Issaquah business owner Mark Mullet has resigned his city council seat effective Dec. 31, so that he may serve in his new position as state senator in District 5 for the next four years.

This energetic husband and father of four daughters, aged 2 to 9, is fired up, and ready for the daily commute when the legislature convenes in January. Like the newly elected District 5 representative, Chad Magendanz, Mullet will also be a freshman in Olympia. He said during the campaign process he met many of the people he’ll be serving with, so he’s not worried about being an unknown face in the crowd.

As far as committees, Mullet hopes to serve on transportation, education and the finance committee, a good fit given his experience working for Bank of America. Before becoming an Issaquah business owner, Mullet was the global head of currency option trading for Bank of America in London from 1996 to 2001, followed by time in New York city. He grew up in Tukwila, where his parents still live in the same house he grew up in.

In his job with Bank of America, he studied how currencies work, particularly the dollar, yen and euro, monitoring how governments invest their public dollars. He is now the owner of the Zeek’s Pizza and Ben and Jerry’s franchise stores in Issaquah. Like Magendanz, he is concerned about education funding – after all he has four kids who are going through the public school system.

His priority and goal for this session, is to work with the unions in Olympia to get them on a Healthy Incentive Plan, which he said would free up $200 to $300 million for education. Mullet said the city of Issaquah just implemented Healthy Incentives programs to keep health insurance costs low and believes it could save hundreds of millions of dollars at the state level.

Responding to the issue of charter schools, Mullet said the charter school initiative should not divide the education community.

“People need to be focused on the big picture,” he said. He added that the teacher’s union didn’t make a huge investment into fighting initiative 1240.

Mullet said he supports seventh period for Jr. High/Middle School students, because if they’re not keeping up at that age, it decreases their chance of graduating from high school. He also supports kids taking at least one AP class in high school.

As a business owner, when asked about regulations, Mullet said it can be overwhelming for new business owners. He said the state has made progress by allowing business owners to keep track of their sales tax online.

“It would be nice to have B&O tax all in one return, not (filing) state and city,” he said.

Mullet is known to be an environmentally conscientious individual, driving an electric car and including solar panels in his home. He said all of the food used at Zeek’s is fresh — there are no freezers — and he uses only the highest quality ingredients. Ditto Ben and Jerry’s — it may be ice cream, but he knows what’s in it — real sustainable food. He believes people should know what they are eating and where it came from.

Mullet is ready for the challenge and possible barrage of phone calls from his constituents.

“If people take the time to call, you need to respond to the call,” he said. “I may not necessarily agree with them, but I will listen to everybody when they do call.”