Middletown Mayor Seeks Reelection

MIDDLETOWN, CT – Mayor Ben Florsheim was elected in 2019, and four years later, he is seeking reelection to lead Middletown.

“I’m grateful that we have taken steps for people to see real progress in projects we’ve started,” he said. “It’s something I’m proud of, but none of this work is finished, and even after an action-packed and challenging four years, I feel we need to keep going in this direction.”

Florsheim said his time as mayor was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the city to rethink everything, but he’s proud of how Middletown navigated the pandemic with humanity.

“In the early days of the pandemic, which was sort of my first few weeks in office, we recognized that it was going to have a dramatic impact,” he said. “We recognized it wasn’t only going to affect public health, but it was going to be the business community, school system, and everybody was going to be affected by it.”

When Florsheim first ran for mayor, one of the reasons he was passionate about getting involved locally was the potential for the river redevelopment.

“For many years, the road and highway have separated the town from the natural asset,” he said. “The thing that I thought coming into the office is that we needed was to take the ideas and half-finished efforts over the years and develop a serious master plan specific to the sites and uses.”

“I’m proud that we not only did that, but we were able to get millions of dollars in funding from the state, and federal funding to get the project started,” Florsheim added.

Florsheim said if he’s voted to be mayor for another four years, a big focus will be funding for schools and support for teachers, staff and students.

“We opened a new middle school in the last couple of years, but we have elementary schools that need maintenance and infrastructure support,” he said. “Everyone needs a safe environment to go and work at school, and right now, that is, sadly, something that is necessarily not the case for every student and teacher in Middletown. It’s not because of Middletown. It’s true in the state and the country right now.”