Sitting on Gov. Phil Bryant’s desk awaiting his signature is Senate Bill 2969, a local and private bill that allows the city to levy, with the public’s approval, a 2 percent sales tax on hotel room rentals and food and beverages sold in the city to finance the acquisition of property and the construction of a sports complex for Vicksburg.

Now the work of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen really begins.

Under state law, 60 percent of the voters participating in a referendum must approve the sales tax increase before the city can levy it on hotels and restaurants. That means the city has to accomplish two things. It must sell the proposed sports complex plan, whatever it is, to the voters, and convince the hotel and restaurant owners that the extra tax they’ll be assessed — in addition to an extra 2 percent sales tax already being assessed for the Vicksburg Convention Center — is an investment that will pay dividends in increased business from the tournaments the sports complex will attract.

They have until July 1, 2018, when the authority to hold the referendum expires, to get the tax approved by the voters.

In contrast to the debacle surrounding former Mayor Paul Winfield’s attempts to get a sports complex in 2012, city officials have so far done all the right things to put this project together.

Approximately 11 months ago, Mayor George Flaggs Jr. appointed an ad hoc committee on recreation to examine the city’s recreation facilities and programs that solicited and heard public comments about the need for a multipurpose recreation complex and what it should include.

When the committee released its report in December, it recommended the city build a multipurpose recreation complex featuring baseball and softball fields, basketball, tennis and volleyball courts and a multipurpose building with an indoor pool on a 270-acre tract.

In January, Flaggs appointed two committees, one to select a potential site and design for the park, and another to look at the feasibility of a sports complex in the city and a way to pay for it. The board and the Warren County Board of Supervisors each approved resolutions seeking a local and private bill to levy the 2 percent sales tax on hotel rooms and food and beverages sold in the county. A revised version of the bill authored by Sen. Briggs Hopson III, minus the county’s involvement, is the one on the governor’s desk.

The board in February hired a consultant to look at three possible sites — the city’s Fisher Ferry property, the Mississippi Chemical property off Warrenton Road and property near the Halls Ferry and Bazinsky Road parks.

The board is expected to receive the consultant’s report this week and then set a public hearing on the park.

A lot will depend on what the consultant recommends, how well the board presents that recommendation to the public, and how well our city officials listen and react to the public’s comments.

With the exception of some difficulties getting Hopson’s bill out of the Senate Local and Private Committee and to the governor, the entire process the city has gone through to get a recreation complex to the point of calling a public hearing has gone smoothly.

The next few months could determine whether the people of Vicksburg and the Board of Mayor and Aldermen want a sports complex as much as they have talked about it.