In 2008, the Ashland City Council determined that the City should take a more active role in Economic Development Activities within our community.  While the City has always had a definite role in economic development activities, much of the work was segmented into parts and carried out in more of an ad-hoc basis by individual Departments and lacked long term coordination. 

Additionally, the City relied heavily on the Chamber of Commerce to conduct many of the ongoing aspects of economic development for the community, such as the award winning Living and Doing Business in Ashland guide.

While the Chamber remains a vital piece of the overall economic development landscape of our community, the City, through funding from the recent increase in the trancient occupancy tax (lodging tax), has bolstered staffing in the Administration Department to work on economic development programs and projects.

The first economic development priority of the City Council is to create an Economic Develoment Strategy document to guide future efforts and decisions regarding economic develoment in Ashland.

The links provided to the left of this page provides a variety of background information that may be useful as the economic development strategy process unfolds over the coming months.  The intent is to provide the public with access to existing adopted City documents relating to economic development, as well as links to demographic information for our community, our region and the State.  Also included are sample strategy or action plans from other communities in Oregon to provide examples of how other cities have chosen to move forward on economic development.