Mayor Laurence Leyens predicted Tuesday petitioners will fall short in their bid to require a referendum on a proposed Vicksburg bond issue for street, bridge and recreation projects.

City Clerk Walter Osborne said today all that remained is to compile the list of verified names. He declined to indicate how many had been verified.

&#8220I’ll probably have it finalized this afternoon,” he said.

The petition was filed Nov. 4 by officers of the Vicksburg NAACP. They said it had about 2,040 names.

To force a vote, 1,500 signatures verified as registered city voters would be needed.

&#8220I’m 99 percent sure they don’t have enough,” Leyens said.

His position has been that the borrowing is business as usual for the municipality, building on previous large-scale improvement projects.

Staff in Osborne’s office have been canvassing the petition since it was turned in, checking each name they are able to read against city poll books.

Leyens said an election, if held, will &#8220waste” $60,000 or more and halt or delay needed improvements.

The petitioners have said they believe the city will raise taxes and they have objected to increasing utility rates to reduce the reliance of city-owned utilities on general fund supplements. They have also said City Hall plans to displace low-income people.

The city’s proposal is to borrow through the municipal-bond market up to $16.9 million, with $7.8 million to be used for street and related improvements citywide, $5 million to replace the Washington Street rail overpass near Clark Street and $4.1 million for the first phase of a recreation complex in south Vicksburg. The cost of the overpass-replacement is to be reimbursed by the federal government.

Also pending before the city’s board of mayor and aldermen is a proposal to create an urban-renewal area south of downtown from Washington Street west. Leyens has said about $570,000 of the $7.8 million street-improvement part of the bond issue would be spent in that area, including for repaving and additions or improvements to curb, gutter, sidewalk and landscaping features of Oak Street.

Organizers of the petition drive linked the two proposals, writing on the top and bottom of petition pages, &#8220Petitioners against a bond for Oak and Washington streets and a softball complex; request a referendum or popular vote.” A few residents of the proposed urban-renewal area have also said in interviews that they were misled about the nature of the bond issue and that they had requested that their names be removed from the petition.

The petition for a referendum was the first filed in Vicksburg since at least the 1970s.

If the bond issue occurs it would be the second in as many terms for the city board. Leyens began his second term as mayor in mid-2005.

The prior bond issue was made for $17.5 million in 2001.

City Strategic Planner Paul Rogers has released a proposed repayment schedule for the fiscal years 2007-2017 showing that city taxpayers’ contribution to the fund from which annual payments of both issues would be made is expected to remain level at $2.7 million a year.

No list of the street improvements that would be made using bond proceeds has been made public. The city’s director of public works, James &#8220Bubba” Rainer, said Tuesday that his department was working to complete that list. The list may not be complete until after it is determined whether and how much funding will be available, Leyens said.

Federal funding for the overpass replacement project is expected to be received by the city over four years, ending in 2011. Leyens said that if the petition succeeds in forcing a referendum and the bond proposal is voted down that project could have to be delayed for lack of sufficient up-front financing.