FORT CARSON, Colo.-More than 350 Fort Carson housing residents cast their votes Aug. 25-26 to elect 16 new mayors.

Voting stations were set up at the post exchange, the commissary, Army Community Service and the Joel Hefley Community Center.

Although the voter turnout fell a bit from last year, there were tight races in a few of the post's 16 housing villages, said Joey Bautista, Installation Volunteer Coordinator and head of the Fort Carson Mayoral Program, ACS.

The 31 candidates used a variety of methods to campaign, Bautista said.

"They went door-to-door with fliers," he said. "They put signs in their yards. They used (social media sites)."

Although some villages had only one candidate, others had several candidates, like Kiowa Village, which had five.

In Cheyenne Village, new mayor Willis Michael threw his hat in the race after speaking with many of the area's residents.

"I ran because I had spoken to people in the village, and a lot of them had concerns that they felt were not being heard," he said. "To help make this a better community, I decided to volunteer."

Tracy Collier, the new mayor of Sioux Village, said she had spent virtually her whole life as part of a military Family and wants to bring that sense of teamwork to her village.

"My life has been all about being part of a military Family, and I know how important it is to have teamwork and have everybody helping each other out," she said. "I would like to clean up Sioux Village, because it looks like it has been left behind. It has become really run down, and I want people to be proud of where they live."

Bautista e-mailed all candidates with the results after the ballots were certified Aug. 26.

"I told everybody that, even if they were not selected as the mayor, they still can be volunteers on the mayor's staff," he said. "We have the mayor, a deputy mayor and we also have a staff within their village, like a councilman or councilwoman, who can provide another set of eyes for the mayors within their villages. I say to them, 'You came here for one reason, to run for mayor. That means you want to make a difference. I'm not going to let you go; you're not off the hook.' They still can make a difference by joining the mayoral program."

The new mayors will be inaugurated in a ceremony Sept. 23 at Elkhorn Conference Center.

For more information about the mayoral program, call ACS at 526-4590.

New mayors are:

Comanche: Cassi Deister

Dakota: Stacy Miller

Iroquois: Lavinia McWilliams

Kiowa: Kala Bevis

Navajo: Brigitte Cornell

Apache: Samantha Margelewski

Arapahoe: Kathy Payne

Blackfoot Hill: Merline Ulloth

Cherokee East: Sherri Kunkel

Cherokee West: Stacy Lorenz

Cheyenne: Willis Michael

Choctaw: Holly Klukarich

Pawnee: Linda Webb

Shoshoni: Jennifer Wells

Sioux: Tracy Collier

Ute Hill: Erin Schoenfeldt