A fifth-generation Glendalian, Bart traces his roots in Glendale to his great-great-grandfather Peter Forney, an Elder in the Brethren Church who, after having visited the area perhaps as early as 1884, moved from Iowa to Arizona to establish a temperance colony at Glendale in 1892. 

Prior to being elected to the City Council, Bart served his fellow Glendale residents in many capacities through a wide range of community boards, commissions, service organizations, and committees—including having served as President of the Glendale Historical Society, Glendale Arts Council, and the West Valley Child Crisis Center, and as Chairman of the Glendale Parks and Recreation Commission. 

Bart is the proud recipient of Glendale Community Council’s Volene Stockham Humanitarian Award recognizing a lifetime of community service and the Glendale Commission on Neighborhoods Spark Award recognizing leadership in neighborhood revitalization in the Catlin Court neighborhood. 

Bart’s civic service has not only benefited his local community, but has had an impact statewide as well. Bart was a founding board member of the Valley Citizens League, a regional civic action organization, serving two years as Board President and nine years as Executive Director. During his tenure at the League, Bart led the effort to ban gifts from lobbyists to elected officials, secured reforms to Arizona’s procurement process to help prevent bid rigging, and successfully advocated for legislation requiring ethics training for elected officials. 
Bart also co-authored Arizona’s successful independent redistricting initiative, which moved Arizona’s redistricting authority away from the legislature and over to an independent, politically balanced redistricting commission. Bart co-chaired the Fair Districts Fair Elections campaign committee that secured voter adoption of the initiative. 

In addition, Bart served as the President of the Board of Directors of Arizona’s Clean Elections Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and preservation of public campaign financing, independent redistricting, and initiative and referendum rights. The Institute was a party defending Arizona’s Clean Elections Act in the 2011 US Supreme Court case McComish v. Bennett. 

Bart has a breadth of business management experience across the insurance, food and beverage, and real estate industries. 

A Glendale native, Bart attended Melvin E. Sine Elementary School (Unit 4) and Apollo High School, studied Economics and Business at Northern Arizona University, and in 2004 earned a master’s degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.