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Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Local Issues Obituaries Weather Archive Revels Etcetera Backpage Hot Topics Most Viewed Forum Photo Galleries Video Readers Polls O-Zone Online Games Movie Preview Special Sections Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad May 19, 2006 Mayor breaks tie, shelves downtown plan By Robert Plain Ashland Daily Tidings The possibility of doing a downtown plan in Ashland this year officially died on Thursday night when a divided Ashland City Council had their tie vote broken by Mayor John Morrison’s no vote. “A downtown plan, to me, is putting a bright, shiny, new roof on a house with a crumbling foundation,” Morrison said after the council meeting, at which the downtown plan was left out of 2006-2007 city budget. “It’s always bad to do long-range planning from a crisis perspective. First you get rid of the crisis and then you do the planning.” After more than a year of starting and then stopping a locally generated downtown plan, Ashland paid a Portland planning firm $15,000 to pitch a new downtown plan to the city earlier this spring. With a price tag in the neighborhood of $300,000 to $500,000, the city balked at funding the project in this budget cycle. City Councilor Alex Amarotico, who owns a downtown restaurant and voted against the plan, said he thought it was too large of an expenditure, given that Ashland is grappling with its largest budget ever. He also said he doesn’t see the situation in the downtown being as dire as others do. “I don’t think the situation is as desperate as some people are saying,” he said. “I’d love to have a new car this year but my old one is still working. If I put it off another year, everything will still be OK.” Morrison agreed, saying, “I know a lot of people feel the sky is falling but I don’t fully accept that.” John Fields, a local developer and chair of the Ashland Planning Commission who spearheaded the downtown plan efforts, disagrees with this point of view. “They don’t see it as a crisis that needs to be resolved,” he said. “Basically, as far as I’m concerned the council is disabled. Everybody is fighting about the details and nothing is getting done. We haven’t done any meaningful planning in Ashland for five or six years. They want to top micro-manage everything and they don’t want to delegate any authority to the planning commission. I don’t know who Ashland is. It’s a big mess. “Instead [of doing a downtown plan],” he added, “they are going to reorganize the deck chairs of the Titanic.” City Councilor Kate Jackson, the liaison to the planning commission, said she would rather see an increase in the staff and budget of the planning department — as well as retooling land-use ordinances city-wide — before a downtown plan process is launched. “We need to update the downtown plan, there is no question about that,” she said. “But there are also a lot of other parts of the city besides the downtown.” Jackson said she supports adding money to the planning department’s budget to hire outside consultants so that projects like the downtown plan can be accomplished in the future. “As I said last night, it wasn’t on the agenda to redo the council goal goals,” she said, referring to the fact that previously the council had not prioritized a downtown plan for this budget cycle. Councilor Jack Hardesty, who participated in the downtown plan committee and voted to support it on Thursday, said he was disappointed with the outcome. “If we wait around for the planning department to get staff levels up, we’ll be waiting another five years,” he said. “We haven’t done any planning. For a decade now the line is, ‘trust us, we’ll do it next year.’ I’m dubious about that.” He fears the plan, which has a history of being started then stopped again, will eventually lose all of its momentum. “Maybe we can get it started after the election, depending on who gets elected,” he said, noting that, because the plan wasn’t funded in this budget cycle, it is likely to become a campaign issue this fall. Ashland Planning Commissioner John Stromberg said he felt the plan didn’t receive full council support because the chamber of commerce would not lend it’s support. “The vote last night doesn’t change the reality of how important this plan is,” he said. “We just didn’t get the support of the chamber.” Fields said he spent much time courting the Chamber of Commerce only to receive a one-line e-mail response from Chamber President Graham Lewis who, he said, wrote, “we neither support it or oppose it.” He said he suspects the chamber has plans to propose an economic development plan for the city, which could implement a similar process of looking at important issues for the downtown. Lewis or Chamber Executive Director Sandra Slattery could not be reached for comment for this story. As a result of the downtown plan not receiving funding, some developers worry that the stalemate that has existed in downtown planning issues will continue. “It’s a shame the city doesn’t have the collective energy to take on all the multiple problems it is facing,” Russ Dale, a downtown property developer whose controversial Northlight project bogged down the planning staff and commission for more than 8 months last year, said. “The downtown plan was an important element in how the city could manage [these problems] appropriately. What the city needs more than anything is strong leadership and less time between identifying problems and resolving them.” Councilors Amarotico, Jackson and Russ Silbiger voted gainst the plan. Hardesty, Dave Chapman and Cate Hartzell. Staff writer Robert Plain can be reached at 482-3456 x. 226 or [email protected]. . Leave a Comment: --> Copyright © 2006 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.