NATCHEZ — After nearly three hours of discussion, the Natchez Convention and Promotion Commission deferred a vote on accepting another marketing and advertising contract with The Goss Agency for this fiscal year until the commission’s next meeting.

The commission met Wednesday evening specifically to discuss their relationship with The Goss Agency.

The commission entered into a $90,000 contract in fall 2015 to pay The Goss Agency $90,000 in exchange for research and development of a brand to use in marketing the city’s tricentennial.

Commissioners spent approximately an hour in executive session discussions the contract.

The open meetings law does not specifically list contracts as an exemption to allow the board to go into executive session.

City Attorney Hyde Carby said the executive session would have to have been limited to a personnel issue that came up as a result of the contract in order to have been legal.

Commissioner David Gammill made the motion to close the meeting, for “discussions as relates to clarification of that contract.”

“Generally, you talk about contract issues in an open session,” Carby said. “Conversation (in the closed session) would have to be within the topics of the statute.”

When the meeting was re-opened, Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Kevin Kirby presented the agency’s $171,879 media proposal for the rest of the fiscal year.

After the agency presents the branding results of the $90,000 contract on Feb. 11, the agency proposes to revitalize and modernize Natchez’s tourism advertising.

Kirby said the current advertising budget could be spent under Goss’ guidance to produce greater returns.

No expenses would be added to the existing budget, Kirby said. Rather, the advertising budget the CVB is currently spending would simply be reorganized according to the agency’s professional recommendations.

Kirby said he created the $171,879 budget based on last year’s revenue, and he expects revenue in 2016 to far exceed that. If the commission wishes later to invest more in advertising, it can.

“Or if we’re not achieving the revenue we anticipated, we will adjust accordingly,” Kirby said. “We can cut back, pull back from aspects of the relationship.”

Commisioner Virginia Benoist said she objected to how the budget had been presented.

“We did not vote on this particular product or service as being an earmarked item on our budget,” Benoist said. “If this was an earmarked line item, we’d be in a different situation, but it wasn’t.”

Commissioner Dennis Switzer said he would require some time to look over the proposal.

Kirby said that should not be necessary because no expenses have been added.

“None of this is new,” Kirby said. “The $171,879 is what we’ve been dealing with since the budget was laid forth in 2015.”

The board asked to delay the vote to give them time to further review the proposal.

Kirby said he was perplexed by the request for more time.

“The numbers have been in every book. They’re there,” Kirby said. “It’s no different now than it was in September when it was presented. It is now just a professional overlay as opposed to an under-professional overlay.”

Kirby said the longer the commission waits, the more tricentennial opportunities will be lost.

“We’re forgetting our website is crap. We need to fix now, today, yesterday,” Kirby said. “People are underwhelmed.”

Benoist said she doesn’t doubt the quality of the work proposed, but had budgetary concerns.

“We’re happy to look at it and see, but we had no idea it was being done,” Benoist said. “Dennis Switzer (should have) an opportunity to look at the books and see how this works for us, if it’s this year or the next budget.”

Kirby said next year would be too late.

“The window of opportunity is open. When it closes, you’re lost,” Kirby said. “It is a narrow window, and I want to suck everything we can through it we possibly can.”