# The Optics Are Not Great *Civic Beat · May 29, 2026 · by 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. --- **Ashland Planning Commission · May 26, 2026 · 46m · study session · six of seven commissioners present · one member of the public, who declined to speak.** Three things happened worth recording, and one thing did not happen at all. ## What Did Not Happen The **public hearing on the manufactured home park ordinance was scheduled for tonight.** Staff said so on April 28, and said notice was going to every park owner and every park resident. It was not on the agenda. No explanation was given and none was asked for. This desk notes it because Dolores Nims of Wingspread came to a Tuesday study session in April to ask the city for protection, and because the notice that went out named a date. ## The Driveway In May this commission was told that LUBA — the state's Land Use Board of Appeals — had remanded a city approval on Granite Street, holding that **Ashland's code does not authorise a driveway variance above 18 percent grade under any circumstances.** On May 26, staff proposed amending the code so that it does. The proposal is narrow and, on its face, sensible: allow variances above 18 percent for **pre-existing legal lots of record** where no compliant access is physically possible, subject to the existing variance criteria and to fire department review. New lots stay capped. Lots created since the 1998 hillside ordinance stay capped. Nothing about future subdivisions changes. Staff's account of the origin is persuasive too. The 18 percent limit sits inside a section of code about **creating new lots**: flag drives may not exceed 15 percent, and a variance may take them to 18. Staff does not believe anyone drafting it contemplated that it would render pre-existing lots unbuildable. Nobody made that argument to LUBA. "An argument could be made, but was not." There is precedent for the manoeuvre, and staff volunteered it: after LUBA remanded the Grand Terrace annexation — 210 units on Highway 99 — over the city's lack of a sidewalk exception that ODOT's right-of-way rules required, Ashland amended its annexation code to create one. And then a commissioner said the thing. "I understand that the intention is to close a gap in the code, but **the optics are not great given the proximity of the LUBA decision.**" The rebuttal, from a colleague, is also fair: "the LUBA decision just exposes something we didn't know before, and so we probably need to correct it." Both are right, which is why the exchange is the most useful thirty seconds of the meeting. A city that loses at appeal and then rewrites the rule it lost under is doing something that is either housekeeping or self-dealing, and the only things that distinguish them are scope, timing and who benefits. On scope, this file can report the following. Asked how many properties are affected, staff estimated "probably a dozen or maybe more" undeveloped, steep, legal lots of record — and confirmed that **no site-by-site analysis has been done**. That analysis was offered and not requested. On who decides: under SB 974 these variances become **staff decisions**, appealable to the commission. So the rule the commission is being asked to widen is one it will mostly stop applying. Two commissioners did useful work anyway. One asked for guardrails so that an applicant granted a steep driveway cannot then site the garage wherever is most convenient when a lower, flatter position exists; staff pointed to the existing criterion requiring measures to reduce adverse impact on the natural area. The chair asked that the **date** of the hillside ordinance be written into the code rather than the phrase "pre-existing," because "nobody reading the code's gonna know what that is." Staff will bring it back with the changes, and there will be a public hearing. And the property that produced the remand is in process, so the commission correctly stopped discussing it once it worked out which address it was arguing about. ## Somebody Should Come Back In 2033 In April this desk recorded a warning from the community development director that went past without comment: provisions of SB 974, if written into Ashland's own ordinance, "effectively become permanent unless you modify that ordinance after 974 sunsets." On May 26 a commissioner solved it. Section 8 of SB 974 — the provision barring design standards for one- and two-family developments of 20 or more units — carries an automatic repeal on **January 2, 2033**. He proposed attaching the same sunset to Ashland's own code amendment. Staff confirmed it can be done. "And then in 2033 somebody should come back and amend it." That is a small piece of drafting and a large piece of governance. The legislature attached an expiry date because it judged this an emergency measure. Without the commissioner's catch, Ashland would have converted a temporary state rule into permanent local law by the ordinary act of obeying it — and the repeal would then have required a deliberate future decision by a council not yet elected. Now it expires on its own. He also caught a second thing, in the definition of **urban housing application** being added to the code. The draft says "proposed for residential use." The statute says **planned**. Planned points at the existing comprehensive plan and leaves nothing to argue about; proposed "adds some grounds to argue." The chair: "Let's not set up a LUBA appeal." Staff took the note. The definition will match the statute. ## And The Inversion, Still The commission returned to the provision it could not get past in February: the design standards exemption applies to developments of **20 or more** units, not fewer. "So you can make really big ugly developments, but your smaller ones have to be cute." Staff's honest answer is that he cannot speak for the legislature, and that his own first reaction was that it seemed inverted — if the aim is infill housing, the burden falls on exactly the small projects that would deliver it. The best available explanation is that design standards in most communities exist for neighbourhood consistency on single lots, and removing them there would collide with homeowners' associations and private covenants. For Ashland the practical effect is small, because the city applies almost no residential design standards to single-family housing. The exception is the **North Mountain neighbourhood plan**, which does — and the remaining large parcel there, south of the newly approved Kestrel Park lots and north of Bear Creek, would trigger those standards at 20 units or more. Those provisions will need qualifying. ## The Threshold Nobody Wanted Moved One more from the SB 974 package. Ashland requires a two-step review — outline plan, then final plan — for performance standards subdivisions above ten lots. Staff proposed raising the trigger to **20**, noting the change is discretionary and not required by the bill. The commission preferred **12**, for consistency with the twelve-unit cottage housing allowance, and was frank about why the whole question may not matter: asked how many subdivisions above twelve lots are even left in Ashland, staff said mostly smaller ones, unless a property annexes in — which triggers a hearing anyway. A commissioner: "So it's really a moot point." The best argument for keeping the two-step process came from the commissioner who develops property: it is worth something to a person assembling a scheme to sell on, who wants "a nod from the city — like, yeah, this can work" before paying for engineering. His verdict on whether any of it produces housing: "I also don't think it's gonna get more houses built, but, you know, that's just throwing it out." ## Odds The city's annual **historic preservation awards** went to a compatible accessory dwelling unit at 53 Pine Street, compatible new residential in a historic district at 114 Bush Street, historic-compatible commercial at 27 North Main, and multifamily new construction at 292 Gresham Street. The Historic Preservation Advisory Committee also gave an individual award to **Madeline Hill**, who championed the creation of the Mountain Meadows neighbourhood. Mountain Meadows is about 30 years old. Staff observed that in fifteen more it will qualify as a historic district itself, "and we'll have her largely to thank for that." The parking recommendation from May 12 was confirmed without further motion and goes to the City Council on **June 16**. ## The Docket The SB 974 code amendments come back for a **public hearing** with the changes requested tonight — the 12-lot threshold, the sunset clause, the statutory definition, and the driveway provision. Adoption is due by **July 1**. The manufactured home park ordinance hearing is not currently on a date this desk can report. Next meeting **June 9**. --- *Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the May 26, 2026 Ashland Planning Commission study session. 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 chair's own words confirm them. Bill sections, code citations, grades and dates are as stated by staff in open session; the statutes and the draft ordinance are the controlling documents. A study session takes no action.* Source: https://ashlandfreepress.com/civic-beat/2026-05-29-the-optics-are-not-great