Sedalia voters decided for a change of leadership at the Municipal Building on Tuesday, Apr. 7, as challenger Traves Williams defeated incumbent Andrew Dawson to take over as mayor, and two incumbents on the city council went down to defeat.

Williams, a longtime city employee who also runs the charity Sedalia Community Helping Hands, claimed 64 percent of the votes according to unofficial totals from the Pettis County Clerk’s office, as the electorate declined to grant Dawson a second term as mayor. Two challengers for city council also prevailed, with mayor pro tem Rhiannon Foster defeated in her bid for re-election to the fourth ward by Spencer Redford, 591-432.  David Covington unseated Bob Hiller 462-295 to represent the third ward.  Tina Boggess was re-elected to the second ward with a 276-207 vote over Christene Meyer, while Jack Robinson fended off a challenge from Adam Porter to pick up another full term in the first ward, 431-322. Cheryl Ames was unopposed in her bid to fill the second half of the unexpired first ward council term she was appointed to fill in June.

Elsewhere, Greg Stidham received wide support in his bid for re-election as mayor of Fayette. Stidham picked up 292 votes, while 36 write-in votes were cast; Brian Cummiskey had submitted paperwork to run as a write-in challenger. Down the road, Boonville voters elected Mike Conway as their new mayor, giving him a 77-vote victory over Tanner Lee Bechtel. Hallie Thompson defeated Steve Young 111-53 to assume the ward one seat on the Boonville city council. In Brunswick. Tom Burkhart easily won election to the mayor’s office there, defeating Stephen Whipple Jr 106 votes to nine. Michael Hamilton and Tim Wheeler were the top two vote-getters among four candidates for the city council.

Voters in Brookfield selected Sarah Wessing and Clay Behrman to two seats up for grabs on their city council, with Wessing picking up 245 votes while Behrman had 227. Greg Mosely was third on 190 votes. The city’s voters restated their support for Proposition Two, which allows the Brookfield R-III Schools to issue $4.2 million in bonds to fund a number of improvements around the district. The 619-281 vote comes a year after a previous attempt to pass the bond was invalidated by the state auditor’s office because the required election notices had not been published in accordance with state law. Also in Linn County, Brian Baker will return to the Marceline City Council, earning nearly 74 percent of the vote there.