Fox looks back on four years as mayor

Bob Fox began his service in Cape Girardeau's municipal government as a Ward 5 representative on the City Council, and the next chapter was as the city's mayor.

That chapter is coming to a close.

Fox was elected to Cape's council in 2016 and served for two years. He said he was approached and asked if he would be interested in running because of his past experience with the chamber of commerce and Cape Girardeau Central's Board of Education. Fox said he believes his first year on the council was an important educational time for him.

"It's kind of a learning experience anytime you get on a council or a board," Fox said. "Having dealt with the real-complicated funding formula with the school budget, the city budget was kind of a breeze. It is complicated because it's not just one budget. You've got multiple budgets with all of your separate enterprise funds. But it all kind of melds together and once you read through some auditing reports, you can see how it all intertwines together."

Fox said he approached the mayor's role not as someone who tried to control how members of the council thought or voted, but instead as someone who encouraged them do their own research on topics and vote for what they believed to be right.

One of the things he said he believed to be right was more of the populace participating in the city progress. Fox said he noticed during his time on the council that in most city elections members were running unopposed and decided he would like to help start something to stir up Cape resident's interest in city government and its functions. He looked into what other neighboring cities were doing to get their citizens involved and to educate them and helped start Cape's Citizen Academy, which educates individuals about city government, budgets and processes.

Fox said, over the past four years, he has witnessed several successes for the city, including passing an infrastructure tax initiative every year for the past four years, the construction of Cape's SportsPlex and new city hall building and a new airport terminal coming in the near future.

"That's all a combination of the people buying into an organized plan and the future of our city," he said. "You look back and think 'Well, you had a pandemic, and you had all this national turmoil going on,' but we survived and we not only survived, we thrived. Our hotel and restaurant taxes we keep breaking records every month even through COVID."

Of the many successes Fox recounted on, the use tax gaining voters' approval is something he considers one of the most important because the tax will generate a moderate growth in sales tax revenue for the city. He said he believes one of the things the council could have done better during his time as mayor is keeping up with the maintenance of Cape Girardeau's streets. The thing the outgoing mayor said he will miss the most is meeting and interacting with new people all the time.

In the April 5 mayoral election, Fox lost a tight race to Stacy Kinder, who represented Ward 6 on the council and who will begin her tenure as mayor Monday.

Fox said his time as mayor kept him busy and he tried to never miss a meeting, whether it be a council meeting or ribbon cutting. In his free time Fox said he is going to travel more on longer trips with his wife, Connie.

"Those longer trips stopped when I became mayor, because you can't just miss a meeting," Fox said. "Now we can begin taking some of those long trips again, and just do those things we can do while we are healthy. We won't go too far away though because the grandkids are too active in stuff, and Connie won't miss any of that."