Billy Gordon, who served as the city of Vicksburg’s information technology director for 25 years and worked under six different mayors, is retiring.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen announced Gordon’s retirement Monday after a more than one-hour executive session in which the board met with Gordon about the city’s IT department. Gordon’s last day is Friday.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said after the closed meeting City Clerk Walter Osborne will serve as interim IT director and work with South Ward Alderman Willis Thompson to review and assess the department. Thompson was a city IT employee and director of the city’s local access channel TV23 before he was elected to the board.

“All the functions of IT are under the clerk’s office as of today, and Willis and Walter will be coming back with a recommendation,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said.

“We’re going to meet and evaluate the whole department and see what’s the next best step to take, whether that will be looking for a new director or promoting from within, or giving responsibilities to other employees,” Thompson said.

He said a recommendation whether to hire a new director or go some other route with the department will be made to the board, but would not give a date.

“We’ll take a couple of weeks,” Thompson said. “We’ve got to get with the employees and go over some of the projects that are ongoing now and some we have to undertake in the immediate future. It may not be wise to make a decision right now, but we’ll make it based on what we find.”

Gordon, 54, has worked for the city a total of 32 years. He said he told the board about his retirement plans in November, adding he filed his retirement papers with the city’s human resources department in December.

“He has been a long-term employee, and provided a good service to Vicksburg. I want to personally thank Billy Gordon for his service to the city, and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors,” North Ward Aldermen Michael Mayfield said.

“It’s unfortunate, but he put in his time and it was time for him to go,” Flaggs said after the meeting. “He was a very good employee. I wish I had 20 more like Billy.”

Gordon came to work for the city under the administration of Demery Grubbs in the 1980s.

When he came to work for the city, he said, “We had an old Burroughs main frame (computer) and we may have had six or seven, maybe eight users on the system, and it was mostly just water and gas, maybe a little bit of payroll.

“We got off the main frame in probably the early ‘90s and went more to the PC network we have today, or at least the beginning of what we have today,” he said.

Presently, he said, the city’s system has about 300 users.

The biggest change (in the city’s system), he said, “Obviously is technology. It’s changed so much over the years from when I started. What it went to, and where it’s headed.”

During Gordon’s tenure as director, the IT department designed and developed the city’s website, set up the city’s online water and gas billing system, “and a lot of things.

“IT really handles more than IT. We do the telephone system, the radio system, the AVL (automated video locators) that track city vehicles,” he said, adding he used to write the programs for the city’s payroll and purchasing systems until the Laurence Leyens administration, when the city began contracting with third party companies to upgrade and purchase special government-related software systems for accounting and payroll.

Gordon said he currently doesn’t have any immediate plans.

“I’m going to take a little time off and then go find me something to do,” he said.