BY RAYMOND MENDOZA
Walnut’s New Mayor, Nancy Tragarz (Photo Courtesy: Raymond Mendoza)
Walnut – During the July 9 city council meeting, titles were exchanged and Mayor Pro Tem, Nancy Tragarz, was officially sworn in as mayor for the City of Walnut- promising to uphold the community’s values and pledging to serve to the best of her abilities.
Tragarz, who served as mayor of Walnut once before from 2011 to 2012, said she’s looking forward to leading the council with a strong sense of leadership, finance, accounting and legal skills to help push along the city’s prominence.
“My goal is to create unity and teamwork on the council and in the entire community,” Tragarz said. “The policy I will fight for is transparency, honesty, ethics, and doing what is in the best interest of the community as a whole.”
In consideration for her background, Tragarz brings a wide variety of expertise to her role as mayor, having graduated from Walnut High School with highest honors in 1981 then obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from USC, magna cum laude, in 1985.
Tragarz then attended Loyola Law School while working as a certified law clerk for the Los Angeles County District Attorney. She passed the bar exam in 1991 and worked for two different law firms in the area of business litigation, bankruptcy, and contracts. She has also volunteered as a temporary judge in the Los Angeles County Courts since 1998.
In 2002, Tragarz worked part-time for a firm in order to spend more time with her two sons.
She then served as a vice chair for the City’s special ethics committee from 2002 to 2003, where she helped draft Walnut’s first code of ethics and candidates’ campaign manual.
By 2005, Tragarz was then appointed to the Parks and Recreation Commission and served as vice chair before being elected to Walnut’s City Council in 2008.
Tragarz said her long-time strategy of being honest and attuned with the needs of Walnut’s residents will keep the city moving in the right direction.
While elected officials sometimes have a tendency to oversell themselves with promises and delusions of grandeur, Tragarz remains realistic to her constituents by saying she has no specific agenda and that she would “respond to the needs and desires of the community.”
As she starts her second term as mayor of Walnut, Tragarz said the best way to deal with concerns of the public is to be informative and lawful in her decisions, stating that the residents are willing to accept the truth if they are provided with facts.
“I believe honesty and integrity is the best policy.”
