During recent years, our Board of Aldermen and I have made infrastructure improvement a priority and moved forward to “catch up” in an aggressive manner.  We still have much work to do, but the progress has been rewarding to see.  When you say “infrastructure improvement”, most people think of street paving, road widening, and road extensions.   All of these are extremely important and part of our plan, but we also have added modernization and alternative transportation projects with sidewalks to make our city more attractive for economic growth.  These projects are costly and take time to develop.  Many are planned for years before they are visible to the public.

Intersection modernization consists of removing old span-wire traffic signals that have been in place for decades and replace them with new signals that have traffic-communication capability and pedestrian options placed on beautiful mast arms.  While this may seem boring or petty, it improves the look of our city in addition to traffic coordination and plays a part in economic attractiveness.  In recent years, many intersections have been re-worked with federal and state projects on Goodman Rd. and Stateline Rd.  The City has completed projects at Stateline/Airways and Highway 51/Mississippi Valley.  Our current project will modernize all remaining intersections on Highway 51 which are at Main, Brookhaven, Rasco, and Custer Drives.  This project, combined with the Main Street Pedestrian Project (sidewalks from Highway 51 to Saucier Park at City Hall) and the Main Street Decorative Light Pole Project will also help us continue with our goal of revitalization in our original business district.  All of these will be under construction in 2019.

The bid for this specific project was recently awarded to Lewis Electric from Flowood, Mississippi after their lowest and best bid of $609,037.50 and is projected to be completed by June, 2019.