# With Four Votes

*The Sunday Edition · October 25, 2026 · by Nixie Worthington*

> On October 20 the council tied three to three on keeping an end date on the parks fee, and three to three on making it permanent, and the mayor broke both ties the same way. Two weeks before Ashland votes on Measure 15-243, here is what the fee was sold as, where a hundred thousand dollars of it went in 2025, and what nobody asked the city attorney.

Art by CONTRA — Collage on aged paper and torn green scraps: an empty council dais with six black chairs, microphones and blank nameplates, three on each side of a torn strip of graph paper, and in the middle a taller empty chair with a brass balance scale in front of it, coins in one pan. Above, an orange crayon sunset over forested hills is crossed out in pencil. Around the edges are a utility bill with one line circled in red, a park bench, an empty outdoor pool with a ladder, an emergency siren horn on a pole beside an empty speech bubble, an envelope under a glass paperweight and maple leaves. Rows of empty audience seats fill the foreground.

---

Jordan Rooklyn had been city manager pro tem for "30 some odd" hours, by
Councilor Jeff Dahle's count, when she got to the parks fee on Tuesday night,
October 20, and she started by apologizing for not being used to the chair.
"Sorry I'm not used to sitting on this dais yet," she said, and then she walked
the council through Resolution 2026-24, which renews the parks fee, the $5.15 a
month on every Ashland electric bill (it was $5 until this July's inflation
adjustment). It raises about $763,000 a year, roughly a tenth of what the parks
department spends. Councilor Eric Hansen got his question in first. Did the
resolution have an end date? "It's currently written," Rooklyn said. "There is
no sunset date." It still didn't an hour later, after the council split three to
three on putting an end date back in, and three to three on passing the fee
without one, and Mayor Tonya Graham voted against the first and for the second.
The fee that was supposed to expire on June 30, 2027 is now permanent — two
weeks before the town votes on a charter amendment that would make the council
ask first.

On October 5, in [Let It Go To The
People](/civic-beat/2026-10-05-let-it-go-to-the-people), we said the council
should renew the fee with a discount for low-income households and amend the
resolution to give it a new end date of June 30, 2029. Councilor Dylan Bloom
made exactly that motion and lost. At the council's September 14 study session
on renewing the fee, George Kramer told the council it would be "rude and
disrespectful" to take a temporary fee "and with four votes" make it permanent
while the people of Ashland were waiting to weigh in. Kramer led the petition
campaign behind that charter amendment, Jefferson Public Radio has reported.

## Ride Off Into The Sunset

The council's public comment on the fee came from two people, and both wanted it
renewed. Mike Gardiner, who is vice chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission
and president of the Ashland Parks Foundation, asked for it "without a sunset
date," and said that "the entire current sitting park commission, as well as all
the candidates for the park commission have endorsed the park fee." Linda Adams,
who lives on Oak Street, told them "Ashland Parks are not a luxury." As written,
the resolution had a low-income discount of at least half the fee and no end
date, and Hansen moved to adopt it that way. Then the councilors talked for the
better part of forty minutes.

Hansen spoke for his motion, and then Councilor Derek Sherrell said he expected
"to catch a little bit of hate on this one," because the emails he'd had all
came from people who signed with a property address.

"So if you send me a nasty gram, I'm gonna hopefully be able to send you a link
to sign up for low income assistance if you need it. And if you don't, please be
more thankful. I did not see one email that was signed with an apartment
number."

Bloom moved to amend, so that the fee "shall terminate on June 30th, 2029,
unless renewed by the city council." Then he said he was going to read
something, because he didn't want his comments "to be misconstrued by populace
out there." He said that at a study session on May 19, 2025 the council had
"directed $100,000 of parks fee revenue to the early childhood affordability
grants and another 100,000 from homeless services, inclement weather funding,"
and that the budget adopted June 3 made it formal. "The fee was projected to
raise 1.5 million over two years against a $1.4 million parks gap. And the
difference went elsewhere. I led the effort to fund that grant program and I
stand by it, but that isn't what we told residents this fee was for." He called
the fee "a bridge, not a solution," and said the sunset was supposed to buy time
for a real conversation about paying for parks, which "never happened." The
survey, he said, "told us people love their parks. It also told us they don't
trust where this money goes." Both of his numbers cover two years: the fee was
expected to bring in $1.5 million over the two-year budget, and Parks had asked
for $1.4 million over the same two years, which left $100,000 over. The second
$100,000 he mentioned came out of the city's homeless services budget, not the
fee. He also read out Recital D, one of the paragraphs at the top of the new
resolution, which says the fee will "exclusively fund parks and recreation in
the General Fund," and then said, "A sunset is how we prove we mean it."

Dahle, who had reminded everyone earlier in the evening that he'd be "a citizen
in 70 some odd days," backed the amendment on the grounds that the council keeps
asking for money before it knows what it will cut. He had written down something
Gardiner said, that "we don't know where the cuts will come until we know what
the budget is," and he said it was the whole problem. "We are doing this
backwards and we continue to do it backwards," Dahle said. "You have to show the
work." And a little later, "When you are in charge of putting a fee on a utility
bill that you have to pay or your heat doesn't come on, we have to do the work."

