# Eight Dollars And Fifty Cents A Month

*Civic Beat · June 12, 2026 · by 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.

---

**Ashland Planning Commission · June 9, 2026 · about 1h 50m · seven of seven
commissioners present · seven members of the public testified.**

The manufactured home park ordinance finally got its hearing, two weeks late, and
went forward to the City Council on a **seven to nothing** vote. Six residents,
one park owner's agent and one flood engineer came to speak — the largest public
turnout at this commission all year, and the first time this file has been able
to report what the people who live in these parks actually think.

## What They Said

**Peter Hoyt**, space 25 at Wingspread, 80 years old, a veteran, seven years in
the park and 38 in the valley: "About 80 percent of my monthly budget is my
social security check. I really couldn't live anywhere else in Ashland."

And the fact that governs everything else: "They may have been mobile when they
came in the gate, but once they've been put on a foundation and left to sit for
years or decades, they start falling apart. And with luck, maybe **one in ten**
of the homes in Wingspread could make it out the gate in one piece."

**Deborah Stampley**, also Wingspread, twenty years: "This is my life. This is my
sanctuary we're talking about." The average sale price of a home in the park,
she said, is **$130,000** — "so it's not pocket change." On the new right to
organise a purchase: "large investment groups tend to outbid the locals."

**Nancy Wilson**, Wingspread, twenty-one years, almost 73: "If I needed to buy
some kind of housing situation in Ashland, I would not be able to afford to. I
think I'm too old to rent a room in someone's house. I hope it doesn't come to
that."

**Alan Aykroyd**, Wingspread, wanted longer than 180 days and did the arithmetic
for why: raising millions "divvied up among, in Wingspread at least, among a
hundred units or so." He also raised something this file has not seen in any
staff report on this project:

> "The wildfire aspects are really of great concern to us in Wingspread, because
> we have over a hundred units and **only one outlet**. And I can just imagine if
> there was an emergency that required evacuation of the park, that it would be
> extremely difficult to get that many vehicles out onto Clay Street, where in
> addition there's a new development going on there also. It's just gonna be
> mayhem if we have to get everybody out in a timely manner."

A hundred and sixteen households, one exit, in a town whose Transportation System
Plan — the document that was to look at evacuation routes — is still waiting on a
signed ODOT contract.

**Jerry Berger** of Highway 99 North brought the other hazard. The 1997 New Year's
flood devastated Navu Park and Jackson Wellsprings; he put the damage at more
than 70 dwelling units. In 1998 the Rogue Valley Greenway bicycle path was built,
he testified, without the **no-rise analysis** that state and federal rules
require for construction in a floodway. His conclusion: the two parks inside the
proposed new zone are in a worse position today than they were in 1997, and the
city is about to count as preserved affordable housing a stock it will lose "not
if it floods, but when it floods." He added that a mitigation project there would
cost less than the sidewalks and crossings recently installed at that
intersection.

That is testimony, not a finding, and this desk reports it as such. It is also
the only time this year anybody has told this commission that the parks it is
protecting sit in a floodway.

## The Owner

**Dave Wright**, agent for Wingspread LLC, spoke for an owner who has held the
65-year-old park for many years and, by his account, has a good working
relationship with its residents.

His objection is to the right of first refusal. Extending the period from the
state minimum to 180 days "could be harmful to the owner and residents" because
buyers will not wait, escrow becomes very long, and an owner in financial trouble
who cannot sell may end up closing the park instead. He asked for **30 to 60
days**.

He also asked a fair question nobody had answered: Wingspread and Tolman Creek
appear to be the only two existing city parks entering the new zone, and both
appear to become non-conforming on day one. What happens when a home comes out
and a new one goes in?

## The Answer, With Arithmetic

Wingspread's owner had also submitted a letter, and a commissioner who sat on the
project subcommittee had read it. The letter argues that the park cannot afford
an estimated **$2 million** to replace 60-year-old water and sewer systems, and
that the new zone removes the alternative of "salvaging the land for other
development."

