September 29, 2026
“A free press is the guardian of a free society”
Council, Parks, Planning, Schools, Budget. We sit through all of it and write down what happened.
September 24, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
On September 15 the council slowed its own zoning package down, 6–0, after a councilor apologized for pushing it too hard. Then it spent an hour on the $4 million Asante payment, voted down three different ways of holding some or all of it for healthcare, and passed a motion to talk about forming a committee.
September 12, 2026 · 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 a list of 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.
August 27, 2026 · 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.
August 20, 2026 · 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.
August 18, 2026 · 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.
August 14, 2026 · 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.
August 13, 2026 · 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.
August 6, 2026 · 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.
August 5, 2026 · 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.
August 4, 2026 · 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.
July 22, 2026 · 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.
July 21, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The Council pilots night-lawn management with no price and no contract review, redesigns its financial guardrails over staff's objection that a floor is a floor, and governs throughout by nod.
July 17, 2026 · Alan Decault
The transportation contract everybody has been asking about since March is signed — and it contains something the standard state scope does not: a study of whether Ashland can get out of Ashland. It is there because the public works director insisted, over a year of negotiation, and ODOT agreed.
July 13, 2026 · Alan Decault
Ashland spent 30 to 45 minutes a head writing 981 narrative answers about the future of its schools. The superintendent read them, had the committee sort them into themes — and then ran the lot through an AI to see whether it could produce one sentence. He read the sentence into the record.
July 9, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A 96-year-old offers the Parks Commission $100,000 for a carousel and gets fifteen seconds; a $2 million ice rink pavilion gets 'thrilling'; and the pickleball wars enter their mandate phase.
June 17, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Wingspread residents take the podium and win: the manufactured home park zone passes 6-0. Also passed: a video-records resolution adopted without a number, a trash rate the Council legally could not refuse, and a park with no operations plan.
June 16, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The Council celebrates its 38th straight financial-transparency award in the same session its forecast goes red by 2030 and its hospital's closure passes in a subordinate clause. Also: the Sarcasm Festival reports record attendance, sincerely.
June 15, 2026 · Alan Decault
Thirty-eight people on the transformation steering committee spent an evening looking at the district's facilities usage, enrollment and staffing data — the same data the public has been told it cannot have until the survey closes. The survey closes June 28. Also: the budget passed with nobody in the room.
June 12, 2026 · Alan Decault
Wingspread's owner told the Planning Commission the park cannot afford $2 million to replace its 60-year-old water and sewer. A commissioner worked out what a reserve would have cost across 116 spaces over fifty years, out loud, and got to eight dollars fifty a month. The manufactured home park ordinance passed seven to nothing.
June 11, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The Parks Commission approves a pesticide nobody in the room could name, for trees a commissioner argued are doomed anyway; a pool with two years left on its liner gets a plan for a plan; and the interim director finally gets a contract.
June 4, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
At the joint parks-fee session, three officials claim paternity of the two-year sunset, staff understates the city's own cushion by a factor of ten, and the herbicide fight produces the mayor's most honest sentence of the year.
June 3, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A mural gets nineteen minutes of applause, the hospital coalition gets silence, an ordinance is amended by one apostrophe, and the Council spends half an hour legislating parcel geometry while the emergency manager works a gas leak from the dais.
June 2, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The state rewrites Ashland's land-use rules before writing its own, and a bond developer tells the Council that at current pace the city reaches wildfire resilience in 241 years. The audience behind him never got to speak.
May 29, 2026 · Alan Decault
Weeks after the state's appeals board told Ashland it had no power to approve a steep driveway, staff proposed changing the rule so it would. A commissioner said the quiet part: the optics are not great. Also, a commissioner found a way to stop an emergency state law becoming permanent Ashland law by accident.
May 20, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Election night at the Council: a 4-3 fee-book vote decided by a remote mayor, a chair voting against the item he presided over, fuel costs quietly doubled — and the hospital closing in the morning, unmentioned by the dais.
May 19, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A study session on the night lawn: the city discovers it doesn't know what its own homeless site costs — one day of police time exceeds a quarter of the official annual figure — everyone disclaims expertise, and the council assigns itself a survey.
