Civic Beat · March 4, 2026 · by J. Korbes
The Tree That Broke the City Attorney
Tuesday's Council meeting opened in grief — a moment of silence for two young women killed in last week's accident; "Words feel inadequate at a time like this, but actions matter," the mayor said, and for once the ceremonial language was equal to the occasion — and ran three and a quarter hours into the kind of procedural collapse that this column was founded to chronicle. The instrument of collapse was a tree.
The Tree of Hope
The city moved to sell 380 Clay Street: a derelict house so dangerous visitors sign a liability waiver, appraised at $250,000, and — the complication — a Fremont cottonwood core-sampled at over 250 years old, "born" around 1776, locally titled the Tree of Hope, protected since a 2009 subdivision marked it for retention, its removal denied by the planning commission a decade ago. Testimony ran rich: a former tree commissioner invoking the Takelma elder Grandma Aggie's teaching that trees are "one-legged," warning that filling the old well would kill it; a woman who has led grade-school field trips to it for years; and Alan Sandler, the would-be buyer, rebutting the internet directly — "some rich man... wants to purchase the property and cut down the tree... To put that lie to rest" — he'd keep the tree and build "four to six very low cost townhouses."
Then the machinery seized. The mayor realized mid-item that the public hearing had never been formally opened, and opened and closed it retroactively. Councilor Hansen moved to attach a deed restriction protecting the tree, and the city attorney — asked to improvise perpetual legal protection for "a living organism" on the spot — visibly broke: "what's the penalty...? Is it a reversion?... unjust enrichment... I have to look out for my client... An email next time. If you wanna propose an amendment, give me at least half an hour." Hansen: "shame on us for not having [an alternative]... I'm pushing right back." The mayor gaveled him: "Counselor, you do not have the floor." Councilor Bloom called it what it was — "This is a process problem... we should be tabling this" — and then the tabling failed, the amendment was withdrawn, the withdrawal of the main motion was blocked by its own seconder, and the original motion passed 4-2 with no tree protection whatsoever. Forty minutes of trying to protect the tree produced a sale containing less protection than the packet started with. Kaplan and Hansen — the two who tried — voted no. Councilor Sherell's epitaph: "This is just another good example of why housing is so expensive. 'Cause it gets kicked down the road and down the road."
Rates Up, Roofs Down
The electric rate resolution — the first increase in five years — passed 5-1: about $3 a month rising to $3.23 by year three, driven by an 18 percent Bonneville transmission hike and a system the staff would like to keep from depreciating into anecdote. The comparison offered: even after the increase and the city's own 25 percent electric users tax, Ashland sits 28 percent below Pacific Power, which is up more than 50 percent since 2021. The reserves defense was concrete for once: four linemen sent to Springfield's storm for ten days billed "just under $200,000... And that's not a single piece of material, a meal or a motel." Councilor DuQuenne dissented on urgency grounds and thanked the utility director "for holding it down for the people for five years" — before voting against him, a maneuver this column has come to regard as her signature.
Paul Mina, in his second appearance of the night, did the arithmetic nobody on the dais volunteered: the rate increase times the city's 25 percent users tax yields roughly half a million dollars a year of new general fund revenue, absent from the fiscal impact statement. "Why can't you just tell the whole truth to the people?" The question was, per custom, received as silence.
The Quiet Bomb
Public forum carried six speakers demanding an ordinance against masked, unidentified federal agents — "masked Jim Crow secret police," in one formulation; "we do not want to wait," in another — and the dais, which had proclaimed Women's History Month with the observation that women's gains "are now under significant threat," said nothing about the masks at all. The item was not on the agenda. It has not been on the agenda since November, its advocates note. Six speakers is a constituency; this paper suspects the agenda will discover them eventually.
And in the city manager's report, at the bottom of the night, the quiet bomb: health insurance renewals are coming in "significantly higher than estimated even what the insurance industry was estimating," and "my read right now is we're gonna need to make some mid-budget adjustments in terms of staffing and service delivery." Mid-budget staffing adjustments — layoffs, in the vernacular — telegraphed in one sentence at 11 p.m. after three hours of tree law. The budget committee reconvenes in May. Readers may wish to attend; on Tuesday's evidence, the important sentences arrive when the room is tired.
Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the March 3, 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.