Mayor Mary Verner

Term of Office: 2007-2011

Mayor Mary Verner is here to work for you—the citizens, property owners, businesspeople, and visitors of the City of Spokane!

Mayor Verner spends her days meeting with constituents, responding to challenges, and pursuing programs and projects that will make our city and our community stronger and healthier. The Mayor is the City’s Chief Executive Officer, directing the activities of the City's 2,000 employees and managing a $600 million annual budget.

As the Mayor has talked with people throughout Spokane, she has found incredible consistency in what they want and need from their City. As such for her term as Mayor, Mayor Verner has defined five priorities that guide her efforts:

• Infrastructure
• Public Safety
• Sustainable Economic Growth
• Community Quality of Life
• Leadership & Administration

During her first two years of office, Mayor Verner has worked to make government more efficient and effective. She has increased collaboration with other governmental jurisdictions and is pursuing more opportunities to reduce duplication in government.

Under her leadership, the City has launched an effort to use the expertise of her employees, combined with Lean Six Sigma techniques, to reduce waste, eliminate duplicative work, and focus efforts on value-added services that serve our customers. This effort is called Employee Led Innovation and already has logged some impressive results. Employees in the Police Department brought forward a variety of changes that have resulted in overtime savings of nearly $500,000. We’ve saved $15,000 in the cost of recycling our used glass, reduced the turnaround time in the Library’s bindery area, and saved money at the Solid Waste transfer stations with new scheduling.

The Mayor has led on the issue of sustainability and making Spokane a hub for green and clean-tech businesses. The Mayor’s Sustainability Task Force developed a comprehensive action plan for the City to address both climate change and energy security, and the City is working on strategies to implement the plan. Meanwhile, the community has added clean technology and energy efficiency as our third priority industry cluster, joining aerospace and health care.

Mayor Verner also has demanded a conservative approach to budgeting and maintaining appropriate levels of reserves. For 2010, the Mayor produced a budget that limited additional costs for citizens while minimizing reductions in City services. The Mayor doggedly pursued a solution to an anticipated $7 million shortfall for 2010 through employee savings, non-personnel reductions, a small revenue increase, and modest use of reserves.

At the same time, Mayor Verner continues to work to enhance business opportunity, improve basic services, improve public safety, address quality of life issues, and rebuild City infrastructure.

What’s Up in 2010

Lots more work is under way in 2010. Planning and work to develop the 2011 Budget is a top priority as City budget challenges persist due to the tough local and national economy. The Mayor is working to improve our financial position, create service delivery models that are more sustainable, and help guarantee our future health. See more details on the City’s budget.

While grappling with the Budget, the Mayor also will keep the critical services of City government humming. Citizens will see:

• A new crop of street and infrastructure projects.
• Continued emphasis on projects to expand bike and pedestrian access.
• The completion of the new City pools.
• Additional advances in public safety.
• Managing of projects paid for with 2009 Federal Stimulus dollars.
• Expansion of affordable housing stocks.
• Ongoing efforts to enhance economic development and create jobs.
• And much more...

Under Mayor Verner’s leadership, the City of Spokane is moving ahead toward a better future for our community and region.