May 18, 2026 · Alan Decault
After eighteen years, Ashland School District is giving up the self-funded health plan that once went eight consecutive years without a rate increase. It will save more than $3 million and cost $1.5 million to close. Also: the assessment the district adopted last spring is being abandoned because Salem left it off a list.
May 15, 2026 · Alan Decault
Somebody asked whether a private lot charging the public to park counts as public parking. Ashland's answer is no — and, staff pointed out, there is no category in the code for what it actually is. The commission refused the request, then asked the council to invent the category anyway.
May 14, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A fishing guide confesses to nine years of unpermitted stream restoration and gets legalized 5-0 — the redds don't lie — while the Parks Commission admits it has no employee of its own.
May 7, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The Parks Commission redesigns an ADA ramp live from the podium, debates a vision document its chair wrote alone 24 hours earlier, and discovers it voted for its own summer break.
May 6, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Three and a half hours of Council: a $7.6 million loan approved for work already done and paid for, a public forum that wanted the city manager's head and the herbicide truck stopped by morning, and $15,000 for Newport's fight with ICE.
May 5, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
May the 4th at the Council study session: City Hall has space heaters, asbestos, and a roof three contractors refuse to patch; the civic-campus dream gets a $20 million price tag and a quiet burial; and a 2014 warranty ambushes the facilities man.
May 1, 2026 · Alan Decault
A woman who has lived at Wingspread for 25 years told the Planning Commission what a manufactured home park resident owns and what she does not. The draft ordinance would give her 120 days to organize a purchase if the park is ever sold. Asked whether that is enough, she said she would like six months.
April 22, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The Council reverses its week-old night lawn hours 5-0 after the chief says the city's own property is 'flirting with' chronic-nuisance status; every vote of the night is unanimous; and the sewers will smell like strawberries.
April 21, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Mount Ashland has essentially zero snowpack, the reservoir is filling at half speed, and the Council spends its remaining time celebrating a survey and declining a fee increase.
April 17, 2026 · Alan Decault
Ashland must rewrite its land use procedures by July 1 to obey a state law that contradicts another state law, using a model code the state will not publish until next year. Staff offered a solution that would technically work: deny every application at the counter and make people appeal.
April 14, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A special meeting on the night lawn's future is hijacked by the police chief's demand to reverse hours that had been in effect, by one councilor's count, for thirty-eight minutes.
April 13, 2026 · Alan Decault
The district published a nine-phase roadmap for deciding which schools Ashland can afford to keep, and declined to publish the facility and enrollment data underneath it — because, the superintendent said, the facts would stop people dreaming. A director had already warned that the empty space is filling with rumor.
April 9, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The Hunter Park vote lands 5-0 for tennis, honoring a years-old handshake; the room empties instantly; and the night's only pro-pickleball action passes unanimously in front of nobody.
April 8, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Two speakers call the government fascist over a commenter's arrest and get a lecture on hand signals; a ten-year gas franchise passes 4-2 over the mayor's objection; and a heritage-tree motion doubles as a time extension.
April 7, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The 1,974-acre Madrone Ridge acquisition gets its airing — with the budget slide deliberately removed from the public deck, a $1.85 million match unraised, and a gap parcel through which all the trails funnel.
April 2, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The tennis-pickleball hearing fills the chamber past fire code: nineteen speakers at a minute each, a commissioner's proposal mysteriously kept out of the packet, and nobody on either side willing to defend a double-striped court.
March 28, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A special Friday meeting reclaims the community center from city staff, 5-1 — held while the city manager, the recorder, and the fire marshal were all out of town, with the motion visibly drafted in advance.
March 18, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The transit district asks for its levy while admitting it surveyed only the riders who survived the cuts; a governor-ordered half-staff flag goes unexplained; and the hospital's inpatient services have two weeks to live.
March 17, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A councilor says staffing, not population, is driving the rate increases — and the response is 'we're just a little past six thirty.' Plus: pipes not being upsized for the climate everyone describes.
March 16, 2026 · Alan Decault
Before the May levy, the superintendent read the arithmetic into the record: athletics and fine arts in Ashland schools are 88 percent levy-funded, world languages 75 percent, classroom instruction 4. Also a $250,000 cut to state funding already booked, and Title I down because a federal formula decided Ashland got less poor.
