever said why. That is the story. Not the why — the nobody.

A Winter Without Ice

Mar 14 · Nixie Worthington

The structure was up. The chiller was paid for. The department knew in June what it needed, was told sixty days, and had no second engineer, no second vendor, and no written fallback when the call came the Thursday before Thanksgiving.

The File

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Meets Expectations

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.