Hansen didn't buy any of it. He said he didn't understand how "a $760,000
revenue hole," which is about a year of the fee, "is, is going to do Ashlanders
any favors," and then said, "I guarantee you that every dollar that you put in
for your parks fee went to parks because that's 10% of our parks budget."
Councilor Bob Kaplan said Ashland was "the last city in the valley" to get a
parks fee, that Talent, Medford, Phoenix and Central Point all have one, that
Medford's is more than twice Ashland's, and that "none of them have sunsets."
Councilor Gina DuQuenne, who voted against the fee in 2025 and against it again
this time, listed what the parks lost in the year the fee was supposed to be
saving them, from splash pad hours to restroom hours to what the soccer clubs
now pay for a field, and said, "$5 is $5."

Bloom went back at Hansen, and Hansen said he "didn't know this was gonna be
high school debate." A permanent fee, he said, was something the council could
ride off into the sunset with, by which he seemed to mean settle it and stop
arguing. Bloom said he had only done middle school debate, "so maybe it's a
little lower for you," and the mayor stopped the whole thing and said the
council was "not going to let this conversation degenerate." Later in the
meeting Bloom apologized to Hansen and said he had meant the line as a joke on
himself.

The mayor spoke last on the amendment. She'd called around to other mayors in
the state, she said, and what Ashland was doing was "right in the middle of what
people do."

"We know that we are dealing with a, a structural issue with budgets just like
everyone is all across this state. And this is a very common way of dealing with
that. When we look at our projections out over the next several biennium, we see
that there is, that that gap continues to grow. And it is not entirely because
of, well it's not, it's not because of anything that we're doing necessarily to
change things, but it's because things are getting more expensive, faster than
3%. It's a basic mathematical issue. And if we are going to protect the services
that we want, we have to pay for them in a different way."

The 3 percent is the cap Oregon puts on yearly growth in property taxes, which
is the first thing the city's own slides on the fee explain.

The recorder called the roll on the amendment: Dahle, Bloom and DuQuenne for;
Sherrell, Kaplan and Hansen against. Three to three. In Ashland the mayor votes
only to break a tie, and Graham voted no, and the 2029 sunset was gone.

Then the main motion: Hansen, Kaplan and Sherrell yes; DuQuenne, Bloom and Dahle
no. The mayor voted yes. "Motion pass," the recorder said, and Graham called a
seven-minute break and asked everybody to be back in their seats by 7:40. The
minutes for that meeting aren't out yet, so both of those roll calls are from
the recording.

After the break and a water plant contract, Rooklyn gave her first report as
city manager pro tem, and the best news in it was about the dam. The city is
running an emergency exercise at Hosler Dam around October 29 and testing its
alert system, so you'll get texts, and you may hear the sirens. "I say this with
some disappointment," Rooklyn told the council. "Turns out our sirens are not
like old school sound sirens. It'll actually be a voice that says out loud, this
is a test." Bloom said he had been about to ask what time it would go off, "but
now that there's no sound, I'm disappointed."

## Made Available by the Parks Fee

On May 14, 2025 the Citizen Budget Committee voted to add $1.4 million to the
Parks operating budget, with a $5 parks fee then on its way to the council.
Kaplan, who sits on the committee like every councilor, had talked the figure
down from $1.5 million because, he said, "the parks department asked for 1.4
million. They didn't ask for 1.5 million." The committee had also recommended
$235,000 in childcare grants, to come out of the reserve fund.

Drawing on the reserve would have meant rewriting the city's financial policies,
so on May 19 the council sat down at a study session to find the $235,000
somewhere else. The approved minutes of that meeting record the answer in one
sentence: "Direction given to staff to reallocate $35K from social service
grants, $100K from homeless services, and $100K from the general fund (made
available by the Parks fee) to the Childcare Grants for a total of $235K." The
homeless services money was the part of that budget line set aside for the
severe weather shelter, whose cost nobody could predict, and staff said they
would cover it out of contingency if winter ran long.

> I led the effort to fund that grant program and I stand by it, but **that isn't
> what we told residents this fee was for.**

The next night, May 20, the council created the fee by Resolution 2025-13, at $5
a month from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2027, "after which it will automatically
expire unless renewed by the City Council." Dahle moved it and Bloom seconded.
Before the vote the mayor polled the table, and the minutes say what she got:
"Hansen and Kaplan will support the fee regardless of time limit or not. Bloom
and Dahle will only support the fee with a time limit." It passed four to one,
with DuQuenne against. The sixth seat was vacant that spring. On June 3 the
finance director explained the $235,000 to the council again, in nearly the same
words, as "funds that would be freed from the parks fee back into the general
fund," plus the homeless and social services money, and the council adopted a
$374,021,893 budget, again four to one. On August 5 the city manager's report
said the first childcare grants were going out, $50,000 to the YMCA, $30,000 to
Avery Street and $20,000 to Mountain Star.

