The Trouble With Being Right About Sabrina Cotta

George Kramer posted something on Facebook this morning that a good many people in this town have been saying in kitchens and at the co-op for about a year, and that almost nobody with a name attached has been willing to write down.

"COTTA GOTTA GO."

I have watched Kramer work a public forum. Last August he stood at the podium during a council meeting, thanked the city recorder by name for her help, and handed the council a petition he had filed with her office — the manner of a man who does his homework before he raises his voice. So when he writes that the city manager "dictates, directs, stalls, or ignores," it is not a tantrum. It is a conclusion, and he shows some of his work.

He is, on the substance, largely right. Which is the easy part.

The hard part is that the case he makes is not the strongest case available, the remedy he demands has a price nobody has put on the table, and the body he is demanding it from is the same body that built the machine he is complaining about.

Let us take those in order.

The Ledger, Which Is Real

Kramer's central charge is that Cotta's only answer to a problem is more revenue, and that when refused, she reaches for the threat of cuts.

Set the record beside it.

Since March 2025 this city has produced, in roughly this order: a public safety fee increase, a wildfire risk reduction fee, an entirely new parks fee, a resolution adopting miscellaneous fees for FY 2027, new electric rates, a water cost-of-service update, wastewater and storm drain rate studies, a solid waste rate resolution, and — as of this month — proposed building fee increases.

Some of that is genuinely overdue housekeeping. The water cost-of-service study dated from 2016 and Public Works was right to want it refreshed; enterprise funds are supposed to charge what service costs. I am not going to pretend a rate study is a scandal.

But look at the general fund side, and look at the rhetoric that accompanies it. At the joint meeting last week, when councilors pressed on what happens if the parks fee lapses, the answer was not a list of things the city would stop doing. It was that a half-million-dollar hole would have to come out of the general fund, and that staff would have to come back and show "what programs across the general fund would we look to remove."

That is the move Kramer is describing. Not a proposal. A hostage.

And it works on people, because the hostages are always the sympathetic ones — the senior center, the ice rink, the nature center, the pool. Nobody ever threatens to cut the thing nobody loves.

The Two Numbers Kramer Left Out

Here is where I can help, because there are two figures in the public record that make his case better than his own post does.

One. In June 2025 — the same budget cycle in which this city told residents it needed a brand-new parks fee on their utility bills or the parks department would lose ten percent of its budget — the council took up a new compensation schedule for roughly seventy top managers and supervisors. Raises in the range of $20,000 to $40,000 apiece. Estimated cost: more than $2 million.

The top step for the city manager's own position moved from $196,964 to $226,803. According to payroll records obtained by a resident through a public records request, Cotta's salary as of last July stood at $216,803, with benefits of $116,075.

So in one twelve-month stretch, Ashland found $2 million for management compensation and told its residents that $5.15 a month stood between them and the senior center.

I want to be precise about blame here, because it matters. Council voted for that schedule. It was a public agenda item, based on an outside compensation study, and the argument for it — that Ashland cannot recruit or hold staff at below-market pay — is a real argument that Councilor Shire was still making this spring when he said the priority ought to be "how do we keep staff, how do we stay whole."

But the city manager did not object to her own raise in public, and the sequence is the sequence. You cannot spend a year telling a town it is broke while the compensation line moves in the other direction and expect the town not to notice. Ashland noticed.

Two. In June of this year — with a structural deficit that councilors and residents alike now put at $2.4 million, with City Hall closed, with union contracts unfunded and healthcare running above forecast — Cotta sent the council a memo proposing to create a new Administrative Service Director position at $141,148 to $173,612.

That would make a three-person executive suite at the top of this government costing, by The Chronicle's arithmetic, better than $530,000 in salary and near $850,000 in total compensation.

The item landed last on a council agenda and time expired before anyone reached it. Cotta was out on leave and unavailable to answer questions about it.

This is Kramer's "vanity projects" charge with a dollar sign on it, and it is more damning than the civic campus, because the civic campus at least came with 351 pages of consultant analysis and an honest staff recommendation. A new deputy-of-deputies in the middle of a $2.4 million hole came with a memo.

The Clause

Now the part that turns Kramer's post from an opinion into a deadline, and the reason I am writing this today rather than next month.

Cotta's employment agreement contains a provision holding that she cannot be terminated until 180 days after new council members are sworn in, with an exception for malfeasance. Three councilors will not be at the table in January. Run the arithmetic and the protected window extends to roughly April 5, 2027.

Read that again slowly, because it is a remarkable thing for a public body to have signed.

The city manager of Ashland is, by contract, insulated from the judgment of the next Ashland City Council for half a year after the voters seat it. The one mechanism this town has for changing direction — an election — is contractually defused for six months on the far side of it.

Kramer says the council must act before November. He is not being dramatic. He is reading the calendar.

And here is the thing about the "let's be fair, let's give her a chance" position that he says some councilors are hiding behind: waiting is not neutral. Every month of fairness moves the town closer to a window in which severance is more expensive and removal is contractually harder. Doing nothing is a decision with a price, and the people paying it will never see the invoice.

I would add one caution the louder voices in this argument keep skipping. Some of what is circulating about Cotta's contract and conduct — allegations of insubordination, of filing suit without authority, of raising her own salary — is assertion, not established fact, and at least one of those is contradicted by the record, since the council itself voted the pay schedule in open session. If this council removes a city manager, it had better do it on the documented record and not on the loudest version of it. The documented record is more than sufficient.

