August 19, 2026 · J. Korbes
Kramer is right that she should go, and right about the calendar — the 180-day clause makes waiting a decision with a price. He is wrong that lost trust is the reason, and it matters that he is wrong.
August 18, 2026 · J. Korbes
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 · J. Korbes
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 · J. Korbes
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 · J. Korbes
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 · J. Korbes
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 · J. Korbes
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 · J. Korbes
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.