March 13, 2026 · Alan Decault
Eleven homes approved on North Mountain, using a solar access rule that appears nowhere in Ashland's code and exists only as precedent. Also a tree the tree committee doubted was a tree, a neighbor who came to say the redesign worked, and a transportation plan whose contract has still not been signed.
March 12, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The ice rink autopsy finally surfaces — a fire permit's clock ran out and nobody says who was watching — while the department's books show it profited from the failure.
March 4, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A 250-year-old cottonwood eats forty minutes of Council, the sale passes with no tree protection at all, electric rates rise 5-1, and the city manager quietly telegraphs mid-budget staffing cuts.
March 3, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
ODFW's official count says four deer safety reports all year; the mayor discloses she walks her neighborhood armed with rebar; and the police chief mentions, in passing, a standing shoot authorization on one specific deer.
February 27, 2026 · Alan Decault
Staff briefed the Planning Commission on the Oregon housing bills, and the room slowly worked out what they say: land divisions with no notice to neighbors and no appeal except by the developer, no design standards for anything over twenty units, and an order to hold no hearing where state law requires one.
February 16, 2026 · Alan Decault
Two sophomores told the School Board that their softball team changes behind a partition their coach built, that a crack pipe turned up in their equipment room, and that two eighth graders are leaving over it. Board policy forbade anyone from answering. Also: the middle school is down 56 students, and the health insurance fund is short a million dollars.
February 13, 2026 · Alan Decault
Six rooms of 325 square feet at about $1,000 each. The Planning Commission refused the permit for the building, using a criterion one member read as meaning whatever the commission wants it to mean — and then heard from staff that the lot can now be built on with no hearing at all.
February 12, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
City administration recommends the Parks Commission leave its director's chair empty; the chair and the mayor tell them to stay in their lane; and zero of 454 assistance customers have done their required audits.
February 5, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Thirteen thousand volunteer hours, a fountain 'restoration' that is actually a full replacement with one original pedestal, and an ice rink failure that surfaces once — as a volunteer-statistics footnote.
February 4, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
OSF's interim chief delivers the most honest institutional autopsy this chamber has heard in years; half the public forum begs for the hospital and gets silence; and thirteen ordinances race an 8 p.m. clock.
February 3, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A sleepy session on charter cleanup detonates when staff says, on the record, that a past appointment proceeded over legal's objection — 'we caved to political pressure' — and nobody names the appointment.
January 30, 2026 · Alan Decault
Ashland's code tells manufactured homes what they may be sided with, and says wood beats metal. Wildfire says the opposite. In the 2020 Almeda fire, 1,500 of the 2,500 homes destroyed were manufactured. Three bodies met for ninety minutes about the six parks left — and nobody has yet asked the people who live in them.
January 21, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A packed house begs the Council to save the hospital and gets a pre-emptive disclaimer; the mayor breaks a 3-3 tie to pay a railroad $1.19 million for a crossing nobody can confirm will carry trains.
January 15, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The facilities study arrives with numbers everyone agrees are wrong, a councilor calls a tenfold error on the spot, and the city manager mentions — mid-paragraph — that City Hall's wiring is giving an employee seizures.
January 15, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The Parks Commission confirms the ice rink season's death only because a commissioner forces the question 'for the public,' and the golf course quietly posts a 28% year.
January 14, 2026 · Alan Decault
The first of this paper's Planning Commission dispatches. A set of findings authorizing eight trees to come down had counted eleven, a hearing had to be re-run because the public notice was defective, and staff told the commission that Ashland's own definition of 'family' violates fair housing law.
January 9, 2026 · Alan Decault
The first of this paper's School Board dispatches. A $107 million bond wraps up having returned $151 million of value and 170 approvals out of 170 requests; the auditor reports a repeat finding, unsigned resolutions and documents lost to staff turnover; and the man closing the bond says his one regret is that nobody read the last plan.
January 8, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The Parks Commission learns the ice rink season is dead — in a subordinate clause — while a Rotarian asks politely whether the thing his club built is still ours.
