The year 2016 may go down in the Miss-Lou’s history books as being the year the incumbents were ousted, particularly local mayors.

Challengers unseated incumbent mayors in both Vidalia and Ferriday earlier this year. In Natchez the incumbent chose not to run for office, leaving the door open for a newcomer to city hall.

The elections of Darryl Grennell, Buz Craft and Sherrie Jacobs — in Natchez, Vidalia and Ferriday respectively — mean the area’s municipal leadership is a clean slate starting in three weeks.

Even before taking office, we like what we’re hearing from the mayors-elect. Without question all suggest they are hopeful their administrations can make the community better for residents.

As they work to accomplish those goals, we hope they will remember that the borders that divide us only exist on maps. For the community to truly excel, we need all of us, all three cities along with the county and the parish to be pulling in the same direction.

When we start doing that consistently, we’ll see our community being to flourish.

Citizens wholeheartedly voted for change this year, and we encourage the new mayors to take that mandate to heart and work hard to make government function differently going forward, putting the people’s needs ahead of all others and keeping government’s business as open as possible.