Q&A: Edmonds’ Mayor Nash and His Goals

Last year, Mark Nash was elected to be Edmonds’ Mayor. The Vista sat down with him in January and discussed his goals for the city.

The Vista: When you were on the campaign trail, what were the key principles you were campaigning on?

Mayor Nash: “Municipal finance, period. To understand that you kind of have to understand my background.”

“I spent 10 years working for the state. First, as a management auditor for the legislature. And then doing compensation analysis and compensation studies for the legislature.”


”Then, as a fiscal analyst for the public safety and transportation agencies for appropriations. Then I ended my career with three plus years as director of finance at the Department of Public Safety.”

The Vista: Could you walk me through what your first step was when you were elected into office?

Mayor Nash: “I repeatedly said on the campaign trail. Even after I was sworn in, this is about government finance. This is about how we spend our money in Edmond, and the challenge that we had.”

“When I was on the campaign trail, we had a roughly $472 million budget. Yet, it was incredibly difficult to even understand where that money was budgeted because of the way it was done.”

The Vista: Could you explain what made the budget difficult to understand?

Mayor Nash: “We had almost a billion dollars in debt. The majority of it is public works debt.”

“A budget should be a tool to help you understand how you’re spending your money. When you look at our organization chart, we have approximately 32 plus or minus departments. Which, in theory, should mean we have that many budgets, probably plus a couple more.”

“The biggest one being a capital improvement budget. As I went through that process of trying to analyze, first of all, what the budget was. I worked in government finance at the state level for 10 years, dealing with budgets and expenditures. Yet, it took me two hours just to understand the basics of what was in our budget, which shouldn’t be the case.”

The Vista: After reorganizing the city budget with your team, what was your next goal?

Mayor Nash: “On the campaign trail, I was talking about roads. In the early ’90s, shortly after I moved here, the big thing that the council came out and announced was we’re going to four lanes, all of our mile roads from 33rd Street to Covell and Santa Fe to the interstate. That was the early 90s. It’s now 2026.”

“As far as the road plan goes in our strategic planning session in December, council told staff, we want a five-year road plan. I’m happy to say that we, being the council, have brought that up repeatedly, and we just took care of one of the major pieces, being Coltrane, just south of 2nd Street.”

“Right now, they are going in while they do an overlay project to resurface part of that section of road, changing it all to four lanes.”

The Vista: Were there any other goals in your plan after you entered office?

Mayor Nash: “Economic development is the third piece that I have been supporting.”

“We have to increase our revenue; our city revenues have decreased by 2% each year for the last three years. We’re hoping it’s flat for the next year. Not a good hope.”


“The only way we’re gonna get there is to compete. We have to compete for retail and restaurants. We have to invest in ourselves. The only way we can do that is if we start by showing our voters, our citizens, that we can be responsible with the money we have.”