The old southern city today has people using such words as clean, tidy and quaint to describe it.

Landscape architect Jeff Richardson started working for Vicksburg in 1994. His first job was maintaining the refurbished Municipal Rose Garden. In the subsequent 13 years, his staff has gone from three to eight and his budget has tripled. He now works for the planning department. People are noticing the city sidewalk improvements he and his crew are responsible for: concrete flower and tree beds along Washington Street, street lighting, city entrance corridors and ?EUR??,,????'??Welcome to Vicksburg?EUR??,,????'?? signs.

Vicksburg residents have seen the most change over the last seven years since Mayor Laurence Leyens took office and pushed to improve the city?EUR??,,????'???s esthetics and earmarked the monies necessary to make improvements. The city has also razed some of the old downtown buildings.