Mayor George Flaggs Jr. has released his state of the city report, an eight-page listing of his accomplishments from July 2013 when he took office through the start of 2016, but he puts two major issues at the top for his administration in terms of achievement and challenge.

The achievement: Improving the city’s financial condition by restructuring debt and developing a $3 million reserve fund. The challenge: Improving accountability in city government under Vicksburg’s antiquated form of government.

Flaggs has issued a state of the city report each year since taking office, using a different vehicle to present the information on the city’s progress.

“I just do it different,” he said. “(Former Mayor Paul) Winfield presented his state of the city report at the (Vicksburg) Convention Center. The first year, I had an open meeting over TV23. Last year, I just started talking about it. This year, I let it go to the database.”

The mayor said his biggest achievement was getting the city’s financial house in order.

“My focus was getting the fiscal part of the city as a matter of priority first, because if we hadn’t been able to do that, we wouldn’t have been able to fund city services,” he said. “We were $400,000 and something in debt, so of we hadn’t taken the action we’ve taken, we wouldn’t have been able to function as a city.

“We would have been bankrupt. The city was headed the way of Detroit in bankruptcy, because you had a debt, you didn’t have a sale tax base coming in, gaming receipts had been declining for seven years and nobody made adjustments for that.”

When the Board of Mayor and Aldermen took office July 1, 2013, the city faced a $470,000 deficit and had lost its bond rating in 2012 because it was behind in city audits and unable to provide current financial information to Moody’s Investment Services, a New York-based provider of credit ratings and risk analysis, which is one of the services that sets bond ratings for government and industry.

“You didn’t have a bond rating, so you couldn’t borrow money, and all I did was restructure the debt and put discipline into the budgetary process. All I did was take $3 million out of their budget (for a reserve fund) and say, ‘you can’t spend it.’ that’s all I did.”

The board in 2014 approved consolidating two existing loans totaling $7.78 million, city audits were made current, and Moody’s in 2015 gave the city an A2 bond rating, clearing the way for the board to approve an $18 million capital improvements bond issue that has been split into two parts.

The city has borrowed the first $9.2 million for street paving, improvements to city buildings and recreation facility upgrades and new pavilions for City Park on Army Navy Drive and the farmers’ market site at Washington and Jackson streets.

Flaggs said bringing better oversight and accountability to city government “is the biggest challenge for the future of Vicksburg.”

Vicksburg is governed by a commission form of government established in 1912 with two aldermen elected by wards and a mayor elected at large. All three members have the same authority; there is no chief executive and two votes are required before the city can take any action.

“The organization we’ve got is not structured where you have people in position because of functional responsibility,” he said.

He pointed to the recent retirement of city IT director Billy Gordon, and the resignation in August of former water treatment plant director Pat McGuffie as examples.

McGuffie’s departure left the city without a state-certified water plant operator, forcing the city to contract with a private company to provide a certified operator. The city Jan. 25 authorized City Clerk Walter Osborne to advertise for bids to privatize water plant operations.

“Billy had 32 years experience and they didn’t prepare for it,” Flaggs said. “And its the same thing with (Public Works Director) Garnet (Van Norman) with 27 years experience. The fire chief’s (Charles Atkins) got 37 years experience, the police chief (Walter Armstrong) is retired from the state and now is vested in the state retirement, and he can go. Out of 400 and something employees, 22 percent have more than 20 years experience.

“What you’ve got is the employees running the city and not the board,” he said. “You change the board out every four years. The board ought to run the city that’s the issue I’m facing. The form of government lends itself that the employees run the city and not the board.”

Flaggs in the past has tried to alter the form of government to improve accountability, including wanting to rewrite the city charter. All attempts to change the government or the charger have been met with opposition by the board, which has allowed him only to restructure the city’s organizational chart from 23 department heads to nine division heads.

“I’m at the wall right now,” Flaggs said. “This city can go forward in two years at the election box or it can stay with the status quo. The future of the city of Vicksburg is going to be at the election box in 2017. They can move that wall or they can keep that wall up. It’s up to them.”

Besides improvements to the city’s financial picture, other highlights in the report include:

• Reducing the amount of unaccounted gas from 24 percent to 14 percent. Unaccounted gas is natural gas in the city’s system that is being used but no registered on meters. Most of the unaccounted gas was recovered by an audit and the installation of new gas meters.

• The Vicksburg Convention Center, which had operated at a loss since it opened in 1997, showed a profit at the close of the 2014 fiscal year.

• The vacancy rate of buildings in the city’s downtown area has been reduced from 90 percent to 10 percent.

• City officials are increasing the automation of city services to help residents pay for online for city services.