Two Hundred Forty-One Years

Two items at Monday's Council study session, and one number that should be stenciled on the water tower. At Ashland's current pace of wildfire mitigation, by the visiting consultant's own model, the city reaches "resilience" in 241 years. Write it on your evacuation map. The Siskiyous will be ready sometime around the year 2267, assuming the fire consents to wait.

The State Legislates First, Writes the Rules Later

Item one was Senate Bill 974, by which the Oregon legislature has removed the City Council from the appeals chain for urban housing applications: staff decides, the Planning Commission hears the appeal and is final, and dissatisfied parties proceed directly to the state land use board. The bill takes effect July 1. The state agency's rulemaking explaining how it works begins January 2027. Community Development Director Brandon Goldman, a careful man, called this "a little bit of cart before the horse on both of these bills," and noted one wrinkle worth savoring: "we see a conflict between existing ORS 227 and Senate Bill 974 where one says you have to have a hearing, another says that you can't have a hearing." Cities must comply with both, immediately.

The numbers say the drama is smaller than the principle: the planning staff has denied three applications in 25 years, and per the planning supervisor, "It probably is more common to have a reversal from LUBA than a denial from staff or the planning commission." Ashland grows at less than one percent a year — Councilor Hansen guessed two and was corrected. Whether any of this builds housing, Goldman answered with a candor the state never used: "I just don't know if it's actually creating an incentive to create housing that would not otherwise be proposed. But that's my own personal opinion."

The lasting sentence, though, came from Councilor Bloom, thinking aloud about a Planning Commission that will now be final: since an unelected body becomes the decision-maker, "the only workaround here is to essentially properly vet and make sure that we're appointing members of the planning commission that are gonna be aligned with our more pro-growth vision." Openly proposed ideological vetting of a quasi-judicial body, on camera, without a blush. The Founders published anonymously for less.

The Developer Who Kept Apologizing

Item two: a community wildfire resilience bond, pitched by Woolsey McKernan of Veridian Ecosystems — a local resident, former municipal bond man, invited after private meetings with the mayor. Councilor Bloom asked the load-bearing question early: is Veridian doing this for free? "I probably should have stated that at the outset... I'm acting as a developer and ultimately developers are paid." He said "I should have stated that up front" twice. How much a developer is paid, and whether it scales with the size of the bond, was asked by no one.

The scenarios: keep the current $7-a-month wildfire fee and bond $10 million — or fund the full wildfire plan, $154 million, at $67 a month per household, which even the salesman called "quite rich and probably out of reach" — or the recommended middle, a $48 million bond at $33 a month, which assumes a $10 million grant moments after the city's own wildfire staff testified that the federal grant program "appears to be stalled out. I don't know if that funding is even gonna be available in the future." The stakes as pitched: $3 billion in property value, and peer-reviewed findings that hardening plus defensible space cuts structure loss roughly in half. The honest core of the pitch, answering what success looks like: "I think success is that we have insurance, period... You're gonna continue to own your house and not lose it to the lender because you can't get insurance."

Then Councilor Kaplan gave the paid finance expert a tutorial in municipal finance — general obligation bonds count against debt capacity, not the Measure 5 and 50 tax caps, and Ashland carries "probably among the lowest levels of debt of any city in Oregon" — a point McKernan conceded he had "not fully unpacked." Councilor DuQuenne supplied the kitchen-table ledger: $33 on top of the existing $7 "means 40 bucks per month... that's gas, that's food," and if it happens at all, voters should decide. The enforcement question everyone circles: voluntary uptake won't get there, and when McKernan began "you start with voluntary, but then there has to be a migration to—" Councilor Hansen finished the sentence: "that will thou must do it. Right." DuQuenne: "I am not in favor of any type of code enforcement on any individual to have to do this." That collision was left standing in the road.

The outcome: a working group — the mayor plus up to two councilors, formed around the same firm that pitched it, with no competitive process mentioned — approved by a poll of the dais that a study session technically cannot take, roughly five to one, DuQuenne dissenting. And one more thing, which this paper files under habits: an audience attended. McKernan gestured at "my community members behind me." DuQuenne read the room aloud: "It seems like you have a lot of support here." There was no public comment period. On the question of whether their houses remain insurable, the people in the chairs were scenery.

Two hundred forty-one years at current pace. The mayor said the quiet part herself: a fleeing event, in this town, "with us built up the side of the mountain and having the demographics that we have is the part that keeps me up at night." It should. The comet, unlike the rulemaking, keeps its schedule.

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Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the June 1, 2026 Ashland City Council study session. Quotations appear as transcribed; the caption software recycles speaker labels, so names are attached only where the chair's own words or self-identification confirm the speaker. Figures are as stated in open session.