The Mill Pond Standard

Ashland Planning Commission · March 10, 2026 · 54m · four of seven commissioners present, one by Zoom · two members of the public testified.

A short meeting with one application, approved unanimously and deservedly. The interesting part is the rule the commission used to approve it, which is not written down anywhere.

A Standard That Is Not In The Code

The application was the last piece of the Kestrel Park subdivision — area seven of phase three, an 18,000-square-foot remnant on North Mountain, divided into four lots carrying a duplex and three triplexes: eleven dwelling units on ground zoned for somewhere between 23 and 43.

The site falls steeply east to west, and on hard rock. Each building steps down the hill with a daylight basement about half below grade. Which raises the question of solar access, and Ashland’s solar ordinance measures shadow against an imaginary fence at natural grade on the property line.

Here the natural grade is roughly twelve feet above the finished floor of the units below, and in some earlier cases there was no property line to measure from at all. So staff and applicants have used what they called the Mill Pond standard: a functional equivalent that measures the shadow cast on the neighbouring building rather than on a line that either does not exist or sits twelve feet in the air.

A commissioner asked the right question, twice. Does this standard appear in the code? It does not. Has it been used before in this neighbourhood? Yes — at Overlook Drive in 2014, at Kestrel phase one, and on the Madeline Hill property. Does the North Mountain neighbourhood plan itself address solar access? No; it refers back to the general solar section.

Satisfied, he said so plainly: precedent exists, “and whether the commission has authority to go ahead and use that functional equivalent standard — sounds like we do.”

This desk records it without objection and with one observation. A rule applied consistently for at least twelve years, on which buildings have been designed and approvals granted, is a rule. It is simply a rule that a resident cannot look up. Anyone reading Ashland’s solar ordinance to work out what their neighbour may build would not find it, and would be wrong.

The shadow finally agreed to is under two feet on one building and a little under three on another — better than the five feet the standard would have allowed — and the buildings are near final design, so those numbers should be what gets built.

A Tree That May Not Have Been A Tree

The application included a permit to remove one non-hazardous significant tree: a multi-stem cherry inside a building envelope.

Staff had doubts about whether it was a regulated tree at all. Ashland’s definition turns on a six-inch trunk at breast height, measured at the narrowest point beneath a split; this specimen, staff said, “presents more like a shrub rather than a dominant trunk that splits.” The tree management advisory committee looked at it, also questioned whether it was regulated, and unanimously recommended approval of the removal anyway.

So a permit was sought, reviewed by a committee and granted by a commission for the removal of something two of the three bodies involved suspected did not require a permit. Nobody did anything wrong; the applicant applied for the permission he might have needed, which is the correct instinct. But the sequence is a small monument to a definition that does not do its job.

The Part That Worked

The best thing at this meeting was procedural in the good sense.

This same area came before the commission about a year and a half ago as part of the larger phase-three application, and was pulled out of it. A commissioner asked, on the record, whether that was because of neighbours’ concerns about parking and congestion.

The developer answered himself, and answered honestly. He had bought the property with the design largely done and assumed it was further along than it was. The day before the hearing, “we looked at some of the items and went, gosh, this just isn’t gonna work” — the topography did not suit the buildings as drawn. And the neighbours, “many of which are here tonight,” had real concerns.

So it was withdrawn and redrawn: buildings pulled apart to open sight lines, and the alley widened — a 16-foot public right of way, plus four feet dedicated from this property, giving more than 24 feet of backup space where 22 is required. That was the neighbours’ central worry, since they take garage access off that alley and the bin lorry uses it.

Then Richard Inger came to the podium and said the changes “have alleviated essentially all our concerns.”

A commissioner’s summary: “It’s a great day here at the Planning Commission when we hear that the residents in the area had some concerns, the developer heard the concerns, went back to the drawing board, and came back with something that looks like addressed really well.”

It is worth setting that against the February briefing, at which this commission learned that under the new state legislation, land divisions of this kind may be processed with no public notice at all and no appeal by anyone but the applicant. The redesign above happened because neighbours found out and turned up. Both facts belong in the same file.

The second speaker, Jeff Thompson of Plum Ridge, asked for something smaller and entirely sensible: that the alley not be called Mariposa Court on the plans, because there is already a public street named Mariposa nearby, and confused deliveries mean traffic in an alley that cannot take it. He wants the new units addressed on Patton or Nandina. Staff confirmed the standard addressing condition covers it, and that the post office, not the city, decides where the mailboxes go.

Approved five to nothing.

Odds

Staff reported ordinances adopted by the City Council on March 3 that touch development without touching the land use code. Ordinance 3286 allows the city to require removal of trees certified by an arborist as infested, to protect neighbourhood canopy. Ordinance 3288 prohibits issuing a building permit while a code violation is outstanding, unless the permit is what fixes it. Privately owned murals on private property are now allowed and privately maintained. At first reading: marijuana dispensary language catching up with state law, and an exemption confirming that heat pumps installed to manufacturer specification comply with the noise ordinance.

The Docket

The March 24 study session is cancelled — it falls in spring break and at least three commissioners will be away. Next meeting April 14.

And one item left open, which this desk will keep asking about. A commissioner raised the Transportation System Plan, and specifically the evacuation-route work discussed at an autumn study session: “we’re entering another wildfire season with very constrained egress out of town.”

The plan is funded by ODOT. As of about three weeks before this meeting, the contract had not been executed. Once it is, the work runs one to two years. Staff had expected it to begin at the start of the year and undertook to bring back a status report.

Ashland’s plan for getting out of Ashland is currently waiting on a signature.

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Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the March 10, 2026 Ashland Planning Commission regular meeting. Quotations appear as transcribed, lightly conformed to natural speech, with bracketed interpolations where the repair is interpretive; the caption software recycles and garbles speaker labels, so commissioners are identified by role except where the roll call or the chair’s own words confirm them; staff, the applicant team and members of the public identified themselves on the record. Lot areas, unit counts and code citations are as stated in open session.