Crawfordsville Mayor Todd D. Barton announced Thursday he will seek a fourth term.
Municipal offices will be on the ballot in Indiana in 2023.
Barton was first elected mayor in 2011 and took office Jan. 1, 2012. He was subsequently elected to serve second and third terms after being unopposed in the 2015 and 2019 elections. His 2015 and 2019 election victories mark the only times in Crawfordsville’s 186-year history that a mayor’s race was uncontested in the General Election.
“I have been fortunate to build a very strong team and we have partnered with the people of Crawfordsville to accomplish much over the last several years,” Barton said. “To say that Crawfordsville is a different place than when I was first elected, would be a significant understatement.”
Barton said his administration has made great strides in improving public safety, upgrading critical infrastructure, enhancing quality of place and elevating the city’s economic development efforts to a level that has resulted in hundreds of new jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new, private investment within our city in recent years.
“All of these accomplishments have been balanced with the strengthened fiscal health of our city which is demonstrated by strong reserves and a city property tax rate that, contrary to record levels of inflation, will decrease by 6% in 2023,” he added.
Despite all of the accomplishments, Barton believes there is still much work to be done.
“We have very strong momentum and I have every intention of leveraging it in the coming months, and years to continue moving Crawfordsville forward,” he said. “We are poised for continued job growth, new investment, significant housing development, and enhanced retail offerings. The future of Crawfordsville is full of potential.”
The decision to run for another term as mayor wasn’t made lightly.
“It isn’t a short-term commitment and the realities of the workload involved in successfully performing the role can be daunting,” Barton said. “For 11 years, I have given every bit of my energy,
and ability, to guide our
community in a manner that allows it to fulfill its true potential. I am committing to giving it everything I have, if re-elected, for another four years after this term. I feel very strongly that complacency kills great cities and will continue to work hard every day to vigorously lead the city I love with unmatched effort, innovation and energy.”
Barton is a Crawfordsville native and served the community for 26 years as a firefighter/paramedic with the Crawfordsville Fire Department. During his tenure with the department, he served in several roles including Emergency Medical Services Operations, EMS Director, Lieutenant, Deputy Chief and Fire Chief. Throughout his career, he worked in the EMS, Code Enforcement, Fire Prevention, Training, and Fire Suppression Divisions.
He graduated with honors from Wabash College in 2000 with a B.A. majoring in political science. He earned his degree in three years by attending the liberal arts school full-time, working full-time, and raising a family.
In addition to his work with Crawfordsville Fire Department, he served as a paramedic for other communities in the state of Indiana and worked as a staff paramedic at Methodist Hospital of Indianapolis’s Emergency Medicine and Trauma Center, the state’s busiest level 1 trauma center. He also worked part-time for more than a decade as a reserve sheriff’s deputy in the Montgomery County Sheriff Department’s Patrol Division.
Barton was an incident management instructor and consultant for police departments, fire departments EMS agencies, school corporations and public health agencies across the nation. He served on several state-wide boards relating to homeland security and spoke nationally about incident management and disaster coordination.
Barton is married and his wife Jamie is a nurse practitioner specializing in family care. They have three children. Adrienne is a registered nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Riley Hospital for Children; Trey is recently graduated from Wabash College and is a staff member for Congressman Jim Baird; and Allyson is a student at Indiana University in Bloomington.
