Beginning soon Vicksburg residents will be able to attend meetings for the first time in nearly a decade to comment on the city’s comprehensive plan.

Public meetings will be held in each of about 14 neighborhoods, probably beginning next month, Planning Director Wayne Mansfield said.

City officials have proposed the zoning map be re-examined, and new developments including casino and golf-course projects have been proposed. Before making such changes, however, it makes sense to update the city’s 1996 comprehensive plan, Mansfield said.

The plan is an umbrella document that is used to develop more-specific regulations and plans for the city including those for zoning, subdivisions and capital improvements. Such plans are designed to look ahead 15 to 20 years and to address topics including land-use, transportation and community facilities.

“We’re going to present information we’ve gathered and allow residents to present their ideas,” Mansfield said of the presentations he and Community Planner Kelly McCaffrey will make, and stressing that such meetings “can only be as effective as the participation of the people.”

The city has also contracted with staff of the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District to gather information.

When the update is complete the plan is to be posted on the city’s Web site and city officials hope to use it to help attract new business to the city.

City officials have said they plan to annex no new land until at least basic city services have been extended to all current city households, including those in the area that was annexed in about 1990. Comprehensive plans can nevertheless encompass areas up to two or so miles outside a city’s boundaries. Mansfield said Vicksburg’s updated plan will give an idea of how areas may be treated if chosen to be annexed.

Mansfield told members of the Vicksburg Kiwanis Club on Tuesday that the city is running short of developable land.

“From a planning standpoint, there is very little vacant land in the city to develop,” he said. The city has about 10,000 acres of undeveloped land and about 5,100 acres of that is in a flood plain. Development on much of the rest of the land is uneconomical because of its hilliness, Mansfield said.

Mansfield, who is from Vicksburg, is in his second stint with the city and has worked in his current position for about two-and-a-half years. From 1993 until he rejoined the city, he worked in Tupelo and then in Southaven.

Mansfield said he has concentrated much of his efforts on economic development, including administering grant money received by the city for that purpose.

“One hundred percent of what I do is economic development,” Mansfield said, adding that that term encompasses planning in a variety of areas, including transportation, utilities, housing and historic preservation.

Mansfield said his office has helped administer, for example, a grant allowing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete an upgrade of the city’s water wells.

“The water will be softer, so it will not have as much lime in it,” he said, adding that the upgrade will extend the life and reduce the costs to operate the wells.

Other major projects in which the city is participating or plans to participate with the help of grants are upgrades to Vicksburg Municipal Airport and the widening and deepening of the Yazoo Diversion Canal to the Vicksburg harbor, Mansfield said.

Mansfield also presented Kiwanians with selected local economic data recently released by the U.S. Census bureau, comparing Vicksburg with other cities in Mississippi. If announced expansion plans for casino-hotel projects are completed Vicksburg would be in line to rank fourth in the state in number of hotel rooms, behind only Jackson, Harrison County and Tunica, he said.

“During the next five years I think we’re going to see a huge transition in Vicksburg and Warren County,” Mansfield said.