Thirty-One Years of Valley Banking

The Small Print · September 2026 · items from the packets of the City Council, the School Board, the Planning Commission and three advisory committees.

This is the first of a monthly column. Every public body in Ashland publishes a packet before it meets and minutes some weeks after, and most of what is in them never reaches a story. Once a month, this desk will print the parts that should have. Each item names the document it comes from. Items from the City Council and Parks sit outside the two rooms this desk usually covers, and where the paper has already reported a meeting the item links to that report instead of repeating it.

Council, September 15: The Wildfire Loans

Page 408 of the council’s September 15 packet is the summary of a meeting held on August 3 between the mayor, Councilor Bob Kaplan, three local lenders and Viridian, a consulting firm from Sisters. Every page of it carries the word “CONFIDENTIAL” in the footer. It is in the public packet.

Roughly 11,000 structures in Ashland need hardening against wildfire, and only about 800 were built under the city’s current wildfire rules. The work runs $3,000 to $10,000 a house, which the notes call “too small for a mortgage product and too large for many households’ cash flow.” The notes estimate the homeowners’ share at about $17 million, as one part of a full wildfire plan “estimated near $150 million.”

One of the lenders put it this way. “In thirty-one years of valley banking, no customer has ever requested a loan to make a home ‘Firewise’.”

The city, according to the notes, raised the idea of acting as guarantor for low-income borrowers, “with utility shut-off and property liens as recovery mechanisms.” The bankers said a bank that shut off a customer’s power would hurt its own name, so no bank was likely to rely on that remedy. Then they gave the city some advice. “If that mechanism is available to the city, then the city should be the lender (as the City has social license from its constituents to leverage that tool in the case of non-payment).”

The next page records that the working group behind this will be disbanded. The notes say it “was founded by a private company” and that “the City isn’t equipped to lead the creation of a large Wildfire Mitigation Program.” Staff now propose hiring a facilitator, at $20,000 to $35,000, to lead a local design process instead. The last of the bank meeting’s next steps is to “size a revenue bond” for a grant program, “backed by the existing utility fee.” The council was not asked to vote on any of it. The paper’s earlier piece on the wildfire plan is The Map With The Black Spots.

Council, September 15: Six Of Four Hundred And Ninety-Five

The city gives low-income households 30 percent off their electric, water and sewer bills. When the council rebuilt the program in June 2025, it also asked that every qualifying household complete a water and energy audit within two years to keep the discount. The staff report for Resolution 2026-28 gives the first year’s result. In fiscal 2026, 495 accounts qualified, 68 reached the $400 annual cap, “and only 6 accounts completed the water and/or energy audits.” Of a $282,660 budget, $122,826 reached households.

The resolution doubles the cap to $800, which staff estimate will cost about $27,200 more next year. It also drops the audit requirement and lets the city ask for an audit from a household it picks out instead. It passed 6–0. Kaplan said the mailed letters had not worked and that “instead of trying to find those more effective ways, what we’re doing is we’re giving up.” He added, “We could save people a lot more money by improving their energy efficiency in their apartment… than we’re charging with a $5 parks fee.”

School Board, September 10: Helman, Building A

The board approved two things on September 10 for the seismic retrofit of Helman Elementary. The first was a resolution exempting the job from ordinary competitive bidding so the district can hire a construction manager and general contractor instead. No one spoke at the public hearing on that exemption, and the chair closed it at 7:02 p.m. The second was a $147,770 design contract with arkitek: design&architecture, chosen over BBT Architects and IMEG.

Minutes from earlier in the summer, printed in the same packet, record a $2.5 million state seismic grant and a $105,000 contract with HMK to manage the project. Construction is planned for summer 2027. The packet caps construction at $1.8 million, and the district’s letter recommending the award says the design fee “is 9% of the established project Maximum Allowable Construction Cost.” By this desk’s arithmetic it is 8.2 percent. Nine percent would be $162,000.

The fee sheet covers “Building A,” which holds the multipurpose room, the stage and the music room. The same night, the superintendent read the board a letter to families about the district’s transformation. It says no school has been selected for closure, asks whether “a smaller facilities footprint” could put more money into classrooms, and says the board’s decision “is targeted for January.” The file does not show whether the state grant limits what the district may do with a building once it is retrofitted.