Where Kramer Overreaches

Three places, and I say this as someone who agrees with his conclusion.

"She has lost the trust of a significant portion of the public and, for that reason alone, is incapable." No. Lost trust is a symptom and a consequence, not a cause of action, and "for that reason alone" is precisely the standard that would let a future council fire a good manager for making an unpopular but correct decision. If you want her gone, want it for the roof that was not called about, the building occupied without a vote, the memo proposing an $850,000 executive suite in a deficit. Those are reasons. Unpopularity is weather.

"She has not, to my knowledge, EVER offered any meaningful or creative approach to reduce spending." The qualifier is doing real work in that sentence, and the record complicates it. When Councilor Dahle brought a councilor-led financial policies package to the July study session — GFOA best practices, reserve policy, a directive for staff to report back within ninety days — the description from the dais was that staff "went through this and agreed with our analysis, added some stuff." That is not obstruction. That is cooperation.

What is fair to say, and is damning enough, is that the creative fiscal thinking in this city is coming from the dais and from the public, not from the manager's office. It was Councilor Dahle who went down the rabbit hole. It was resident Nick David who stood up in April and offered the third lever — "modernize the operation before you cut or tax" — with actual specifics about permit intake and minutes production. The ideas exist in this town. They are simply not originating where we pay the most for them.

"Cotta simply doesn't communicate." As a description of how this administration handles bad news, that is unarguable — two months of "we don't comment on personnel matters" followed by a 98-word release, five different explanations for one locked building, a city manager out of town for the special meeting called about her own decision. But as a blanket statement it is too broad. In June 2025 councilors went out of their way to praise the city's communications work, one saying it was "night and day" from a period when misinformation had "blossomed into full blown conspiracy." The city has a communications officer who is good at her job. The problem is not that this government cannot communicate. It is that it communicates beautifully about things that are going well.

The Council In The Mirror

Kramer told a councilor that they do not work for Sabrina Cotta, it is the other way around, and all of them work for the residents. Correct, and worth saying out loud in a strong-manager town where the distinction blurs.

But the council does not get to arrive at this moment as an innocent party.

This council approved the compensation schedule. This council's mayor and attorney produced the contract with the 180-day clause. This council created the parks department by ordinance in December 2024 and was informed thirteen months later that the resulting director's job may be "the toughest in the city" — after the director had resigned. This council let the April 7 direction on City Hall repairs sit unanswered for three months and did not, so far as the record shows, put a single item on an agenda demanding to know why.

Councilors Bloom and DuQuenne called a special meeting on a Friday afternoon to defend the line between operations and policy, and they deserve the credit. The question for the other five is what they intend to do with the six months they have left, and whether "being fair" is a principle or a place to stand while the clock runs.

The Tell

One more fact, and then I am done.

In June, Sabrina Cotta was named one of three finalists for the city manager job in Tigard. She did not get it.

I do not hold that against her. Public executives look at other jobs; that is not a character flaw, and anyone who has read the last year of Ashland's news would understand the impulse.

But it does answer a question the council has been circling for months, which is whether this arrangement is working for anybody. A city manager who is interviewing elsewhere and a public that is petitioning against her are, between them, a fairly complete verdict. The only party still undecided is the seven people who can actually do something about it.

The Verdict

Kramer is right that she should go. He is right that it must happen before the new council is seated. He is wrong that lost trust is the reason, and it matters that he is wrong, because a town that fires city managers for being disliked will spend the next decade hiring people who are pleasant and useless.

Fire her for the record. It is long enough: a public building occupied without a vote; a council directive ignored for three months; a roofer under warranty never called; five explanations for one locked door; an executive position proposed in the teeth of a $2.4 million deficit; and a management style that answers every gap with a fee and every refusal with a threat to close something people love.

Do it in the open, on the documented facts, at a properly noticed meeting where the public can watch — which, given the last twelve months, would itself be a small revolution.

And then do the harder thing, which no Facebook post can accomplish and which this council has been avoiding since 2008: fix the structure that keeps producing this. Ashland has now burned through a city manager, a finance director, two parks directors and a city attorney in three years. At some point the common denominator stops being the individuals.

Because here is what I fear about "COTTA GOTTA GO," true as it is. It is a satisfying sentence, and satisfying sentences have a way of substituting for work. Removing a city manager will not repair a rafter, will not call the roofer, will not put commas in the facilities plan, will not build a pickleball court, and will not tell the seniors on Homes Avenue whether their building is being sold.

Get rid of her. Then get to work. The second part is the part that costs something.

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Sources: George Kramer, public Facebook post, Aug. 19, 2026. Ashland City Council and Parks & Recreation Commission meetings, March 2025 through August 2026, as transcribed from the public meeting record — in particular the council study session of July 20, 2026 (financial policies), the council meeting of April 21, 2026 (public comment), the joint Parks Commission and City Council meeting of Aug. 12, 2026 (parks fee), and the council meeting of Aug. 5, 2025 (public forum). Compensation figures: The Ashland Chronicle, "Big Pay Raises for Top Ashland Staff," June 16, 2025, and "City Manager Proposes to Hire a New Senior Level Aide," June 22, 2026, the latter citing city payroll records obtained by public records request. Contract terms including the 180-day provision as described in guest opinions published by The Ashland Chronicle, July 2 and July 12, 2026; the agreement is posted publicly. Tigard finalist status: Ashland.news and Rogue Valley Times, July 2026. Allegations attributed to other commentators are identified as such and are not adopted here.