The Village of Cassopolis has a new village president.

David Johnson defeated Jim Bronke 328-163 to win the spot.

Johnson, the current pro-tem, replaces Dianna McGrew, who decided not to seek re-election.

He will be sworn in, along with the trustees, Nov. 20.

“Business,” answered Johnson when asked what will be one of his top priorities. “That is the biggest thing to me. We can talk all we want about recreation, but until we get a business infrastructure in place where we have tax dollars coming in to help with that, then nothing else matters.

“The first thing is to keep the businesses that we have and do our best to get more businesses downtown. We are talking with some of the building owners trying to get them to allow us to use their buildings as seed for new businesses coming in. Possibly even allow someone to come in and take care of the utilities, and if it works then they can takeover and start leasing the building from them. We are looking at a lot of different options to bring businesses into Cassopolis so that we can increase our tax base.”

Current village trustees Eugene Wagner, Frank Williams Jr. and Geraldine Sims all won re-election.

Wagner and Williams, along with write-in candidate Kim Parsons won four-year terms ending in 2020, while Sims won a two-year term ending in 2018.

Sims finished with 367 votes, while Williams had 366, Wagner 245 and Parsons 73.

Felomina Patton and Carolyn Kelly, also write-in candidates, finished with 51 and 37 votes respectively.

Beverly Young edged Sharon Myrick for Vandalia Village president 60-58.

Karen Young (68), Donnie Damron (60) and Theresa Damron (58) all picked up trustee seats.

Cassandra Bennett and Sam Fowlkes each had 51 votes and are tied for the fourth seat.

It was unclear at press time if a recount will be held. If after a recount the two remain tied, the winner’s name will be drawn out of a hat.

Amanda Smego, Scott Ward and Jesse Binns were all re-elected to the Cassopolis school board.

All three were running unopposed.

Smego had 1,900 votes, while Ward, the board president, and Binns finished with 1,721 and 1,670 votes respectively.