ssanoski@vicksburgpost.com

Whether they come during Paul Winfield’s first city board meeting as mayor or not, changes in lead personnel at City Hall undoubtedly are on the way.

Winfield made that much clear before his election on June 2 and in the days leading up to his swearing-in, set for Friday.

Since his win, however, he has refrained from naming names or departments.

“I still need to talk to some department heads and the aldermen to let them know where I stand and get their input,” Winfield said Friday from Orange Beach, Ala., where he was on a weekend vacation with his wife and 3-year-old son.

While he remains tight-lipped on the specifics, Winfield’s campaign platform offers some insight into which of the city’s departments likely will see personnel and operational changes. His repeated pledges to replace Police Chief Tommy Moffett drew perhaps the most attention during the campaign, but he also soapboxed for changes in code enforcement procedures and at city court.

Meanwhile, Winfield said he plans to expand the recreation department, and he’ll also have to decide how much he wants to invest in a new department created just last fall for the Vicksburg Municipal Airport.

“The city is a service-orientated organization, and I really want to concentrate on the departments in which employees interact with people a lot,” he said. “We’ve got to get a facelift.”

The city charter calls for a slate of “corporate officers” to be appointed by the board of mayor and aldermen at the outset of each new term. Those positions are currently held by City Clerk Walter Osborne, City Attorney Nancy Thomas, Fire Chief Keith Rogers and Moffett. The appointments are typically made at the new board’s first meeting, but it’s not required. North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield, who is entering his second term, called for a 30-day moratorium on all appointments last week, but Winfield maintained he’ll be ready to make most of his decisions at the first meeting, on July 7.

Winfield, 35, beat two-time independent incumbent Mayor Laurence Leyens by garnering 61.6 percent of the vote. He won the primary contest against three challengers with a near identical share of the votes. All four candidates in the Democratic primary called for various degrees of change in the building and inspection department, claiming the code enforcement procedure lacks impartiality and targets certain neighborhoods over others.

“Right now, there’s not a lot of public confidence in that department,” Winfield said. “We have neighborhoods in the city that appear to have little or no code enforcement and then we have some people who have been repeatedly raked over.”

Director of Buildings and Inspections Victor Gray-Lewis, who did not return calls for comment, has been in charge of inspections and code enforcement since December 2005 and is paid approximately $68,780 annually. Winfield has not yet met with Gray-Lewis or any of the department’s employees and said he is not yet sure how the department will be changed until he further assesses its current operations.

“I do want to ensure everybody that it will be a fair, streamlined department,” he said. “Citizens can, and should, expect fairness.”

Code enforcement issues are handled through the city court, which Winfield has also said needs a new focus. The consensus of the citizens, Winfield campaigned, is the court has become little more than a money-making venture for the city without real concern for justice. An attorney by trade, Winfield pledged to address problems in the city court when he takes office. The Leyens administration appointed former city prosecutor Walterine Langford to head the court in April 2008 — the first time anyone has been given responsibility to head the entire city court’s services — and she is paid approximately $104,000 annually.

While the Vicksburg Municipal Airport on U.S. 61 South did not become a major issue in the campaign, its future is in undoubtedly in question with Leyens leaving office. Beginning in the fall of 2008, Leyens began pushing for reinvestment in the roughly 60-year-old facility. He created a new city department, hired General Manager Curt Follmer, contracted a Birmingham-based consultant, commissioned an ambitious 20-year plan and began an in-house renovation of the airport’s dilapidated terminal.

Approximately $300,000 is set aside in the current fiscal year budget for improvements at the Vicksburg airport, and various state and federal grants requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in matching funds have been accepted. Follmer’s salary has added $60,000 to the administrative budget. Winfield said he won’t halt any ongoing renovations on the airport’s terminal, but said he will be reviewing many contracts inked since last fall.

“Laurence had his priorities, and I don’t necessarily align with those priorities,” he said. “I’m always leery when big changes are made at the very end (of a term). We need to look at the short term and long term goals for the (Vicksburg) airport, and decide what is an appropriate investment. The mayor, in my opinion, shouldn’t be the only person doing that.”

A point of contention in the continued development of the Vicksburg airport is the renegotiation of a contract the city has with three municipal funding partners — Tallulah, Madison Parish and Warren County — of the Vicksburg Tallulah Regional Airport in Mound. In December — as the original 25-year funding and operating deal was set to expire — Leyens met with representatives of the other partners in Mound and got verbal agreements from all to a new, five-year deal that included language to set fuel prices at the airport in accordance with other regional facilities.

While the Vicksburg, Tallulah and Madison Parish boards all have since officially approved the new contract, the Warren County Board of Supervisors held off and earlier this month said they’d like to revisit the deal and reconsider renewing it at 25 years. Winfield — who was the county board attorney from 2005 to late 2008 — looked over the contract as one of his last duties for the board, and said it needs to be reviewed yet again.

“I didn’t think it was wise to renegotiate that contract in the first place,” he said. “My hat goes off to the (board of) supervisors, they are well aware of the obligation we have to the Tallulah airport. Prior to leaving (as attorney of) the board, I suggested the city might face some liabilities if it reneges on that project. I think the Tallulah airport and the Vicksburg airport could both be good economic development tools to help sell our community to outside companies.”

In 1983, the four local governments accepted $6 million in federal funds for a new, expandable airport to be built in Mound. The facility has cost each municipality about $30,000 a month since it opened — at which point the Vicksburg Municipal Airport was taken off the FAA’s list of airports eligible for federal grant money. In late 2007, the Vicksburg airport got back on that list.

As for the much discussed and rumored police chief position, Winfield has said he’s identified a short list of candidates to replace Moffett, but won’t release any names until he runs them by both aldermen. South Ward Alderman Sid Beauman, who enters his third term, has said he will support Moffett. That puts Mayfield in the position of casting the swing vote. Mayfield has been conducting an informal telephone poll on the matter, and said he will also look at statistics on the department since Moffett was recruited by Leyens shortly after he took office for his first term in 2001. Moffett has said he will continue to do his job as usual until he’s directed otherwise, and added he’d welcome the opportunity to share department statistics and his vision for the force with Winfield and the aldermen in private or during a board meeting.

With nearly 600 people on the workforce, the city is one of the largest employers in Vicksburg. All employees, except police and fire personnel up to the rank of chief, are at-will workers and can be replaced at any time by a majority vote of the three-member board. Police and fire personnel are hired through a civil service system to shield them from “politics,” and changes in their personnel are subject to independent review.

The Winfield administration will also have to do without Strategic Planner Paul Rogers, who resigned last week and ended his full time employment Friday. Rogers has been in charge of the city’s finances, budgets and audits since Leyens brought him out of his first retirement in 2001. Accounting Director Doug Whittington was hired a year ago and has been working alongside Rogers — who was the city’s highest paid employee with an annual salary of $153,800. Leyens said he planned for Whittington to take over Rogers’ position, but it is uncertain who will fill it permanently. Rogers said he is going to stay on as a part-time employee through the fall to help complete unfinished audits from 2007 and 2008, and to assist Whittington as he prepares his first budget for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

Winfield and the aldermen will be inaugurated for the new four-year term at 6 p.m. Friday at the Vicksburg Convention Center. Their first board meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. July 7 in room 109 of City Hall Annex, 1415 Walnut St.