With expiration of an appeal period Monday, Vicksburg Mayor Laurence Leyens said the city will move ahead to issue bonds at its next meeting.

At the deadline, a petition seeking a citywide vote on the question had 922 verified signatures, 578 short of the required minimum of 1,500.

When submitted Nov. 3, the petition, the first of its type in at least 30 years, had 2,120 names. Over the next month, 1,202 were disqualified by City Clerk Walter Osborne who announced the result of the canvass Dec. 1.

That triggered a 10-day appeal period during which only four people whose names had been disqualified submitted affidavits claiming error, Deputy City Clerk Edna Hadad said.

Leyens, who was miffed by the effort, said the organizers were against progress.

&#8220If all those people were legitimate they could’ve fixed their names really quickly,” Leyens said of the 1,198 disqualifications that were not appealed.

There were six bases for disqualification, with more than 1,000 in total invalidated because the names did not appear in city voter rolls or because addresses did not match names on city voter rolls. The rest could not be read and were judged to be multiple names written by the same person. One person was dead.

Leyens said he expects action to formally disqualify the petition as well as to go ahead with borrowing $16.9 million Monday and vote on an urban-renewal project that has been linked to it by opponents.

&#8220Then we can issue bonds whenever we want to,” Leyens said. Rates in the municipal bond market would be a factor, Leyens said.

The petition for a bond referendum was Vicksburg’s first since at least the 1970s.

The city’s unanimous resolution says $7.8 million of the bond money will be spent on street-paving and related improvements citywide, $5 million on replacing the Washington Street rail overpass at Clark Street and $4.1 million on the first phase of a planned recreation complex off Fisher Ferry Road. Repayment of the bridge money is to be at $1 million per year from federal sources and the balance is to come from the city’s general revenue, also over 10 years.

With the bond issue, the city’s first since 2001, fixed debt will be about 8 percent of the city’s annual $30 million revenue.

The urban renewal area is to be south of downtown from the east side of Washington Street west to the riverbank.

Petition organizer John Shorter has said it will result in displacement of lower income residents from the area and that the bonds were part of the picture. Leyens has said that’s not true.

The plan calls for redevelopment or development of the area to be accomplished almost entirely by the private sector, with the city spending about $570,000 of the proposed bond proceeds on repaving and additions to or upgrades to landscaping, sidewalks, lighting and curbs and drainage features.

Leyens said the city will use stricter code enforcement in the area to entice owners to improve their property. The area, much of which features views of the Mississippi River, is now a mix of antebellum mansions, light-to-heavy industry and middle class to substandard housing.