The Environment Gets a Vote

Wednesday's Parks Commission meeting opened with a correction to its own minutes — Commissioner Gardner noting the previous set had omitted him from the roll call: "I was at the meeting" — and closed ninety-four minutes later with the chair declaring, of the Daniel Meyer Pool, "we can't walk away from the pool ever, in my opinion, but that's a personal opinion." Between those bookends: a job description tabled, an interim director authorized, a pesticide approved sight-unseen, and a plaque sent back for being uninspiring. Local government, in other words, at cruising altitude.

A Plan for a Plan

Public forum belonged to the pool. Todd Landry — high school swim coach, Masters club president, volunteer pool operator — itemized the repairs staff has quietly delivered: heater elements that "finally rusted away and were replaced," backstroke flags formerly "held together by duct tape," locker rooms restored from two working showers to six. Then the turn: the pool liner installed two years ago carries roughly a five-year warranty, "we're two and a half years into that liner... I hope there's a plan for a plan to keep moving with the pool." A plan for a plan. He said it without irony, which is what made it land.

Aaron Goldman followed with the testimony that should be read into every budget hearing henceforth: family arrived in 1990 when he was eight, the pool was his first social world, his 75-year-old mother "still swims laps almost every day," and — the kicker — a kid he taught to swim at age nine "is now my wife and I's midwife. We're expecting our first child." His plea: "it would be a huge tragedy for me if we lost that due to something as small in the big picture as being unable to agree how to spend our money." The commission's response arrived at meeting's end: perhaps a study session. No date.

The Interim, at Last

The substantive business went well, and deserves saying so. The parks director job description was tabled to July after Commissioner Adams caught it requiring a bachelor's degree while simultaneously allowing that degree to substitute for experience — "It reads as if... it's not actually a minimum qualification" — and the deputy city manager conceded the draft "did not pass through the final, does it make sense review." And the commission voted 5-0 to negotiate an interim director contract with Rachel Dials, converting her from "acting" director — a city employee answering to the city manager — to an interim who reports to the commission itself. Commissioner Lund put the constitutional point plainly: the acting arrangement "makes the lines of chain of command really muddy," and "we have a great candidate right here... someone who's already been doing the job." Six months into doing it, the record shows.

One voice on the dais asked quietly whether the ship had already sailed on that decision — "Could impact voting maybe" — and was told "that's a different conversation." The assistant city attorney's contribution to the personnel question was a sentence for the ages: "That strikes me as an operational question. I don't know if I have the capacity to answer that, but it seems like everyone's doing fine now." Everyone doing fine now is, of course, how this department described itself before the events nobody on this dais will name — Gardner's own passing reference to the abandoned "fast track" first search ("I think this is a much better procedure") being as close as the record came all night.

Nine Pines, Contents Unknown

Then the item this column exists for. Staff sought the annual exemption from the pesticide policy to treat nine pines around the Japanese Garden — third year running. Commissioner Weiner went looking for the name of the chemical in the packet and could not find it: "there was a lot of stuff in this packet... with all the recent concern from the community about use of stuff... we ought to probably at least have some understanding of what the product is." He voted yes anyway, on the theory that it was the same product as last year, whatever last year's was.

Commissioner Lund then argued, with some elegance, that the trees requiring annual chemical intervention "are not exactly adapted to this area... maybe these aren't the right plants," concluding: "a reasonable case can be made for voting against this. And I think ultimately the environment's gonna vote against doing this because the plants are gonna die." He then voted yes. The motion as passed authorized a "basal bark application" of a pesticide that every speaker had described as trunk injection — a mismatch between the motion and the method that survived into the record unremarked. Five to zero: for an unnamed chemical, by an undescribed method, on trees pronounced doomed by a member of the majority. The environment, as advised, retains its vote.

For completeness: the bronze nature-walk plaque honoring thirty years of volunteer-led walks was tabled after Lund reviewed the mock-up — "the way it's laid out there is pretty uninspiring" — with Gardner, who presented the item wearing his Parks Foundation hat and then voted on its tabling, still "negotiating with the donor" over round versus rectangular. And the Lithia Park East Hillside mountain bike trail got its public-input schedule, which former councilor Kate Hartzell promptly disassembled from the podium — summer timing, mismatched maps, "The proposal that I read tonight is a sales job" — and the commission, to its credit, largely adopted her fixes on the spot: comments open now, trail marked within weeks, guided tours. Commissioner Adams performed the first vocabulary correction of a war that will run all summer: "These are trail crossings... people aren't getting hurt at trail crossings." The chair: "Intersections."

The presses note, finally, that the golf course's mystery windstorm sits behind a $163,495 insurance check nobody explained, and that the five-year capital plan still contains no scenario for the food and beverage tax dying in 2030 — Lund asked; "I haven't been tasked with that," said staff. Task them.

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Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the June 10, 2026 Ashland Parks & Recreation Commission business meeting. Quotations appear as transcribed; names are attached only where the meeting record confirms the speaker. Figures are as stated in open session.