After a year and a half in office, Misty Buscher is coming into her own. Illinois Times readers voted the new mayor best city official.
During her short time in office, Buscher has already faced a trinity of tragedies: the derecho that swept through Springfield in June 2023, the fire that consumed several downtown businesses in June 2024 and the July slaying of Sonya Massey by a Sangamon County sheriff's deputy.
The derecho created plenty of challenges for her then-fledgling administration.
Last year, the mayor said she didn't plan to take on the role of emergency operations coordinator when she and other officials camped out in the basement of city hall as the storms hit midday on June 29.
She learned that the coordinator job had gone unfilled since the administration of the late Mayor Tim Davlin. Buscher, who was sworn in the month before, said someone needed to coordinate the services of police, firefighters, Public Works and CWLP crews and other community resources in weather-related emergencies. That responsibility has now been assigned to the assistant chief from the Springfield Police Department.
Just over a year later, the July 19 fire at 413-415 E. Adams St. was the largest downtown conflagration in more than 40 years.
"The day of the downtown fire, I was out there until about 12:30 that night and first thing the next morning," Buscher said. "Hanson Engineering and O'Shea Builders asked: 'What can we do to help?' Community partnerships are important, and they're helping us move the ball forward. ... We want to continue those partnerships because the city itself cannot, as an employer, do it all alone."
Most recently, the city has faced backlash from citizens upset by several high-profile incidents involving law enforcement, both from the Sangamon County Sheriff's Office and Springfield Police Department.
"It wasn't really a 'shooting.' I call it an 'execution,' because that's essentially what (Sean Grayson) did to her," Buscher said of the death of Sonya Massey at the hands of a sheriff's deputy earlier this year.
"There was a community listening session held by Union Baptist Church, and it got to be pretty heated in there, but the city of Springfield has continued their conversations since then. We've had multiple meetings and we've had community partners in those meetings, because we're committed to making sure the community feels comfortable with our hiring practices and our training practices and our policing," she said.
