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TheRockin’ the Siskiyous — Ever Since 2005
Online EditionAugust 18, 2026 · by J. Korbes
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.
Read the piece →August 18, 2026 · J. Korbes
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.
August 14, 2026 · J. Korbes
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.
August 13, 2026 · J. Korbes
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.
August 6, 2026 · J. Korbes
The Parks Commission takes public comment on a mile of mountain bike trail in Lithia Park: a room at fire-code capacity, applause banned in favor of jazz hands, dueling satirists, and a commission that can't agree on what its own hundred-year plan says.
August 5, 2026 · J. Korbes
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.
August 4, 2026 · J. Korbes
The city manager's official term for the $4 million Asante hospital settlement is 'funny money.' Three groups pitch three futures for it and none brings a budget; the SERJ committee's anti-detention proclamation passes by acclamation in a session that cannot vote.
July 22, 2026 · J. Korbes
The Council amends a citizens' petition over its author's objection, on the night the recount found it qualified by eight signatures nobody can lawfully verify. Also: the tenant-protection ordinance passes 6-0, and a resident's EMS allegations sit unanswered.
July 21, 2026 · J. Korbes
The Council pilots night-lawn management with no price and no contract review, redesigns its financial guardrails over staff's objection that a floor is a floor, and governs throughout by nod.
July 10, 2026 · J. Korbes
On December 3, 2025, the director of Ashland Parks and Recreation stood up in front of his commission and made a joke about painkillers. That was the last time the public saw him do his job. Nobody has ever said why. That is the story. Not the why — the nobody.
July 9, 2026 · J. Korbes
A 96-year-old offers the Parks Commission $100,000 for a carousel and gets fifteen seconds; a $2 million ice rink pavilion gets 'thrilling'; and the pickleball wars enter their mandate phase.
June 17, 2026 · J. Korbes
Wingspread residents take the podium and win: the manufactured home park zone passes 6-0. Also passed: a video-records resolution adopted without a number, a trash rate the Council legally could not refuse, and a park with no operations plan.
June 16, 2026 · J. Korbes
The Council celebrates its 38th straight financial-transparency award in the same session its forecast goes red by 2030 and its hospital's closure passes in a subordinate clause. Also: the Sarcasm Festival reports record attendance, sincerely.
June 11, 2026 · J. Korbes
The Parks Commission approves a pesticide nobody in the room could name, for trees a commissioner argued are doomed anyway; a pool with two years left on its liner gets a plan for a plan; and the interim director finally gets a contract.
June 4, 2026 · J. Korbes
At the joint parks-fee session, three officials claim paternity of the two-year sunset, staff understates the city's own cushion by a factor of ten, and the herbicide fight produces the mayor's most honest sentence of the year.
June 3, 2026 · J. Korbes
A mural gets nineteen minutes of applause, the hospital coalition gets silence, an ordinance is amended by one apostrophe, and the Council spends half an hour legislating parcel geometry while the emergency manager works a gas leak from the dais.
June 2, 2026 · J. Korbes
The state rewrites Ashland's land-use rules before writing its own, and a bond developer tells the Council that at current pace the city reaches wildfire resilience in 241 years. The audience behind him never got to speak.
May 20, 2026 · J. Korbes
Election night at the Council: a 4-3 fee-book vote decided by a remote mayor, a chair voting against the item he presided over, fuel costs quietly doubled — and the hospital closing in the morning, unmentioned by the dais.
May 19, 2026 · J. Korbes
A study session on the night lawn: the city discovers it doesn't know what its own homeless site costs — one day of police time exceeds a quarter of the official annual figure — everyone disclaims expertise, and the council assigns itself a survey.
May 14, 2026 · J. Korbes
A fishing guide confesses to nine years of unpermitted stream restoration and gets legalized 5-0 — the redds don't lie — while the Parks Commission admits it has no employee of its own.
May 7, 2026 · J. Korbes
The Parks Commission redesigns an ADA ramp live from the podium, debates a vision document its chair wrote alone 24 hours earlier, and discovers it voted for its own summer break.
May 6, 2026 · J. Korbes
Three and a half hours of Council: a $7.6 million loan approved for work already done and paid for, a public forum that wanted the city manager's head and the herbicide truck stopped by morning, and $15,000 for Newport's fight with ICE.
May 5, 2026 · J. Korbes
May the 4th at the Council study session: City Hall has space heaters, asbestos, and a roof three contractors refuse to patch; the civic-campus dream gets a $20 million price tag and a quiet burial; and a 2014 warranty ambushes the facilities man.
March 14, 2026 · J. Korbes
The Ashland Rotary Centennial Ice Rink sat empty on December 19, 2025, inside a canopy nobody was permitted to stand under. The structure was up. The chiller was paid for. Here is how a town loses a winter.