As mayoral candidates Tom Robins and Mark Nash took the debate stage for what is likely the final time ahead of Tuesday’s runoff election, they did so with far more familiarity than during NonDoc’s first Edmond mayor debate in January. As the saying goes, familiarity often breeds contempt.
“I said, ‘Hey, If you win, I’m going to call and congratulate you, but don’t be offended — I don’t want to see you for a month,'” Robins joked during opening statements. “And I think he said ‘Hey, if you win, I’ll call and congratulate you, but don’t be offended — I don’t want to see you for two months.'”
While Robins and Nash again shared some pointed exchanges regarding policing during Wednesday evening’s Runoff Rematch, on other topics the pair found common ground in their visions for Edmond, leaving voters to decide which will earn their support based on overarching priorities. Robins touted broad efforts to improve Edmond’s public safety, road quality and recreation during his time representing Ward 1 on the Edmond City Council, while Nash focused primarily on his financial expertise.
Questions on public safety and the specifics of Edmond’s fiscal future also revealed finer differences in the candidates’ platforms.
Candidates clash on community policing
Perhaps the clearest difference in opinion between Nash and Robins emerged when both were asked what they would like to see the Edmond Police Department improve moving forward.
Robins, who has secured the endorsements of Edmond’s local Fraternal Order of Police chapter and Oklahoma County Sheriff Tommie Johnson, said he saw no obvious areas for improvement in EPD’s current operation. He went on to reference his work with EPD to address recurring crime at Edmond’s Rolling Greens apartment complex.
“There’s a contrasting difference [between us] — I was able to work with police, who were doing dozens and dozens of calls there, to completely turn it around,” Robins said. “One of things my opponent said is, ‘Well, it’s not high crime that’s happening,’ when he was literally standing where somebody was murdered, ‘It’s high call volume.’ I call crime what it is.”
Robins said Nash had previously “insulted” police by suggesting the department could focus more on building community relationships. While Nash acknowledged he would like to see EPD prioritize community policing, he refuted the suggestion he was looking to “insult” EPD.
“What do I think the police could be doing better? Well, Tom just answered it for you — community policing,” Nash said. “We used to do a really good job with community policing in this city, and it has fallen off over the last, I don’t know, five, six, eight years. What I was talking about at Rolling Greens was simply doing what police officers told me they wanted. They said when they investigated crimes in that complex, if they took the time to actually talk to those kids (…) those kids started talking (to police).”
Nash said focusing on the community aspect of law enforcement makes policing easier, “because then the public is not afraid to call them.” But he also suggested the most aggressive policing proposal of the night.
“Something else we can do is get our police department reengaged with the district attorney, and the highway patrol, and the other law enforcement agencies in the state to do what we used to do for that particular apartment complex: do warrant sweeps,” Nash said. “When you do that, the bad apples don’t want to come back. That lets the people who want to live there have something that they can do to protect themselves and protect their kids.”
Nash’s statement spurred Robins to defend EPD’s current efforts, and he promised to hold “out-of-state landlords” of such apartment complexes accountable.
“It’s not ‘high call volume,’ it’s high crime, and our police are doing an excellent job, and I will not allow them to be defamed when I’m mayor,” Robins said.
In the final word on the topic, Nash began with a sigh of exasperation.
“Well, Tom, there you go again,” Nash said. “The reality of it is, we’re trying to help people. We’re trying to come up with a way to help people help themselves, and to make it sound like I’m bashing our law enforcement is an insult to me. Coming from a law enforcement family, I am insulted, and every police officer that I know should be insulted for me.”
Election Night
The Edmond mayoral runoff is set for Tuesday, April 1. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. For live updates on election night, follow @edmond_news on Twitter.
On other policing topics, Nash and Robins agreed. Robins said he has engaged EPD Chief J.D. Younger in conversations regarding Younger’s proposals to use public cameras as a “force multiplier” for the department, an idea Younger has brought before Edmond’s Community Policing Board over the last several months. During a budget workshop March 24, Younger said the department has requested funds for a mobile camera trailer to be used at public events such as Heard on Hurd in this year’s budget.
Younger has acknowledged some residents may have privacy concerns with such technology, which Robins also noted.
“I’ve been to multiple presentations about this, and we have a commitment to be able to keep our citizens safe while also having a commitment of transparency and openness,” Robins said. “I appreciate our chief every step of the way being transparent and going to the city council.”
Nash agreed that such cameras could be a boon to EPD.
“Privacy is a concern for a lot of people. But guess what? You’re on camera. Everywhere you go, you’re on camera today,” Nash said. “When it’s done correctly it works, and with the mobile camera units like the police department has in their budget for next year, I think it is a great way to help with crowd control, because you don’t need as many officers in one place at one time. So, there is a lot of potential, and yes, people are thinking about privacy when they do it.”
Following a Department of Justice report released in January found that residents of Oklahoma County with mental health needs have faced constitutional violations during their interactions with law enforcement, one suggestion involved the creation of “behavioral health mobile response teams.”
