Pardon the presumption, but in some comments it appears Mayor Paul Winfield senses a need to distance himself from the administration of former Mayor Laurence Leyens. There is no such need. Winfield won the primary and general elections by convincing margins, larger, in fact, than Barack Obama recorded to become president of the United States.

Forward is the way for Vicksburg to go.

There’s no need — especially given the city’s claims of budgetary poverty — to go back and dig up flower beds the previous administration ordained and for which taxpayers have already paid.

There’s every good reason — as has been argued on this page — to move forward with the transportation museum and facilitating the use of the upper levels of the Levee Street Depot by staff of Vicksburg Main Street, the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce.

On other fronts, Mayor Winfield is continuing ongoing city initiatives — pouring money into improvements at Vicksburg Municipal Airport, pressing to obtain funds to expedite and complete the Washington Street rail overpass at Clark Street, increasing the staffing of the Vicksburg Police Department, developing a worldclass recreation complex, supporting NRoute and more.

But in remarking on whether he’d work with developers as a partner in tapping the Mississippi River for its power-generating potential, Winfield observed that he was open to the idea, even though the mayor he defeated predicted that wouldn’t be the case.

Mayor Winfield doesn’t need to give a minute’s thought to what the person who used to have his job would or wouldn’t think. As Winfield himself has said, his duty is to the citizens, and they have expressed their confidence in him.

He doesn’t have to go back and undo anything the previous mayor did to prove anything to anybody. If a program or initiative is good for the city, keep it. If it’s not, shed it. It’s attributed to Harry Truman, a pretty significant Democrat, and it’s true: It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit.