Community Spotlight: Mayor Mark Freeman, Mesa: Building Mesa Into a Technology and Manufacturing Anchor for Arizona
Mark Freeman took office as Mesa's mayor in January 2025 after winning a runoff election the previous November. He is the 41st person to hold the office and the 1st mayor with deep multigenerational roots in the city, since his ancestors were among Mesa's founding families.
Before becoming mayor, Freeman represented District 1 on the Mesa City Council for 7 years starting in 2017 and served as vice mayor from 2019 to 2021. Outside of elected office, he spent 31 years with the Mesa Fire and Medical Department and retired as a captain paramedic, giving him a working knowledge of the city's public safety operations.
Mesa operates under a council-manager system, so Freeman chairs the council and sets policy priorities while a city manager runs daily operations. He also chairs the Mesa Gateway Airport Authority Board of Directors and the United States Conference of Mayors Energy Standing Committee.
In his April 2026 State of the City address, Freeman reported that Mesa attracted more than $1 billion in investment over the prior year and added over 1,500 jobs, with the gains concentrated in advanced manufacturing, aerospace, and logistics.
Much of that investment lands in the Elliot Road Technology Corridor, a 5-mile stretch on Mesa's east side that the city designated for high-tech development in 2014. Apple, Google, Meta, and EdgeCore all operate data center campuses there, and firms that locate in the corridor qualify for an expedited entitlement process the city built specifically to compete for these projects.
Freeman has tied industrial recruitment to workforce development by connecting Arizona State University Polytechnic, Mesa Community College, the East Valley Institute of Technology, and Mesa Public Schools with employers across the city. The aim is to provide local residents with a clear path to the jobs being created around the technology corridor and Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. Freeman also chairs the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport Authority, where continued expansion has strengthened the airport’s role in the regional economy. He has pointed to that growth, alongside the technology corridor, as evidence that Mesa’s economic expansion is being driven by multiple sectors.
Freeman's stated priorities for the year ahead include strengthening public safety, growing the tax base, investing in infrastructure, and protecting the city's water supply. Mesa police and fire crews responded to hundreds of thousands of calls over the past year, and the city reported a 14% drop in violent crime that Freeman attributed to proactive policing and community partnerships.
Freeman frames the corridor and airport investments as tools to keep Mesa affordable, arguing that a broader tax base allows the city to fund services without increasing the burden on individual households.
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