Former Mayor Bob Morris died Monday, according to a notice from Quirk and Son Funeral Home.
No services have been scheduled at this time. Burial will take place at Morris Cemetery in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, at a later date.
Morris took office as mayor on Jan. 1, 2007, and served through 2010. He was defeated in the November 2010 election by Claud “Rusty” Moody.
Mayor Scott Fontenot said, “I think he did a pretty good job running the city.”
Fontenot said he knew Morris outside the mayor’s office.
“I know his family and I know he battled cancer for awhile. He was a fighter,” he said.
Fontenot said he believed Morris tried to do what he thought was right and was passionate about his role as mayor.
Former alderman at-large Jack Burson said, “Bob is a definitely a strong-minded individual and we had some pretty good debates on the council during his reign in office, but you are going to have that. I personally give him a lot of credit for rectifying some problems we had with the sewer system at that time that were really serious.”
Morris got personally involved in reconstructing some segments of the system.
Morris had machinery installed to keep the sewer system operating when a lot of the towns were shut down,” Burson said.
“I have always thought in the 24 years I served as alderman at-large that every mayor I served with did some good things,” he said.
Burson said people are not always going to agree. “There is no question Bob was aggressive in what he thought needed to be done. When he got elected to office promising people to do certain things it is a natural assumption that they thought you were serious and you should be aggressive in trying to get it done,” he said.
Burson said Morris had a focus on city finances and “one of the really good things he did was pay off the bond issue early that we had taken out to build our great new youth ball parks.”
The early payout probably saved the city more than $200,000, he said.
Morris was an independent businessman and pilot and was active trying to help the city airport.
The Eunice News reported about Morris’ first months in office:
“By the fall of 2007, there was a $500,000 swing in the city’s finances from a year earlier, and along the way two fire trucks had been purchased, tennis courts were ready for re-surfacing and a new ordinance aimed at cleaning up blight had been passed.”
The story also noted, “...two years into his term, the city audit showed the Morris administration with a $3 million cash reserve.”
Also, “In the final year of the term, Morris completed his city-wide ditch cleaning program, finished upgrade of all the city’s wastewater lift stations, got the biennial road overlay project ready for bid and continued the campaign against blight.”
An obituary appears on Page 5.