Tulare City Manager Mark Mondell made Gov Business Review’s “Top 10 City Managers” for 2026.
The 10 city managers were recognized for being “visionary leaders driving efficient, responsive, and innovative local governance,” and excelling “in public administration, community engagement, and operational excellence.”
Mondell, who has served as city manager of Tulare for four years, previously served as assistant city manager of Rocklin, California, for three years, and assistant city manager of Ocala, Florida, for two years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in design, master’s degrees in urban and regional planning and in architecture, all from the University of Florida.
We asked him about being named as one of the top 10 city managers in the country.
How did you get recognized for the honor?
It’s not something you apply to. What they told me is they have about 85,000 subscribers nationally, and one of their subscribers had to nominate me.
I won’t tell you who I think it is, but the reason I think I know who it is because they included a quote in my article that is not a quote that I gave them. It’s a quote that I gave someone else about a year ago for a podcast.
You were the one selected for the magazine’s cover. Does that mean that you outranked the other nine?
I definitely don’t think it means I outranked them. I think they were just identifying the top 10 without any rank order. My wife thinks it’s because I was the most handsome, but I can’t speak to that.
What is the role of the city manager?
To put it in the simplest terms, the city manager is essentially the chief executive officer of the government agency. If you think about it like the private sector, the CEO is the chief executive of the business, and the board of directors of that business in our case is the city council.
We recommend to council a budget. We recommend to them policies, but they ultimately make those decisions and adopt them. Then it’s our job as the city manager to make sure those policies, those objectives, those goals, those budgets are implemented.
What does an effective city manager do that most city managers might not?
It’s very important as the city manager to recognize that you’re put in a position that comes with a lot of responsibility, and it’s your job to listen well to the council, to the community and to staff.
It’s your job to synthesize all of those comments, all of that information that you receive, and package it in a way – when you couple it with your experience, your training, and your knowledge – to identify opportunities that align with those things that you believe will work well in the community and continue to help move the community forward in the direction that’s needed and necessary for the community.
Where a lot of city managers maybe make a mistake is some of them don’t listen well. On the other side of the coin, sometimes leading a community and making recommendations can be tough because it comes with a lot of criticism, especially when you’re bringing something new, maybe that the community hasn’t done before. Sometimes city managers are passive or they’re too tentative to recommend and bring forth those ideas that would be good for the community.
What attracted you to Tulare?
A few things. First was the opportunity. I see a tremendous amount of opportunity in the city of Tulare. I see a community that has good bones, a good foundation. People care about this community. People work hard in this community. People want the community to be better.
That’s very important because not every community has that, and I saw a community, a council that wanted to bring change and move the community forward. That’s not always the case.
I saw we had a budget that was in pretty good shape, but it still needed some work, and there’s opportunities here. I saw, for example, Highway 99 wasn’t being further leveraged.
And then I would say the second side of that equation is, oddly enough, I was attracted to the problems. As a city manager, I like to be in a community where I can help fix problems, identify issues and then problem-solve.
I thought I knew how to fix those things and really when you’re in a place that you’re wanted, you know you can help, you have the right skills, and there’s that alignment on what the goals are, especially related to economic development, that’s very attractive.
What are the biggest issues that Tulare faces?
I would say further support and enhancement of our public safety, our streets. We have a lot of deferred maintenance in our roadways that we’ve got to develop some strategies to fix.
We’ve made some really good progress on homelessness, but we still have a little bit more work to do there. We have our shelter opening up here in the first quarter of next year. There are some additional financial resources I think we need to attach to make sure that that project is operating well.
You’ve been in city management for a while. What are the biggest changes that you’ve seen?
I would say across the nation, the phenomenon of homelessness has really become a much bigger challenge for cities everywhere in terms of how they manage it.
It’s a very important issue because it’s so human. I mean, all of us could find ourselves, or we may have family members, or may have been in a position where we were in despair, maybe even homeless.
We can relate to the issue, but it’s hard to understand how to mitigate it and manage it. You can’t solve it, but you can try to manage it. There’s a lot of philosophies and differing opinions about how best to manage it. I would say all cities are struggling with that.
I would say another one that’s more on the exciting front is technology. Technology has always been changing rapidly, but I would say with the advent of artificial intelligence, we’re really just on the cusp of – just like in the private sector – how is AI going to change our business and our operations and how we communicate with the public and how do we get our job done every day? AI is the latest, greatest change that we all have to adapt to.
The third would be, and it pertains to all cities, it’s not unique just to California, is as the economy ebbs and flows and as we have changes in ideologies and philosophies, let’s say at the federal level, and as the states deal with all those things, there’s always a lot of unfunded mandates that come down to the local government.
How do we efficiently and effectively deal with those in a way that protects our local communities’ interests and our precious local dollars, but still meets all the requirements of the federal and state government? That’s not unique to today, that’s always been the case, but it just seems like it’s always becoming increasingly more difficult.
What are you proudest of?
In Tulare, when I interviewed with the city council, one of the questions they asked me was, “What is my biggest concern about Tulare? What do I think is the biggest challenge walking into this job?”
I told them at the time that I felt like it would be the people. I said, “I’m walking into a community that has not experienced a lot of change in a number of years. They’ve had some political strife, but they’ve not implemented a lot of projects. There was a lot of things they weren’t addressing, a lot of things that had been deferred.”
I said, “You guys are asking for change, you’re asking for economic development, you’re wanting to see the community move forward.
“That’s what I want to do, but you have to understand if we’re going to do that, we’re going to ruffle a lot of feathers. A lot of people are going to be concerned about all the change, and they won’t understand it. You have to listen to them, and you have to address their concerns. After you address their concerns, if you know what we’re doing is right, you still have to have the confidence and the commitment to move forward.”
And this council has done that. This staff has done this.
I am really proud of this community stepping up over the last four years and saying it’s time for us to move this community forward, because I’ve seen places where they say they want to do that, but they don’t have the courage to do it. This council, this staff, and this community have had that, and they do have that.
Is there anything else you want to add?
It’s certainly an honor to be recognized, and I am really grateful for it. I also recognize, however, that it is really hard to determine who are the top city managers. It’s very subjective and I’m humbled by it. I’m grateful for it. There are many, many great city managers all over this county, this state, this country.
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: How Tulare’s Marc Mondell landed on a national Top 10 City Managers list
Reporting by Steve Pastis, Visalia Times-Delta / Visalia Times-Delta
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