Mark Davie

Ward 4 City Councilor

Concord, New Hampshire

Meet Mark

Hello! It’s so nice to meet you. My name is Mark Davie and I’m the city councilor for Ward 4!

I am on a mission to make our capital city attractive and accessible to all ages and abilities! I bring a unique perspective as a young person who is a transplant to New Hampshire. My career in public service equips me to advocate for fair and realistic housing opportunities, improved walkability and reduced car-dependence, and enhanced local planning and engagement.

I want to

Priorities

Housing & Zoning Reform

At the local, regional, and national levels, much of my age group has simply never known a fair housing market. Businesses struggle to recruit employees and many of us have “leapfrogging” commutes to higher cost-of-living places while many state workers similarly commute from other places because Concord is unaffordable to them. Homelessness is visible in Concord, and unhoused individuals and families have been exposed to record climate events in recent winters and summers.

It was disappointing to arrive as a new resident to find out ConcordNEXT was no longer going to be implemented. I want to adopt a modern, dynamic zoning ordinance that allows Concord to evolve by leaning into its “villages” and avoids sprawl and exclusionary development patterns. There is no no-build solution to the housing crisis.
Time adds costs, and administrative delays faced at City Hall are a barrier. I want Concord to be the first community in New Hampshire to institute pre-approved plans. When neighborhoods are allowed to proactively determine their community’s “character,” we can compile a sample of appropriate homes that can automatically be approved at city hall, dramatically reducing costs for potential homeowners.
We are severely lacking in Missing Middle housing. We are a typical New England city with large old homes, as well as a dense downtown with apartments over our Main Street. There are contemporary examples of both as well, with sprawling subdivisions and newer apartment blocks. We need transitional housing, starter homes, rowhomes, and basement, attic, and garage apartments readily available near our schools, grocery stores, and city services. They must not be bogged down by parking, lot size, and frontage requirements as I have seen in my time on the zoning board and in working with other communities’ zoning ordinances in my day job.

Safe & Walkable Streets

As a runner and biker, I have seen all of Concord’s neighborhoods on foot and on wheels. Data on road injuries is notoriously poorly managed in New Hampshire. However, you as a Concord resident can probably recall a recent incident on one of our streets just as you read this. In addition to the life cycle and regular maintenance of our streets, our paving program must reflect the rate of incidents and conversation with kids, wheelchair users, and cyclists. I will:

Bring firefighters and business owners to the table in discussion of re-shaping some key corridors, like Loudon Road, Manchester Street, North Main Street, and Green Street, to ensure the streets remain usable for large vehicles responding to emergencies and friendly to business.

The State of New Hampshire spends less than a tank of gas per resident on transit each year and federal funding is in limbo. Unfortunately, this means that Concord and other municipalities are expected to continue to shoulder the cost of public transportation. I will:

Advocate for increasing Concord’s contribution to the CAT system and work to identify the steps needed to reinstate Capital Corridor rail service in the future. Let’s get cars off 93 and our sidestreets!

Community Engagement

I frequently find myself as the youngest person in the room in my day job in local government. I want to demystify the local government process through clear and concise communication. I will:

Foster an environment for renters, residents of color, the unhoused, young people, service industry workers, parents, and anyone else to feel encouraged and able to participate in local boards and committees that matter to them, regardless of prior knowledge.

The new master plan must include more engagement than one survey and workshop as many other communities do. It is a $400,000 plan – City Council must confidently feel they are adopting a plan that reflects engagement conducted at this caliber.

What's New?

City Council Priority Setting Session

On Thursday, February 19, we sat down to get our formal list of priorities in order for the term.

Why is this important? City Council’s priorities direct the work of our city staff. They should be clearly achievable actions that remain flexible enough for staff to accomplish the work. For example, if City leadership and City Council agreed that we need a new fire truck, we probably wouldn’t direct them to purchase a particular make and model of fire truck. You can see this highlighted in the quarterly report issued by the City Manager’s office (most recent December 2025 example).

