Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said Monday he is reorganizing the city’s public works department to improve its operation.

Flaggs announced his plans at the Board of Aldermen meeting. His plans include a reorganization of the department’s chain of command with a project engineer, interim public works director, assistant public works director and a liaison between the interim director and the project engineer.

The people named for those positions will be ratified at the board’s July 10 meeting, he said. He said the city has tentatively hired someone to fill the project director’s position.

Flaggs said the organization chart will make it easier to contact supervisors at public works. “I don’t need to talk to everybody and their mama when I need to talk to somebody,” he said.

“That’s not the way a functional organization ought to work,” he said. “You ought to always know who’s in charge and if that person’s not there, who’s next in charge. I just believe that.”

Flaggs said after the meeting the changes will simplify the department’s chain of command.

“The way it was going (determining responsibility) was complicated. You didn’t know who was what, who has taken whose place. Now you know there’s a direct order of supervision,” Flags said.

The reorganization comes about two months after the death of Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman, who worked nearly 35 years for the city, first as city engineer and public works director. Flaggs said Van Norman served as the city’s project engineer and public works director. He said the jobs were split under the reorganization.

The board in May sought requests for proposals for engineering services for the city. Flaggs at that time discussed hiring a project engineer for the city. He said Monday the board will hire two of the forms that submitted proposals for engineering services to serve on a standby basis if the project engineer is unable to perform the work.