Dr. Cheryl Farmer has served as the Ypsilanti Mayor for 3 terms, 11 years, beginning in April of 1995, and has a medical practice in Ann Arbor. Her Mayoral campaigns were as an independant - unusual in Ypsilanti - in the name of avoiding partisan divisiveness. In 2006, she decided not to run for a fourth term, citing a desire to spend more time on her private life, and a belief that she had accomplished enough of the things she set out to do that she could step aside.

Farmer was succeeded by Paul Schreiber.