The commissioner accepted that the owner might well bring that forward as
justification for a phased-compliance permit. Then he did the sum, out loud,
from the dais:

Two million dollars across **116 spaces** is about **$17,000 a space**, over
nearly fifty years of ownership. A sinking fund of **$8.50 per space per month**,
earning the fifty-year average risk-free rate — roughly 4.2 percent on a
three-month Treasury bill — compounded over 600 months, would have fully funded
the replacement. That is well under 2 percent of a typical space rent. At the
actual long-run average, he said, the figure falls below **$5 a month**.

"This is not a problem with the ordinance. This is a management unfunded capital
obligation. It is reality for the park owner, but it is reality that could have
been avoided."

This desk has no way to audit those numbers and does not need to. What matters is
that a claim was made in writing to a public body and somebody on that body
checked it before voting. That happens less often than it should.

## What Changed Since April

The commission's study session in April produced specific asks. Every one of them
came back in the draft:

- **The right to organise a purchase went from 120 days to 180.** Residents had
  asked for six months; the chair had said 180; CASA had said 120 was workable.
  The consultants moved.
- **"Financial burden" became "proportionate impact."** The commissioner who
  flagged the two undefined phrases asked how the new term would work, and staff
  gave a worked example: an owner adding a second entrance and exit onto the
  street for Wingspread would not then be required to rebuild every internal road,
  because the improvement is to public safety and the requirement should scale to
  the work. It also removes the need for an owner to open his books, since cost is
  now one justification among several rather than the only one.
- **The limitation on adding units was deleted** — the second catch from April,
  where a park might need extra spaces to finance the very compliance being asked
  of it.
- Landscaping and lot coverage moved to 65 / 35 to match R-2.

Two parks came off the map. **278 Idaho Street** was recommended for removal after
its owner met with staff — he came to the podium to say thank you — and Jackson
Wellsprings had already been dropped. The zone now covers **five** parks:
Wingspread and Tolman Creek inside the city, Siskiyou Village and Navu Park in
the urban growth boundary, pending annexation.

The package also carries two changes that have nothing to do with manufactured
housing and were folded in because the chapter was open: **childcare facilities
and residential care facilities**, which previously needed a conditional use
permit in several residential zones, become **permitted outright** — required by
state law in most zones, and, staff noted, discretionary in single-family R-1,
where the ordinance goes further than the state demands.

A public survey ran April 27 to May 31 and drew **46 responses**.

## The Vote

Deliberation went ordinance by ordinance at a commissioner's suggestion, which
was the right call for a four-part package.

One amendment was moved and **failed, one to six**. The main motion then carried
**seven to nothing**, unamended, and the package — the development standards, the
new zone, the map and comprehensive plan changes, and the separate chapter on
notice of sale and tenant protection — goes to the City Council.

The assistant city attorney has flagged that the tenant-protection chapter sits
outside the land use ordinance and wants further review of it, so the commission
was told it need not formally recommend on that piece. It commented anyway.

## The Docket

City Council **study session June 15**, **first reading and public hearing June
16**, second reading and adoption expected **July 21**.

Also on the council's June 16 agenda: this commission's two parking
recommendations from May.

Next Planning Commission meeting **July 14**.

Two things this file will keep asking about: the ODOT contract for the
Transportation System Plan, and whether anybody looks at the floodway question
Jerry Berger raised before the council adopts a zone over two parks that sit in
it.

---

*Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the June 9, 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; members of the public identified themselves at the
podium. Ordinance provisions, unit counts and dates are as stated in open session;
the adopted ordinances are the controlling documents. Statements by residents and
by the park owner's agent are reported as testimony, including the flood history
and the no-rise analysis, which this paper has not independently verified.*

Source: https://ashlandfreepress.com/civic-beat/2026-06-12-eight-dollars-and-fifty-cents-a-month