From staff reports

Meeting without Mayor Laurence Leyens, Vicksburg’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday approved bookkeeping measures before adjourning until a Friday session.

The city panel amended Vicksburg’s budget to move $54,638.30 in tax revenue from Cypress Centre Marketplace, a hotel and retail development near the intersection of Halls Ferry and South Frontage Road, from the city’s general fund into an account devoted to paying off bond debt accrued to help finance that project.

The move was in accordance with a tax increment financing deal to which the city and county agreed earlier this year in order to encourage the project’s development. 

Another budget amendment approved by the panel authorized the expenditure of $98,190.42 for engineering services and other improvements at a Fisher Ferry Road site intended to be a new city recreation complex.

The board also passed an amendment to an agreement between the city and the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to help contain erosion at several sites around the city.  City attorney Nancy Thomas said the changes correct typographical mistakes in the original contract. “It doesn’t change the substance of the deal at all,” she said.

North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield and South Ward Alderman Sid Beauman attended the board meeting. Leyens is expected to attend the session scheduled for Friday at 10 a.m.