Mark Capell Says He'll Run for a Third City Council Term

Mark Capell announced today that he will run for a third term on the Bend City Council. He was first elected to council in 2006 and made headlines in 2012 when he bucked tradition and publicly declared his interested in serving as mayor.

Capell currently serves as chair of the Bend Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Bend Urban Renewal Agency and is a member of the Deschutes Water Alliance Board and the Deschutes River Conservancy Board. He outlined his three key issues for the upcoming City Council term in a release:

· Infrastructure. Between the sewer, water, and roads projects going on right now, we have more infrastructure projects going on than any time in the history of Bend. It is critical that we manage these projects to get the most return on our investment.
· Public Safety. In both Police and Fire, we have made great strides in improving efficiency. With the recently passed operating levy for Fire, we will have much better response times. We need to keep looking for additional efficiencies and continue to improve the service to Bend.
· Economic Development. We have made great strides in making the City easier to work with. As we grow, we need to keep diversifying our economy and having City Councilors that understand business.

“We are in another growth spurt in Bend and we need to make sure that we manage it in such a way that we still want to be here and our quality of life continues to improve”, Capell said in the release. “I believe that if we lose focus of these issues and the investment that is required to help make sure that land and space is available for our incoming and local companies to grow we could again see Bend in a position that we are stymied and stuck in another recession.”

Capell is a fourth generation resident of Bend and a graduate of Southern Oregon University with a background in business and marketing. He currently owns the small tech support/consulting business CMIT Solutions.

He joins fellow councilor Scott Ramsay, activist/volunteer Ron Boozell and Roats Water System co-owner Casey Roats in running for the three council seats coming open in November. Councilor Jodie Barram is running for Deschutes County Commissioner.

This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 3, 2014.