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TheRockin’ the Siskiyous — Ever Since 2005
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Art by CONTRAAugust 20, 2026 · by Nixie Worthington
At 9:31 the council suspended its own end-time rule so two councilors could deliver a hand-drafted rewrite of the land use code — sixteen amendments, due at the state in a month, for a planning department with a quarter of a person to spare. Also: neighbor notice eliminated, the parks fee's third near-death experience, a $50,000 childcare sneak, and the city manager's empty chair.
Read →Aug 18 · Nixie Worthington
Monday's Council study session: the police chief credits the vibe for falling crime, a former dispatcher out-prepares the department on its own data, the building division gets the dedicated fund the hospital money can't have, and $4 million sits in a drawer.
Aug 18 · Nixie Worthington
Ashland charges you a parks fee. Ashland does not have a parks fund. It has not had one since 2024, when the city's auditor told the finance department that a separate parks fund could no longer be maintained and the money was folded into the general fund like an egg into batter.
Aug 14 · Nixie Worthington
The room at the Parks Commission study session on April 1 was full in a way that parks meetings are not usually full. What they were fighting over was eight tennis courts at Hunter Park — and a shortage nobody has budgeted to fix.
The long pieces — it is always Sunday somewhere
August 19, 2026 · Nixie Worthington
George Kramer says the city manager has to go, and half the town agrees with him. We spent a week with the full record — the hiring she stabilized, the wildfire work, the money, the process failures — and reached the same verdict for different reasons. The reasons matter more than the verdict, and the clock matters more than either.
Read →Aug 13 · Nixie Worthington
The joint Parks–Council session on the parks fee: the chair discovers what the money is for, a councilor's mental model is executed on live television, no decision is reached — and then everyone stays another ninety minutes for pickleball.
Aug 6 · Nixie Worthington
Ashland is deciding whether bicycles belong in Lithia Park: a mile of trail, $30,000, 390 comments, a master plan nobody on the commission can agree on, and the four real questions under the jazz hands. The long treatment arrives in our next Sunday Edition.
Aug 5 · Nixie Worthington
Seventeen citizens get one minute each, a committee is un-cut in real time, City Hall discovers it has violated its own window code for twenty years, and a ballot measure most of the dais opposes sails to November anyway.
Aug 11 · Nixie Worthington
Six studies, eighteen years, 351 pages, a 159-person survey, and a civic campus the Council declined nearly unanimously — while the buildings Ashland is keeping still have no costed plan.
Aug 4 · Nixie Worthington
A $6,000 rafter, five explanations for one locked City Hall, a roofer with a live warranty who never got a call, a police car in a journalist's driveway, and thirty Helman heirs with four lawyers.
Aug 1 · Nixie Worthington
Three public buildings you cannot go into, six unwritten rules that put them that way, and the short list of people who came out of the year with their record intact.