## In the Case of Tie, the Mayor Votes

Counting Tuesday's two, the mayor has broken at least six ties in fifteen
months, not counting a straw poll. Ashland's council has six seats, and for a
good part of the last year and a half they have tended to sort themselves into
the same two groups of three, with Kaplan, Hansen and Sherrell on one side and
Dahle, Bloom and DuQuenne on the other.

Before Tuesday, the minutes have her voting yes to break ties on the management
raises in August 2025, which included the city manager's, on the $1.19 million
the city paid a railroad in January for a crossing, and on this year's schedule
of miscellaneous city fees in May.

Right after the vote on the raises in August 2025, Bloom moved to adjourn and
DuQuenne seconded him, and the motion to go home split three to three like
everything else that night. That one the mayor voted no on, and the meeting went
on to the city manager's report.

## Measure 15-243

The ballot sitting on your kitchen counter has a charter amendment on it,
Measure 15-243. Kramer's petition started collecting signatures in 2025 and
turned in 1,537 by its own count. The city recorder threw out most of those,
largely for missing cover sheets and other paperwork problems, and counted
roughly 194 valid against the 1,308 it needed. In November 2025 the council took
a straw poll on putting it on the ballot anyway and decided not to, four to
three with the mayor voting. Then on August 4, after a motion by Hansen to
reject the resolution putting it on the ballot died for lack of a second, the
council put a revised version on the ballot itself, four to two, with Dahle,
DuQuenne, Bloom and Sherrell voting yes and Hansen and Kaplan voting no.

The measure says the council may propose "new fees, taxes, or increase existing
fees or taxes on a utility bill unrelated to the operation of the utilities,"
but that "no such fee, tax, or increase will be assessed, imposed, or collected
on a utility bill until at least thirty (30) days following a positive vote to
affirm by Ashland voters at the next regularly scheduled election." Increases
for inflation up to the western consumer price index are exempt, and so are
franchise fees.

The fee the council passed on Tuesday doesn't start until June 30, 2027. Section
1 of the resolution says it "shall take effect on June 30, 2027, and shall
replace the temporary Parks Fee that terminates on June 30, 2027." If the
measure passes on November 3, is that a new fee, which would need your vote
before it could be collected, or is it the old fee carrying on, which wouldn't?
City Attorney Johan Pietila was at the meeting, two weeks before an election
with the ballots already in the mail, and nobody asked him. DuQuenne was the
only one who even said the measure's number out loud, and what she said, during
the debate on the 2029 amendment, was that if the fee was going to run to 2029
she hoped people would vote for the measure.

Sherrell was one of the four votes in August that put the measure on the ballot.
When he explained his vote for a permanent fee on Tuesday he talked about
tenants and young families, and the measure didn't come up.

> I did not see one email that was signed with an **apartment number.**

## It's Not Like a Levy

The mayor herself pointed out on Tuesday that the council can undo all of this
whenever it likes. "Any council at this dais will be able to pull back any of
those fees, restructure any of those fees," she said. "It's not like a levy."
Four of the six seats are on the ballot November 3 and the new council is sworn
in December 15, and it will start its first budget the same winter.

Before November 3 somebody should ask Pietila in public whether the measure
reaches the new parks fee, since people are filling out the ballot now.

After that it's up to whoever is sitting there in December. Put a review date
back in. Bloom's amendment said 2029, and 2029 is still fine, and I'd point out
that the one night this council spent asking what the parks fee buys, that
September 14 study session, only happened because the old fee was about to
expire. Then put a page in every budget showing what the fee raised and what the
general fund put into Parks beside it. Bloom promised on Tuesday that in two
years the council would "show them every dollar went to parks."

As for the households the fee was always going to land on hardest, the
resolution promises them at least half off, but the actual discount still has to
be set. Rooklyn said she'll bring a resolution adding it to the city's utility
assistance program, probably along with discounts on the public safety and
wildfire fees. There were 495 households in that program a couple of months ago,
and the city says it has been budgeting more help than people are claiming.
Anybody on SNAP or the Oregon Health Plan is automatically eligible for that
program, Rooklyn said.

---

*Sources: the recording of the October 20, 2026 council meeting and its packet,
which has the staff report and Resolution 2026-24 as voted. The 2025 story is
from approved minutes for May 19, May 20, June 3 and August 5, 2025, and from
the recordings of the May 14 budget committee and the May 19 and June 3 council
meetings. The 2025 figures are the minutes'. The mayor's earlier tie votes are
from approved minutes for August 5, 2025, January 20 and May 19, 2026. Measure
15-243 is from the August 4, 2026 packet, the draft minutes of that meeting in
the August 18 packet, and Jefferson Public Radio's September report for the
number. The quotations come from the city's caption track, with the software's
mistakes corrected.*

Source: https://ashlandfreepress.com/the-sunday-edition/2026-10-25-with-four-votes