The government seats: a five-member council, dug to its current holders

1877 – November 2026 · as of November 2026

The frame: Walkerton has no mayor, and never has had one on the record. Under its code (§11.01, published in the American Legal Publishing code library) the town is governed by a five-member town council, its members elected by ward and at large under I.C. 36-5-2-5, with a clerk-treasurer as the town's other elected officer; the council president is the mayoral-equivalent face of the town. Town Hall — the Municipal Building — stands at 301 Michigan Street (telephone 574-586-3511).

The current seats, at directory strength: the seats as they stand in November 2026, printed at the strength of the published record reached. Clerk-Treasurer: Terri Buckmaster. Council: Gene Reese, listed in the town's employee directory (ZoomInfo's crawl of it) as "President Or Vice President" — the phrasing is the directory's own and is printed as such — with the council's remaining seats itemized whole in this build's Government leg, which supersedes this paragraph's directory-strength frame. Directory strength is aggregator strength; the settlers that would raise every seat in this paragraph to record strength are the town's own published roster and council minutes on walkerton.gov and the Indiana Gateway / State Board of Accounts directory, named here as the standing check for any future pass. A second Buckmaster stands in the record at contact strength only: Phil Buckmaster, the town's named contact for Veterans Park (walkerton.gov), printed as a contact and as nothing more.

Gene Reese — the transition, printed as a transition: Reese's printed record runs deeper than the directory line. On the record banked by this build's government pass — the Saint Joseph County Clerk's precinct summary for the May 2026 primary, read first-hand — he has served on the council since January 1990, and on 5 May 2026 he lost the Ward 2 Republican primary to Rick Coffman. His service therefore ends 31 December 2026 by operation of that result, and Coffman is the incoming holder. Reese stands in this section as the sitting member through the end of 2026 — the as-of date governs — and the succession is printed here as a transition in progress, never as Coffman already seated. Thirty-six years on a small town's council is the longest documented service in this section, and it closes inside this build's own as-of window.

An identity flag, carried unresolved: two men named Christopher Winchell stand in this build's records — a township board member-elect of that name (in the government pass's record) and the sitting superintendent of the John Glenn School Corporation of that name (in the schools pass's record). Nothing in the record reached in either pass establishes whether they are the same man or two men of one name, and this section does not merge them. Each stands only in his own seat's record; the settler is a biographical record — the corporation's and the township's published biographies, or the county's — that ties name to person, and until it is read the flag stands exactly as unresolved as it was found.

Sources:

1. Town of Walkerton code of ordinances, §11.01 (American Legal Publishing code library) — the five-member council; I.C. 36-5-2-5.
2. ZoomInfo, Town of Walkerton Indiana employee directory — the Buckmaster and Reese lines, at directory strength as labeled.
3. Saint Joseph County Clerk, precinct summary, primary of 5 May 2026 — the Reese–Coffman Ward 2 result and Reese's service since January 1990, as banked first-hand in this build's government pass and folded here on the parent's flag.
4. Town of Walkerton, walkerton.gov — the Veterans Park page (Phil Buckmaster, contact).