School Board, September 24: Lincoln Street

The agenda for the board’s September 24 work session sets aside forty-five minutes for a “Housing Discussion” presented by Matt Edlen, to “review proposed adjustments to the project scope and anticipated development timeline.” Edlen & Co. has held an exclusive negotiating agreement with the district since February 2025 for about 4.18 acres at South Mountain Avenue, East Main Street and Lincoln Street, where the agreement’s stated goal is at least ninety units of housing. In April the board amended that agreement to make child care optional rather than required and to allow up to three three-month extensions. The same agenda lists a review of the city’s proposed property tax exemption for nonprofit low-income housing. The July minutes put its cost to the district at about $9,000 a year for the 42 units that would qualify now, and record Director Jordan Rooklyn’s statement that she would abstain because the proposal came from her employer, the city.

The paper has not written about the Lincoln Street project before. Work sessions are not televised, so the record of what the board heard will be the minutes, which come to the board in October.

Council, September 15: Ordinance 3311, As Read

Ordinance 3311 sets the process the council must follow before it adds or raises a fee on utility bills. It passed first reading 6–0. Before the vote, Councilor Jeff Dahle’s amendments were to be read into the record. The reading stopped partway through the second. “I’m not able to repeat,” the reader said, and Dahle said he would email the text. The ordinance was then adopted “with the amendments that were read into the record.” The text of those amendments will first appear in the packet for second reading.

Council, September 15: The Police Contract

The new agreement with the Ashland Police Association moves members to a new salary schedule, a wage increase averaging 4.2 percent across the union’s members, raises the city’s health savings contribution to 3.5 percent, and adds three personal days and a Christmas Eve holiday. The staff report says it costs $138,811 more than the city budgeted for fiscal 2027, and that the police department’s preliminary vacancy savings for fiscal 2026, $694,439, cover the difference. The council approved it 6–0 without questions about the cost.

Public Arts, August 20: The Cameras

The draft minutes of the Public Arts Advisory Committee’s August 20 meeting, published in its September packet, record a resident objecting to “the City Council’s directive requiring all committee and subcommittee meetings to be video recorded and posted publicly.” Deputy City Manager Jordan Rooklyn, the same Rooklyn who sits on the School Board, told the committee the rule “is not a state mandate, but a policy choice made by the City Council,” and that it took effect on September 1. This file has not seen the directive itself. If the rule holds, the committees this column knows only from their minutes will soon have recordings too.

Also In The File

Item 12 on the School Board’s September 10 agenda was an executive session under ORS 192.660(2)(e), the exemption for real property negotiations. The board struck it when adopting the agenda. The record gives no reason and does not say what property it concerned.

On September 10 the School Board adopted Policy KNA, which covers immigration enforcement on district property, on its consent agenda, with no item pulled and no discussion. The policy refers to a regulation called KNA-AR(2), a request log, that was in the August first reading and is not in the September packet.

The same night the board began adopting new social studies materials. The district reported itself out of compliance with the state’s rule on adopting instructional materials in 2024 and has been working through the subjects under a corrective plan since.

The Trails Advisory Committee’s September 16 packet carries the Parks Commission’s direction to look for a beginner mountain bike site outside Lithia Park as an information item, with no motion needed. Staff will invite more groups and identify locations. No site and no amount were named, and the committee meets next on November 18. The paper’s report on the Parks vote is The Smallest War Ends Two To Three.

The council’s September 16 strategic planning workshop was not televised. Its agenda gave the location as the Siskiyou Room, with the public welcome in person. Its packet said “Via ZOOM – Link shared via email.”

The August 13 minutes of the Social Equity and Racial Justice Advisory Committee are still marked draft. The committee’s September 3 minutes, which would record their approval, have not been posted.

At the Planning Commission on September 22, staff reported that the final plat for the Caldera Oaks subdivision on Clay Street had been signed, for 21 single-family lots and sixteen units in four fourplexes, and that eight affordable housing deed restrictions had been recorded.

The next Small Print runs at the end of October.

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Sources: the agenda packets for the September 15 City Council business meeting (the wildfire workgroup report and its two attachments, the staff reports for Resolution 2026-28, Ordinance 3311 and the police agreement), the September 10 School Board regular session (the Helman exemption findings, the design award and the July and August minutes), the September 24 School Board work session agenda, the April 30, 2026 School Board minutes, the February 27, 2025 School Board packet containing the exclusive negotiating agreement, the September 16 Trails Advisory Committee and strategic planning workshop packets, the September 17 Public Arts Advisory Committee packet, and the caption transcripts of the September 10 School Board, September 15 City Council and September 22 Planning Commission meetings for what was said aloud. The Public Arts minutes are a draft, and the consultant’s notes are the consultant’s account of the bank meeting, not the banks’. Where a staff report and a later record disagree, the record governs, and this column will say so when it does.