What did I bring to the table? I continue to support any and all initiatives that promote fair and accessible housing, as well as optimizing our engagement and outreach strategies. On 2/19, I advocated for doing outreach as part of the interim zoning updates that the Community Development department continues to work on while we await the start of the Master Plan process. I also advocated for moving the mayor’s suggested outreach priorities to fit within a “fiscal responsibility and communication” item.

Recording | Meeting Packet, including Renters’ Caucus priorities and Mayor’s suggested priorities

February City Council Meeting

At February’s City Council meeting, we moved forward with the class and compensation study, the Concord Coach parking agreement, and accepting the Skate Park donation.

Recording | Meeting Packet & Minutes

January City Council Meeting

In January, we accepted some pass-through donations, allocated $100,000 toward a water main upgrade that coincides with a New Hampshire DOT project, and did some reorganizing of several reserve accounts that were no longer serving a specific purpose or held small amounts of money.

Recording | Meeting Packet & Minutes

How to Spend a Friday Night

Going into the small snow on Friday evening, February 20, I had asked our General Services department if it would be possible to ride along with a plow driver, to which they obliged! I got to be in one of the smaller trucks navigating much of downtown just before the parking ban went into effect that night. I got to see the clearing of tight streets like the alleys around Bicentennial Square and Hanover and Garden streets. Later, I was moved to one of the bigger trucks that was navigating East Concord in subdivisions around Broken Ground school. I got excellent insight into the logistics of parking bans as well as the different work our crews do throughout the year. Thank you to Tony and Tarryn for sharing their shifts with me!

Want to know where your street falls within the plowing routes? Check out page 19 and onward of the Winter Operation Policy on General Services’ website.

My Committee Assignments

Early in January, the Mayor issued the Committee assignments for councilors. Cities and towns have committees to focus on specific issues. If City Council had to discuss parking hours on School Street versus Merrimack Street, approve a zoning map, make a volunteer schedule for maintaining trails, make a cold weather action plan for homeless services, AND talk about the budget, we would have some very long meetings on our hands. That’s why communities have several committees that are fine-tuned to their needs. In Concord, we have over 30! Want to get involved? Many have vacancies! Not sure what a committee does? Reach out and I may be able to help!

I was assigned:

Energy & Environment Advisory Committee. At my first meeting, we discussed Community Power and some key solar projects happening in Concord.
Opportunity Corridors Advisory Committee. Details coming soon!
Parking Committee. I will have my first meeting the last week of February!
Solid Waste Advisory Committee. At my first meeting, we largely discussed the rollout of the pilot transition period to automated trash pickup. We will meet again in March to discuss outreach and logistics.
Tax Exemption Policy Committee. At the 2026 meeting at the beginning of February, we discussed the changes in state legislation impacting credits and exemptions for veterans, and the upcoming reevaluation. We set the credit and exemption income thresholds based on staff recommendation from what other communities around the state have done. This committee typically only meets once a year, but we will likely have a second meeting this spring to discuss the reevaluation further.

Experience

I have served on the Zoning Board of Adjustment for nearly two years and have volunteered with the Concord Greenspace Coalition for about the same. Both of these experiences have given me a front-row seat to development and the mechanics of our local government in Concord.

My day job as a regional planner in the Seacoast region has given me a complementary skillset as a facilitator, geographer, and analyst. I bring to the table parallel experiences and phenomena happening in other New Hampshire communities, and I know how to advocate for services and funding from the state and federal levels and navigate countless data sources.

Prior to this role I had experience in mapping and GIS with the Department of Community Development of Chester County, Pennsylvania, as well as a brief internship in the Census Outreach team of Baltimore County, Maryland. I hold a Bachelors of Geography & Environmental Planning from Towson University and a Masters of Urban & Regional Planning from West Chester University. Last December I obtained my certification from the American Institute of Certified Planners and will do everything in my power to continue embodying their mission to serve the public interest in my first elected role.

I grew up in Maryland and absolutely fell in love with New Hampshire regularly visiting family here in my childhood. Now, I’ve made the Granite State my home. I lived on and off the Seacoast while completing my master’s degree until moving to Concord in spring 2023. In my free time, you will catch me knocking out the 4,000 footers up north, hitting the slopes at Ragged, or zipping by on the Northern Rail Trail. I am left-handed and I love board games!