The Tree Bought Us Ten Minutes

Tuesday's Council meeting ran three hours and five minutes and contained, by this paper's count, one First Amendment fight the dais refused to have, one ten-year energy decision made partly on a quick Google search, and one parliamentary maneuver in which a 250-year-old cottonwood was deployed as a time-extension device. The mayor said it herself, after the heritage-tree motion landed inside the meeting's hard stop: "We just bought ourselves 10 more minutes." The tree has been buying this town things since 1776; ten minutes of council time is its smallest gift yet.

The Word Nobody on the Dais Said

Public forum opened with journalist Julie Akins, addressing the city's motion to dismiss a federal civil-rights suit over the arrest of a public commenter: "Simply put, if you do not wish to be called fascist, then stop behaving as fascist. The criticism is not the problem. Your behavior is the problem." Clarinda Mein followed with a pledge of thumbs-down civil disobedience — "We will find out if we will be arrested or thrown out of a meeting for silently showing opposition" — quoting the mayor's own March ruling, "There is no appropriate signal if you disagree," back at her as "chilling words."

The mayor's response came later, unprompted, and without ever mentioning the arrest, the lawsuit, or the dismissal motion: a defense of the hand-signal regime concluding, "Is it illegal to put your thumb down? No, it's not. I believe it's disrespectful." That is the complete official engagement, to date, with the question of whether this government arrested a critic. The lawsuit will answer it if the Council won't; this paper will report the docket either way.

Ten Years of Gas

The Avista franchise consumed the evening's middle. The city attorney had drafted both a franchise agreement and an ordinance with identical terms — "I did not make any policy decisions by design... I allowed you guys the joy of discussion" — and the discussion obliged, including several minutes in which the entire government could not retrieve the phrase "privilege tax" ("Ecology? Is it?"). Councilor Kaplan supplied the institutional memory: Avista once simply stopped providing requested information mid-franchise with no recourse, and his verdict on the company's stated need for a long franchise to borrow against was crisp: "That sounds to me like hogwash because they can't be kicked out regardless." His amendment to cut the term from ten years to five drew the mayor's open support — wildfire is the top community concern, "burning fossil gas is a primary cause," and the below-market franchise fee means the city is "in effect on some level subsidizing the very utility that we have concerns about" — and failed 2-4, after the roll call was first announced backwards and re-counted ("Wait, wait, wait... we only have two yeses"). Councilor Hansen then read the future from his phone — "a quick Google search here shows us that Avista's planning on raising their rates 14% in 2027... not having control is scary to me" — and voted against the whole thing. The ten-year agreement passed 4-2, on Councilor Dahle's affordability-and-stability argument: "I want the friction of negotiation." Ten years is a long time to be sure about gas.

The Building and the Lawn

City Hall's rafter repair came back with an accepted bid — $55,700, against the $6,000-to-$7,500 estimate presented eleven days earlier at the special meeting, an escalation nobody on the dais remarked upon and this paper hereby does — plus a $260,000 roof "estimate" that staff stressed came from studies, not contractors, since no request for bids has ever been issued. The city manager's twin summaries frame the whole facilities era: "Our priority is to keep the building from coming down," and, on soliciting free contractor estimates with no budget behind them: "To be clear, we're harassing them to come out for free with no identified funds to give us an estimate." Hansen, a contractor himself: "It's what they do."

The Garfield Park item brought eight speakers and produced the night's actual policy: night lawn hours extended — return at 3 p.m., off by 10 a.m., full occupancy on weekends and federal holidays — over the deputy police chief's warning that posted times drift ("10 is gonna be realistically 11 o'clock, 11:30, noon"). Neighbor Paul Bingham earned the quotation file: "Anybody who sleeps near where I sleep is my neighbor, definitionally." OHRA's director, reporting on the winter shelter that placed 25 of 32 guests, gave the season its one unambiguous win: "A couple of 'em went from despondent to walking their dog and going to get coffee." And Councilor Kaplan dismantled the services-magnet myth with one case history: a man beaten and robbed in Medford, now on Ashland's lawn — "he didn't come from Tennessee."

The heritage-tree nomination for the 380 Clay cottonwood then passed 4-2 — Dahle opposed because any future owner can undo it on request, DuQuenne because "Do we want trees or do we want housing?" — and bought its ten minutes. Councilor Bloom, whose long-term homelessness framework was squeezed off the agenda entirely, secured a special meeting instead with the argument that ends this dispatch as it ends most arguments on this dais: "we get paid 900 bucks a month. We can make time."

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Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the April 7, 2026 Ashland City Council business meeting. Quotations appear as transcribed, lightly conformed to natural speech; the caption software recycles speaker labels, so names are attached only where the chair's own words or self-identification confirm the speaker. Allegations made in public testimony are reported as testimony. Figures are as stated in open session.