September 29, 2026
“A free press is the guardian of a free society”
Arguments, complaints, and the occasional retraction. Bylines optional — that is a tradition here, not a loophole.
September 3, 2026 · an Ashland water customer
A guest piece. I voted for the water treatment plant and I would again. What I have not been able to get out of anybody at City Hall in almost two years is what it costs, when it will be done, or what the loan came to, and I have watched a great many council meetings trying.
August 25, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Nine people got one minute each on herbicides. The eighth had spent fifteen years earning the policy she was defending. A letter this week asks where the real Tonya Graham went; the answer is in the packet, and it is worse than the question.
August 18, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Ashland charges you a parks fee. Ashland does not have a parks fund. It has not had one since 2024, when the city's auditor told the finance department that a separate parks fund could no longer be maintained and the money was folded into the general fund like an egg into batter.
August 14, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The room at the Parks Commission study session on April 1 was full in a way that parks meetings are not usually full. What they were fighting over was eight tennis courts at Hunter Park — and a shortage nobody has budgeted to fix.
August 11, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Six studies, eighteen years, 351 pages, a 159-person survey, and a civic campus the Council declined nearly unanimously — while the buildings Ashland is keeping still have no costed plan.
August 4, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
A $6,000 rafter, five explanations for one locked City Hall, a roofer with a live warranty who never got a call, a police car in a journalist's driveway, and thirty Helman heirs with four lawyers.
August 1, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
Three public buildings you cannot go into, six unwritten rules that put them that way, and the short list of people who came out of the year with their record intact.
July 10, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
On December 3, 2025, the director of Ashland Parks and Recreation stood up in front of his commission and made a joke about painkillers. That was the last time the public saw him do his job. Nobody has ever said why. That is the story. Not the why — the nobody.
March 14, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
The structure was up. The chiller was paid for. The department knew in June what it needed, was told sixty days, and had no second engineer, no second vendor, and no written fallback when the call came the Thursday before Thanksgiving.
