of mismanagement and holding officers to a higher standard than himself. Also allegedly fired because of the shakeup was the Mayor's Chief of Staff Burnetta Hill-Corely. The Chief of Staff position replaced the Village Manager when Towers was sworn in during 2009. Mayor Towers sees that times ahead will still be challenging but are "looking up". While the economic recession has hit Sauk Village hard in 2009, the village has managed to work through the challenges. Between 1990 and 2010 the demographic makeup of Sauk Village has changed from a predominantly white blue collar middle class community to a more racially integrated community. Numerous industrial construction projects which had hoped to bring jobs to the area had been halted in 2008 as one of the worst economic recessions began. Mayor Derrick Burgess, before his election as Mayor in April, 2017 proposed the Burgess Plan for Progress which was what he called the "roadmap toward a Pathway to Progress". The Village Board of Trustees formally adopted his plan as the Strategic Plan for Progress. This was the Village's first Strategic Plan ever adopted by a Village Board. In 2017, the Village applied for and received a grant from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning to update their old Comprehensive Plan. Teska and Associates was chosen as the consultant for the plan which was completed in 2019. Election facts 2009 Election On April 7, 2009, Sauk Village voters went to the polls to elect its first African-American mayor in its 52-year history. Voters elected Lewis Towers over current Village Board Trustee Derrick Burgess, who was also an African-American, by 62% to 37% respectively. Towers went on to become Sauk Village's 6th mayor, and the first to have won running on a party affiliation. Up to this election all mayors had run as independent candidates. 2011 Election On April 5, 2011, the voters of Sauk Village went to the polls and came out in numbers greater than in 2009, to return Village Trustee David Hanks to a historic fourth term as Village Trustee. Only two other Village Trustees have been re-elected to a consecutive four terms, those being Matthew Murphy and Raymond Gavin. Hanks and his running mates of the People's Voice Party, incumbent Trustee Derrick Burgess, and the first Hispanic/Latino Village Trustee ever elected, Robert Chavez, won with about a 3 to 1 margin over the candidates supported by Mayor Towers. The