Nash and Robins again agreed such an organization would benefit Edmond, with Nash specifically noting the September 2024 shooting of Ross Norwood, an Edmond resident who lit his house on fire during a psychotic episode. When Edmond police responded, the first officer who arrived shot Norwood when he believed the lighters in his hands were knives. Norwood survived, but he remains incarcerated in the Oklahoma County Jail awaiting mental health competency restoration services.
“It is a brilliant idea, because it actually reduces the cost of public safety, it reduces the risk to the entire city if we have trained mental health professionals responding in appropriate situations,” Nash said of mental health crisis response teams. “If we had something like that back when the gentleman had a psychotic break (…) perhaps that could have been avoided if the right responders showed up. We already knew in this city that gentleman had those problems. There had already been multiple calls, multiple times law enforcement had gone out there.”
Robins noted the City of Edmond’s efforts to support community mental health resources, such as the NorthCare clinic and the recently opened Oasis Clubhouse.
“[Crisis response teams] are great tools so we don’t just have to rely on what we have,” Robins said. “We’ve done that in many ways with NorthCare, I have talked to our police chief, and I know that they’ve developed programs to be able to deploy mental health (response) and they’re getting feedback on that and are continuing to work on that (…) Holistically, it’s not something that can be solved by police, it has to be addressed by our community.”
Nash: ‘It’s about the money’
A career fiscal professional, Nash’s primary campaign message has focused on his expertise. Should he be elected, Nash noted he would join incoming councilmen-elect Preston Patterson and Phil Fraim as a third financial expert on the dais.
“It’s about the money. It’s about future sales tax revenue. It’s about how the city is spending that money,” Nash said.
The sound defeat of a hefty general obligation bond package in November became Nash’s primary motivation to join the race, he said. He described the proposal to fund $231 million in city projects via a 14 percent property tax increase as “too much, too fast,” noting strong opposition to the proposal could complicate the city’s effort to secure future revenue owing to lost public confidence. Nash has previously hammered Robins’ stance on the GO bond proposal.
The financial picture is particularly vital, Nash said, with two city sales taxes set to expire in 2027 and a current decline in sales tax collections against expectations.
“We can do a better job of communicating what’s going on. And a lot of that, I’ll be honest with you, it starts with regaining the citizens’ trust, and a big piece of that is there is so much distrust about the finances,” Nash said. “I know that our council members are not out there just shuffling money around to do whatever they can. They have a plan, they’re working on it, but better communication I think would take us a lot further.”
Robins agreed that public communication is a key area the current city council could improve, touting his active approach to constituents during his time as Ward 1 councilman.
“That’s why I’m so conscientious about communicating, and even without having a daily paper, being very responsive to everybody who reaches out or posts things online, which can definitely be uncomfortable as far as getting information out,” Robins said. “For me, it’s about being a mayor that is available, that is engageable.”
Both men also agreed Edmond needs a communicator as its next city manager following the resignation of former City Manager Scot Rigby, a parting of ways that Nash and Robins both expressed their support for in January.
“It was obvious he needed to go, and I thank the council that finally said, ‘Let’s get rid of this guy,’” Nash said. “What do we need in the future? We need someone who can not only listen to what the citizens of Edmond want, but is the kind of leader that can listen to what the city council says is the plan and go implement it. We don’t need someone who can say ‘I’m the city manager, it’s my city, I’m running it.’”
Robins: ADUs need ‘public input’
Previously, Edmond has considered adopting an overlay district to simplify the process for property owners to construct alternative dwelling units, or ADUs, in certain areas of Edmond. While ADUs are considered an approach to provide diversified housing inventory for cities lacking affordable homes, Robins and Nash were both opposed to the previous proposal.
Robins, who was on Edmond City Council at the time, said his opposition was based on the proposal skirting the public input process for ADUs to be constructed.
“I will never cut out a step for our citizens to be able to have a voice in front of city council. As I looked at the overlay district, which was all the way [in] my district, residents started receiving letters about the overlay district that I wasn’t given in advance,” Robins said. “When I dug into it and found out it would just basically be taking away the public hearing to streamline this, I said absolutely not. (…) That is a decisive example of when I heard feedback and had to be educated on something I was told was working in Oklahoma City, but I did not think would work for Edmond.”
Robins noted Nash published an op-ed at the time also opposing the overlay. Nash said ADUs could still be viable housing options, but not as previously proposed.
“The reality of it is, the entire concept was bad. Not about accessory dwelling units — that’s not a bad idea, to be quite honest — but the fact that you can completely bypass the planning process called planning commission and city council to do this was the bad idea,” Nash said. “Should we allow some type of accessory dwellings? Maybe so, but that was not the way to do it. Tom said it: It didn’t include the people. We need to get everyone involved in this.”
The housing affordability issues facing Edmond and the nation as a whole also tie into what both candidates said is the city’s top health care concern: staffing. Nash and Robins both suggested the city could help promote the University of Central Oklahoma’s nursing program to draw more employees in the field to Edmond.
Just weeks after Edmond’s Capital Improvement Projects Advisory Board received a presentation on local roadways that noted road conditions would degrade if more funding is not used for maintenance, Robins also promised to double Edmond’s current $4.5 million maintenance budget to $9 million.
Nash was incredulous the money existed in the city’s current budget to allow the increase, but Robins said he had identified where funds could be spared.
View the Edmond mayor debate
