Ninety-Eight Words

On December 3, 2025, the director of Ashland Parks and Recreation stood up in front of his commission and made a joke about painkillers.

"It's been a couple months being up here," Rocky Houston said, "so if I stumble around with my words, it's just 'cause I'm not used to it. So it's not the pain meds anymore." Then he gave his director's report, and the first item was the ice rink, and he explained in careful detail why it was not going to open.

That was the last time the public saw him do his job. Within about two weeks he was on paid administrative leave. On January 22, 2026, the city announced he had resigned, effective immediately, in a news release of 98 words.

Nobody has ever said why. That is the story. Not the why — the nobody.

The Job, As Advertised

Houston signed a four-page employment agreement on June 6, 2024. The Parks Commission ratified the appointment on July 10 — the motion was to appoint him director "and that we acknowledge that the city manager executed the employment agreement" — and he took over operations on July 15. About 35 employees. An annual budget around $6.7 million. A salary just shy of $159,000, plus $350 a month for a car.

He came from Clark County, Washington, where he had run the Parks and Lands Division for three years. He replaced interim director Leslie Eldridge, who had been holding the department together since August 2023, after Michael Black resigned following nine years in the job.

Nine years, then an interim for eleven months, then eighteen months, then nothing. Whatever is wrong here predates the man who just left.

The Month Of No Comment

By mid-December 2025 the parks department had begun referring to Rachel Dials as acting director, which is a sentence that means something specific to anyone who has worked anywhere.

Ashland.news asked the obvious question. What follows is the city's answer, in full.

Communications officer Dorinda Cottle: "I want to follow up and reiterate that our staff are unable to comment on personnel matters." She suggested calling Jim Bachman, chair of the Parks Commission.

Bachman, by text: "no comment." He referred the question to Human Resources or the city manager. Later: "We don't comment on personnel matters."

City Manager Sabrina Cotta, before a council meeting: the city couldn't comment on personnel matters.

Houston did not answer emails. There was not even an out-of-office reply.

For nearly two months, a department with a $6.7 million budget was run by someone whose title contained the word "acting," and the residents who pay for it were told three times, by three officials, that they were not entitled to know why.

I understand personnel confidentiality. It exists for good reasons, most of which protect the employee. What I do not understand is why the same confidentiality that forbids explaining a suspension permits announcing a resignation in a release short enough to fit on an index card, with the line "We would like to thank Rocky for his service and wish him well on his next endeavors," and then nothing further, forever.

What Ninety-Eight Words Are Worth

Here is the number this piece is built on, and it comes from Houston's own contract.

Under its terms, resigning rather than being terminated relieves the city — absent mutual agreement otherwise — of the obligation to pay severance of up to six months' salary, plus 90 days' notice.

Six months of $159,000 is about $79,500. Add ninety days' notice and you are somewhere near six figures that the city did not have to spend because the departure was styled a resignation.

I am not alleging a deal. There is no evidence of one in any record I can find, and I am not going to invent one. I am pointing out that the public was told nothing, and that the form the silence took happens to be the form that costs the treasury the least. Both of those things can be true by accident. The taxpayer is still entitled to notice that they are true.

The Structural Confession

On February 11, 2026, the Parks Commission and the City Council sat down together, and city administration opened the item this way: "with the resignation of director of Rocky Houston. We felt this was a really great time just to talk together as a body to review kind of the history of the parks department and its integration."

What followed was more candid than anything said in December.

Ordinance 3428 had made Parks an official city department in 2025, formalizing an arrangement previously run on a memorandum of understanding. The presentation described the first year under that model. And then, plainly: "potentially the parks director may be the toughest job in the city."

Why? Because the job answers to three masters. "You gotta make sure that you have an alignment between the park commission, between the city manager and the city council to really have strong success in your role. And when either of those are out of whack or out of kink, it can take much longer to get things done."

Under a slide of concerns, the presentation listed "inconsistent policies, improper management of the parks director." The bifurcation, staff explained, leaves the director "one more step removed from supervision within broader city functions" than any other department head.

The examples given were not hypothetical. Parks proposed cost-recovery fees for Pioneer Hall; council reversed them. The PROS plan and the citywide strategic plan were built side by side instead of together. And — this one, verbatim — "some of the complaints that ice rink, a lot of citizens were complaining to council members and city manager even though it was Park Lane."

Then came the recommendation: delay hiring a new parks director until the necessary changes were made.

Chair Bachman, who a month earlier had said "no comment," did not say no comment to that. "We take that under advisement," he said. "The parks commission retains the authority to hire, evaluate, and terminate as necessary."

Yes. That is what the ordinance does.

Who Is Blameless Here

Two people come out of this with their record intact, and they should be named.

Rachel Dials ran a department through a leaderless winter — the ice rink collapse, the East Main bid, the Hunter Park grant, the pickleball hearings, the budget quarters — under the word "acting," which conveys all of the work and none of the standing. In July 2026 the commission finally put her under contract as interim director, a full six months after she started doing the job. Every transcript in that period has her explaining, patiently, decisions she did not make.

And Fire Chief Marshall Rasor, who in December, while everyone above him was declining to comment on anything, answered a reporter's question about the rink directly and on the record: they could take the canopy down or not use it, they chose to leave it up, nobody can be under it. "We can't have a double standard with our permitting." One official gave a straight answer that month. He didn't work in the building where the questions were being asked.

The Verdict

Fix the structure or stop advertising the job. A position that requires simultaneous alignment among a commission, a city manager and a council, and that your own administration describes on a slide as suffering "improper management," is not a job. It is a fault line with a salary and a car allowance, and Ashland has now run three people across it in three years.

And when the next director goes, say something. Not the personnel file — the fact. That an employee is on leave, that a department is being run by someone else, that the residents whose $6.7 million is being spent should adjust their expectations accordingly.

Ninety-eight words was enough to thank him. It was not enough to tell us anything, which I suspect was the point.

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Sources: Ashland Parks & Recreation Commission meetings of July 10, 2024, August 14, 2024, December 3, 2025, May 13, June 10 and July 8, 2026; joint Parks Commission and City Council session of February 11, 2026. Salary, contract terms, employment dates and the city's statements to the press are from Ashland.news reporting: "Silence from city fuels uncertainty over Ashland Parks & Rec director's future" (Dec. 19, 2025) and "Ashland Parks & Recreation Director Rocky Houston resigns" (Jan. 22, 2026). Quotations from meetings are as transcribed from the record; the February 11 presentation is attributed to city administration, which introduced and delivered it.