Rebuilding The Plane While It's Flying

Ashland Planning Commission · April 14, 2026 · 1h 15m · seven of seven commissioners present — the first full house of the year · no public forum speakers.

Staff came for guidance on four decisions, all forced by Senate Bill 974, all due by July 1, and all to be made without the state rulemaking that explains what the law means. The rulemaking begins this summer. A model code is expected in February or March of next year.

A commissioner supplied the evening’s image early and returned to it twice: “re-engineering the plane while it’s trying to fly.”

One: Upzones, And The Contradiction

The problem has not moved since February. SB 974 says the initial decision on an application to increase residential density inside the urban growth boundary must be made without a hearing. ORS 227.186 requires that zoning changes be adopted by ordinance, which requires a hearing.

Staff put the state’s own position on the record, and it deserves quoting: asked about the conflict, the state “acknowledged that that was something that was recognised before the legislation was passed but was not addressed.”

They will address it in rulemaking. After the deadline.

The community development director’s advice was to keep the hearing, on the ground that “in the interest of public engagement, I would err on the side of providing a public hearing opportunity, because then people haven’t lost that opportunity.” He was equally clear that this leaves the city exposed the other way: an applicant could argue the hearing itself violates 974.

The chair took the same view from the other end: “I’d rather have somebody say that we’re violating 974 than saying we’re violating our own current standards.”

A commissioner asked whether waiting blocks anything real. It does not. Applications can still be filed and approved; they simply go through a hearing. Staff has been told by a developer that they are holding an upzoning application in anticipation of the change, but there has been no pre-application meeting and no property named — “it could very well have just been flippant.”

Then staff offered the solution that technically complies with both laws, and this desk would like it preserved exactly:

“There is a simple solution that gets through it: we would just deny every application at staff level and make the applicant ask for a hearing.”

The chair: “And then you don’t want that reputation.”

Staff: “No. But that’s really the only way that you could meet both.”

Commissioner Phillips dissented from the wait-and-see consensus, and his position is honest: 974 passed, its intent is fewer procedural hurdles, and the commission should find a legally defensible path to administrative review “sooner rather than later.” He was in a minority of one.

Two: What Is An “Initial Decision”?

The second question was performance standards subdivisions — Ashland’s version of a planned unit development, which the code calls something else and which the surveyor’s plat calls a planned unit development anyway.

Two facts from this discussion are worth keeping on their own.

The first is a small confession about how the system is actually used. Ashland allows outline and final plan to be reviewed concurrently for developments of ten lots or fewer. Staff named a recent development — Grand Terrace — that deliberately designed itself in under the ten-lot threshold to combine the two, shortening its timeline and reducing the opportunities to appeal it.

The chair: “So they played the system.”

The second is a piece of statutory analysis by a commissioner that may end up mattering more than anything else said this spring.

Section 3(7) of SB 974 requires that the initial decision be made without a hearing, and permits a local government to provide a hearing on appeal of the initial decision. Neither “initial decision” nor “final decision” is defined — not in the bill, not elsewhere in the statutes, not in any rule. He said he had searched in good faith and could not find them.

His conclusion: in the absence of a definition, it falls to the city to supply one. Define “initial decision” as an administrative determination, and the existing hearing structure can survive as the route to a final decision. “I would hesitate to make any significant change to our land use ordinance until we know what’s going on.”

A commissioner asked the obvious question: “Doesn’t that basically circumvent the goal of 974?”

The answer, and it is a fair one: “The DLCD can make a rule saying that it does, but until they do, it’s up to us to interpret that law.”

This desk takes no view on whether that reading survives contact with a court. It records that a volunteer commission, given a law with a hole in it, found the hole and started measuring it — which is more than the legislature managed.

One smaller item from the same discussion worth fixing while the code is open: cottage housing developments may have twelve units, but concurrent review stops at ten. Two extra 800-square-foot cottages currently trigger a two-stage process for no reason anybody could name.

Three: Variances, And A Sunset That Isn’t One

Ashland’s variance process is deliberately difficult. Senate Bill 1537 introduces a parallel creature called an adjustment — a staff-level process with its own thresholds, which an applicant may use to get around the hearing that a variance would require.

The justifications for an adjustment include affordability. They also include, simply, that without the adjustment you could not fit the number of units you propose. Staff’s example: needing 60 percent lot coverage instead of 50 in order to build three units rather than two would justify granting it automatically.

The chair’s response: “Variances are supposed to be difficult to get. So the idea of making them easier doesn’t sit well with me.” And on the units justification: “It would make more sense… if there was a requirement for affordability included in the units. But just to say anybody who wants to propose five units or ten units of any kind of housing, they can get this variance.”

Senate Bill 1537 sunsets around 2032. Section 8 of SB 974 sunsets in 2033. The state has advised cities not to write 1537 into local code but to implement it directly from the statute, so that when it expires it simply goes away.

And here is the trap, stated by the community development director and passed over without comment by anybody:

“974 does, if you codify it in your local ordinance, then effectively becomes permanent unless you modify that ordinance after 974 sunsets.”

The temporary emergency measures the legislature attached expiry dates to become permanent Ashland law the moment Ashland writes them down. Undoing them will require a separate, deliberate act, seven years from now, by a council that has not been elected.

Four: Design Standards

The last item is the smallest. SB 974 bars applying certain design standards to one- and two-family dwellings in projects creating twenty or more lots. Ashland does not apply site design review to single-family homes anyway, so the practical effect is limited to qualifying a few provisions — some single-family and duplex standards in 18.2.5.090, and some design standards in the North Mountain neighbourhood plan, which will need language saying they do not apply above twenty units.

The Plan

Staff’s proposal for meeting the July deadline is deliberately minimal: define urban housing application clearly in the definitions chapter, and add notes in the procedures chapter identifying which actions become type one. Housekeeping and substantive policy amendments — the tree ordinance among them — come in a separate package so the two do not get tangled.

And then, the director said, when the model code arrives early next year, the city will open the code and do it again.

The chair: “And we can have this conversation all over again. Gosh, how fun.”

Odds

The findings for Kestrel Park area seven were approved five to nothing, with two of the seven commissioners out — one abstaining for “potential business conflicts with the applicant,” the other stating plainly, “I worked on that project. I can’t vote on it.” Both disclosures were unprompted and immediate, which is how it is supposed to work, and it is also worth noting that in a town this size two of seven members of the land use body had a connection to a single four-lot subdivision.

Community development’s public counter hours are now 9 to 1, Monday through Thursday.

The Plaza fountain has been removed — the last major step before restoration, with carving due to begin shortly. It is coming back.

And the former automotive shop at A Street and First, across from the co-op, has type one planning approval to become a food and outdoor seating area. Staff’s estimate on when anybody can eat there: about a year.

The Docket

Code amendments implementing SB 974 must be adopted by July 1. On the current plan they arrive as a narrow package — definitions and procedure notes only — with the larger housekeeping and policy amendments following separately.

The state’s model code is expected February or March 2027, at which point the commission expects to reopen the same chapters.

Next meeting April 28.

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Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the April 14, 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. Bill sections, deadlines and code citations are as stated by staff in open session; the statutes are the controlling documents. A discussion item takes no action.