Eight days after city officials said they were evacuating seven city departments in the City Hall Annex threatened by an unsafe roof, none has moved and employees and department heads are waiting to hear when they’re leaving.

The evacuation was ordered last week after a structural engineer’s survey of the roof revealed severe damage to the trusses and supporting beams in the rafters.

Departments ordered to move are public works and engineering, human resources, grants and planning, mapping, TV-23, police internal affairs and purchasing.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen discussed the annex’s condition at an Aug. 2 budget meeting. At that meeting, Mayor Paul Winfield said the estimate for a new roof is $500,000, which he said might be more than the building is worth. He suggested last week that the city consider razing the building except for the Vicksburg Senior Center, which is not affected by the roof problem, but the board has not discussed the property’s future.

“We’re going to wait and let a contractor take a look at it and see what the structure looks like,” South Ward Alderman Sid Beauman said. “An engineer looks at something and sees it one way, but we really won’t know what we’ve got until a contractor who might work on the building gets a look at it.”

North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield said he, city buildings and inspection director Victor Gray-Lewis, building maintenance superintendent Sammie Rainey and John Moss of Moss Construction of Vicksburg were to look at the building today to see if it can be repaired and get an estimate.

“I’d like to save the building if we can,” Mayfield said, “but we have a structure problem and it’s not safe to let employees stay there. We’ll know more after we tour the building.”

The annex is three buildings combined. It covers an area from the middle of Walnut Street between Crawford and South, to the corner of South and east for about half-block on South.

An Aug. 29 memo from City Clerk Walter Osborne told department heads the relocation would begin Wednesday, and employees would be notified when they would be moving. Employees were told not to move on their own.

“These relocations are being performed in a systematic manner and the personnel performing the move will know the move schedule,” according to the memo.

No departments were moved Wednesday and no one was notified of a pending move. Osborne said the grants and housing offices might be moved from the annex today if space is ready in the Carnegie Building, which for years housed the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library, where the offices originally were located.

“We haven’t gotten a date when we’ll move,” interim public works director Garnet Van Norman said. “We’re supposed to go to the street department on Army Navy Drive, from what I’ve been told. We’re just waiting and we’ll do as we’re told.”

Purchasing director Ann Grimshel said she was also uncertain when her department will move. She said she did not see Osborne’s memo.

Purchasing is expected to move to a section of the building facing South Street, but Grimshel said she has not been told that officially.

Jennifer Harper is another city department head who’s in the dark. Harper is director of the senior center, which is not moving, but is losing space to make room for TV-23, which will take over what is now the center’s classroom in the back of the center. She also had not seen the memo.

“I got a call last week asking me to move things out of the classroom for TV-23,” she said.

The classroom, she said, is the center for arts and crafts and computer classes, and twice-a-week bridge games. It also holds the center’s library. She said furniture will have to be moved from the center’s den to relocate the material and equipment for the classes.

“We may have to cancel some classes because we don’t have the room,” she said, adding the center’s programs serve an average of about 800 seniors a month.

The den measures 33-by-10½ feet, and the classroom measures 48-by-12 feet. She said Osborne offered another room in the building that is east of the center, “but it was smaller than the den.”

Osborne said the delay and uncertainty surrounding the moves is because city workers have to find and clear free space in other buildings and install telephones and wiring for computers. The situation has been compounded, he said, by air conditioning problems at the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Depot.

The broken air conditioning system for the building’s third floor has forced Vicksburg Main Street out of the depot and back to its previous offices in the Ellis Building on Walnut Street, where the city’s human resources department is supposed to go.

“As soon as these spaces are ready, we’ll be able to move the offices, using community service workers,” Osborne said.

City officials bought the Annex, known then as the Neill Building, in 1995 for $250,000. When the city bought the building, several businesses fronted South Street.

The Open Door Bible Church was located in the area the senior center occupies. Next door was Up To Date Shoe Repair and Atlas Travel, and South Street Hair Styles, the last business to leave the building before city offices occupied it. The Walnut Street side was vacant.

Other businesses in the buildings over the years included the Crystal Pharmacy and Kolb Buick in 1941, and Home Oil and Neill Butane and Appliance Co. in 1964. A butane tank from the company remains under the building. A White’s Home & Auto Store also was an occupant from 1963 to 1974.

The senior center opened in April 1999, and city offices began moving in in 2001, when the first board meeting was held in the building.

“We still have people coming in here asking, ‘I thought there was a shoe store here,’ or ‘Where’s the travel agency?’” Harper said.

The city’s plans to occupy a part of the building has the center’s participants upset, because the uncertainty has curtailed classes until the den is cleared.

“We have oil and acrylic painting class and water colors in that room, and we set out five tables for bridge,” said Judy Donley, who is a center regular. “Ameristar sponsors a Christmas buffet and we have 100 people attend,” she said. “The classroom handles the overflow crowd. We have to use that room.”

Jackie La Barre, another regular who teaches bridge, said the game helps older people keep mentally sharp and helps them keep track of friends.

“It’s fellowship,” she said. “You get to know people, and if they don’t come to the games, we check up on them.”

“When they made their decision, I don’t think the ones who came up with the idea (to move) gave much thought to the human element,” Donley said.

Harper said she’s not waiting to hear when TV-23’s coming.

“If I haven’t heard anything by Thursday, I’m getting help and moving furniture out of this den,” she said. “I need to get our programs going.”