Civic Beat · March 12, 2026 · by J. Korbes
One Hundred Eighty Days
Commissioner Adams opened the substantive portion of Wednesday's Parks meeting with a sentence this department had spent three months not saying: "a couple failures this last year. You know, the failure to open the ice rink was really significant to our community." He framed it carefully — not to point fingers, but so the public knows "we're hearing them, we read those emails, we really do" — and it remains, as of this writing, the closest thing to an official acknowledgment the lost season has received. It came from a volunteer commissioner. The paid apparatus has yet to match it.
The autopsy arrived later, in fragments. Commissioner Landt asked the question of the season: if the fire department can issue a special permit for the rink's parking lot now, "why didn't they give us that back in December so we could have opened?" The answer: they did issue one — last year. Such permits run 180 days. "The 180 days expire and that's what happened," said the interim director, and a new one couldn't start until after snow season. There it is: a clock, running in plain sight, that nobody in a leaderless department was watching. Who owned that calendar, and what it cost, remains unexamined — though the evening's financial report supplied one grim answer. December revenue came in "significantly lower than 24 and 25. That's due to the ice rink," yet the department finished ahead year-over-year, and Adams explained why with the honesty this beat depends on: "like most programs we do, the ice rink doesn't actually make a profit. And so no doubt we came out ahead... by the ice rink not being open, and of course it's not the kind of ahead that we want to be." The books improved because the children didn't skate. Every argument about "efficiency" in parks funding should be made to stand next to that sentence.
The Few Million Dollar Do-Over
Then Mark Knox of the Parks Foundation arrived with the redemption arc: the foundation wants to privately fund a permanent ice rink structure — rental shack, snack shack, bathrooms, Zamboni garage, plaza — replacing the tent that, in his words, "all of a sudden became a permanent structure. It sure doesn't look permanent. And I just, I personally think that we as a community can do better." Budget, extracted only after Commissioner Weiner noted the presentation mentioned funding constantly without naming any: "it'll be a few million bucks. How about that?" Timeline: trucks rolling this time next year, site unusable until October 2027, the only city ask being demolition of the existing structure. And one detail Knox volunteered himself, which this paper will simply quote: the steering committee has "no females on that one list... because the female that we chose actually is probably gonna be our landscape architect. So I just removed her from that list." The bike polo community's counterpoint, from Darrell Whitmore, was the night's best self-assessment: "We are not 2.7 million. We are this obscure sport."
The Racket and the Paddle
The Hunter Park tennis courts consumed the final hour, and the spring's great conflict is now fully formed. The facts: a state grant covers 60 percent of a roughly million-dollar rehab of eight tennis courts; the approved scope contains no pickleball; amending it requires documented public comment, which Wednesday supplied in abundance. The survey numbers cut both ways — 205 pickleball players to 104 tennis in the city's sampling, but "more tennis courts" polls worse than "more pickleball courts" — and the institutional memory cuts deeper: shared courts were tried in 2020-21 and, per the interim director, "it did not go well... constant complaints from the public on both sides." Hence the settlement of 2022: tennis at Hunter, pickleball at Lithia, never the twain.
Commissioner Weiner arrived with a full alternative map — twelve pickleball courts, Lithia returned to tennis, and the argument that will anchor his season: "to put in a multimillion dollar Japanese garden and stick eight pickleball courts right next to it is at best laughable. We have an opportunity to repair that harm." Commissioner Gardner's response was the succinct kind: "you're kind of an army of one to... change everything that we currently have in place." The commission votes April 8; staff, given two weeks to cost multiple options, registered its position mildly: "I do have concerns about getting costs." Public comment ran eight deep, and the record should preserve Sharon Bryson's opener on a different subject entirely — she can find the posted pest-management policy for Talent, Medford, Eugene, and Portland in minutes, but not Ashland's: "That's my 2 cents." Nobody engaged it. Her two cents are accruing interest.
Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the March 11, 2026 Ashland Parks & Recreation Commission business meeting. Quotations appear as transcribed, lightly conformed to natural speech; names are attached only where the meeting record confirms the speaker. Figures are as stated in open session.