Councilors did deep dive into each of the city’s 11 departments at all-day confab Friday 

By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news

After spending the balance of a day reviewing the litany of projects underway in the various departments of the city of Ashland, councilors and the mayor redefined priorities for the city and celebrated progress. 

Inside the opulent Crystal Room of the Ashland Springs Hotel Friday, the heads of all 11 of Ashland’s departments presented their projects and their successes and took councilors’ questions and recommendations for priority projects. 

Community Development Department Director Brandon Goldman was proud to share successes this biennium. Staff have been productive in processing permits and moving building projects from application to completion. 

“There’s a representation of larger projects but also many more projects. … In residential development, typically we see about 50 units per year. So far to date this year we’ve had 99 new dwelling units,” Goldman said. 

Of those new units, 26 are single family residential and the remaining 73 are much-needed multi-family housing, he said. In terms of code compliance, Community Development is walking back a pandemic-motivated leniency on signs for businesses and the seasonal rise of AirBnB’s popping up in residential areas in violation of the Ashland Municipal Code. 

Councilor Bob Kaplan asked Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara about contingency planning and preparedness for fires, an evacuation or a shooting. 

“I think we’re as well prepared as we can be. … It’s never going to be a checklist of ‘when the bad thing happens here’s what we’re going to do.’ It’s always going to be a framework of how to be responsive to whatever that threat is,” O’Meara said. 

O’Meara also said he has worked with Emergency Management Coordinator Kelly Burns on bringing an evacuation summit to town. In the absence of finding any available evacuation training, an effort is underway to create some for the city. 

Councilor Eric Hansen asked Ashland Fire & Rescue Chief Ralph Sartain if the department’s new single role EMS staff had alleviated the issue of dropped and missed calls for service. Sartain was proud to say this project was five years in the making and once implemented quickly made a difference. Last year, the department was missing around one call per day due to lack of staff, Sartain said. The department is now only missing a call every three days or so. 

“We’ve stopped the downward trajectory. … It’s doing what I thought it would do and a little bit better,” he said. 

Four new single-role hires will be in fire academy and then further training until roughly early June, further increasing the department’s manpower, he said. 

The city of Ashand’s Electric Department has received a certificate of reliability as recognition for its place in the top 25% of electric departments in the country, Interim City Manager Sabrina Cotta said. The department recently provided mutual aid to the city of Springfield, is working on renewable energy initiatives and building greater resilience. 

Department head Tom McBartlett highlighted that Senate Bill 760 has created additional oversight and obligations for the department through state-mandated efforts to curb wildfire risk from public utilities. McBartlett said these additional obligations and establishing electricity for the volume of new construction has been a “heavy lift” for the department. 

After a brief lunch focusing on the minutiae of the city’s recent communication’s survey, Burns led the council in a not-quite hypothetical disaster scenario. 

“When we have a local disaster or event, you as electeds and Sabrina, you kind of want to know, ‘What do we do?’ … I want you to get comfortable with some uncertainty,” he said. 

Councilors were asked to consider a scenario where Cotta received an email from Mayor Tonya Graham asking her to click a link in email to upload secure documents. When the link failed to work, Cotta called Graham who said she did not send the email. 

A one-page message appears from Cotta’s printer, the mental exercise continues, informing the city it has been “hit by royal ransomware,” and the city’s other sensitive data will not be returned unless the city pays a ransom. City fileshare, emails, property records, utility and other vital systems are inaccessible by the following day. 

Burns asked councilors to work in pairs on lists of possible actions to take and questions about the situation they find themselves in. Councilor Gina DuQuenne asked about how to fix communications, Hansen wanted to establish a “baseline” of how city systems such as wastewater are affected. Graham wanted to see how police, fire and dispatch were affected and what kind of mutual aid the city would need to call. 

Councilor Paula Hyatt and Jeff Dahle highlighted emergency services, the potential for insurance coverage, if community partners were affected and what the role of elected officials should be. Cotta wanted to establish “runners” to keep city departments in communication without email. Kaplan and Councilor Dylan Bloom wanted to consider resources and contacting larger agencies for assistance. 

This scenario is not so hypothetical because something nearly identical happened to Curry County last year, Burns said. The county’s data was held for a roughly $15 million ransom, and vital systems such as emergency dispatch were not functional. Because the county had not prepared for the attack but chose not to pay the ransom, it took seven months to recover from the damage, he said. 

At the close of the day, the mayor, councilors and the city manager took a moment to reflect. 

“If someone had told me two years ago that we’d be where we are now, I wouldn’t have believed it was quite possible,” Graham said. 

The addition of an emergency management coordinator and better disaster planning, improved staffing levels, increased receipt of grants and other successes were celebrated in the day’s discussions. The mayor echoed councilors in praising the dedication and work ethic of city staff to keep chipping away at the city’s long list of lofty priorities. 

“There’s always more work to do,” Cotta said, and encouraged councilors to start thinking about a long term strategic plan for the city. 

To view a 27-page PowerPoint presentation with a department-by-department list of projects, click here.

Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].