After more than two decades of service in every role within Ashland Fire & Rescue, Marshall Rasor has been named the department’s permanent fire chief. Rasor had been interim chief since March after Ralph Sartain retired.
The Ashland City Council approved the first reading of an amended ordinance that would make it easier for law enforcement to ban from downtown areas for negative behavior.
Ashland is moving forward with a regional fire service study aimed at boosting collaboration and emergency response across multiple fire districts.
The long and winding road to Grand Terrace — a 210-unit apartment complex proposed for the northwest end of Ashland — leads to another Ashland City Council hearing Tuesday, Sept. 16.
The Ashland Family YMCA has always had an internal safety plan, says Heidi Hill, chief executive of the organization. But not until last fall did the nonprofit have a specific plan for a wildfire evacuation on the books. It is the first local organization to ask Ashland Emergency Management Coordinator Kelly Burns how to make such a plan.
Ashland’s Parks & Recreation Commission plans to vote Sept. 10 on a nearly $3.4M budget—up $500,000 from earlier estimates. Phase one won’t include a playground, but commissioners say it’s time to move forward.
Loss of access to a pair of popular Ashland watershed trails for a half-year ended up lasting less than three weeks after public outcry and the realization a temporary pedestrian bridge could be installed in a former creek-crossing site without undergoing a time-consuming permitting process resulted in opening of a temporary bridge on Aug. 8, just 19 days after the July 21 trail closure.
Derreck Moore, the new traffic enforcement officer at the Ashland Police Department, met with members of the Transportation Advisory Committee last week as they conducted their regular six-month review of crash and near-miss data for the city.
Ashland School District officials plan to make arrangements over the weekend to relocate an alternative education program from Lincoln School to Ashland High School following the emergency closure of the nearly 100-year-old building after an annual inspection by the city fire marshal turned up severe structural issues.
Wildfire experts from a nonprofit that helps people harden their homes from wildfire, which helps keep their insurance premiums from rising, joined local leaders and residents during a Thursday, Aug. 21, webinar to share their latest findings on how homes ignite during wildfires — and how to prevent it from happening in Ashland.
After a successful production of “The Vagina Monologues” and raising more than $2,000 for Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon, Ashland actor and director Lia Dugal intends for “The Climate Monologues” to premiere in Oregon in late 2025 or early 2026 at the Bellview Grange in Ashland.
It’s complicated.
Herbert Rothschild: Whether visualization and intention by themselves can effect broad social change is impossible to determine, but the question merits sustained consideration.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz said he is willing to return to in-person town halls if decorum and safety can be guaranteed. He specifically called out the group ORD2 Invisible, which Bentz said has orchestrated disruptions at meetings. The group pushed back, and said Bentz is scapegoating the organization to avoid accountability.
KS Wild will celebrate their annual dinner event Saturday, Sept. 27, at the historic Ashland Armory, 208 Oak St.
Rabbi Jackie Brodsky: As many seem to have forgotten or denied, the current war in Gaza was started by Hamas terrorists breaking a ceasefire on Oct.7, 2023, when the worst attack on the Jews since the Holocaust took place.
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