Morris honors 20-year alderman Duane Wolfe for his last meeting

Duane Wolfe sat through his last Morris City Council meeting as an alderman Monday morning, where he gave up his seat to new Fourth Ward Alderman Jim Black.

Jim Black took his oath of office Monday morning alongside reelected Aldermen Alex Clubb, Jake Duvick and Dean Tambling.

Wolfe said current Mayor, then Alderman Chris Brown came to him 20 years ago to ask him to run for a seat, and Wolfe rejected him twice. On the third attempt, Brown pushed the paper over to his side of the table and Wolfe signed on the bottom.

“If somebody had been sitting at that table and said to us both, ’you’re going to be a 20-year alderman and Chris is the mayor,’ I wouldn’t believe them,” Wolfe said. “I have to thank the people of Morris. They gave me the chance to sit in this chair. I hope I was a good alderman. I strive every day to do that.”

Wolfe’s last request as an alderman was that he could make the motion to adjourn, with the seconding of that motion coming from his best friend Alderman Julian Houston.

The first of Monday’s two meetings ended on that note, followed by Wolfe’s contemporaries praising his leadership over the years.

“I’ve been here for 16 years and he’s been here for 20,” Houston said. “We’re the oldest things in here. He’s been a friend, a great alderman and a great teacher.”

Sarah Mettille, Wolfe’s fellow fourth Ward Alderman, said there wasn’t a better person to learn the ropes of being an alderman from.

Mettille took her seat on the Morris City Council in November 2020.

“He kept me rocking and rolling with this,” Mettille said. “There was nobody better to learn from, and I always appreciate having you around to weigh in.”

Wolfe will be replaced by Jim Black, who won his seat in the April consolidated election.

Black said he’s excited to serve the citizens of Morris, and he wants to be the voice of everyone living in the fourth ward. Black said he ran because he wanted to bring a conservative voice to the Morris City Council, and one of his main goals is to ensure city council meetings are accessible to everyone.

“My goal is to have them streamed, so everyone can have them available on their cell phones, laptops and home computers,” Black said. “That way, they can see them anywhere, anytime.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Sarah Metille as “Matille.”