The Vicksburg Convention and Victors Bureau board of directors had seven members of the board in attendance at last week’s meeting, which was enough to make quorum for the first time since August.

The board voted for the first time in three months to approve the bills the VCVB staff has to pay to keep the organization running, but the biggest order of business was the budget.

The VCVB works on a calendar year budget instead of the usual October through September fiscal year. However, it takes two months for the Food and Lodging Tax to come through, and they won’t know for certain how they will end 2015 until February 2016.

“At the end of December they have to turn their collections into the state in a certain period of time and by the time the state tax commissions gets it all done it’s two months,” executive director Bill Seratt said. “We’ll get what the hotels and restaurants collected on our behalf in December, we’ll get that check in February.”

At this time, the VCVB estimates by the end of the year they will have spent $1.16 million. Their projected budget for 2015 was $1.31 million. This makes them $155,784.65 under budget at this time, meaning they have only spent 86 percent of what they expected to spend. Seratt said in the end the bureau’s number would change once they know exactly how much they will spend on bills throughout the end of December, the Food and Lodging Tax comes in to supplement the spending and once they add in the check they received a few days after the meeting for a matching grant.

“I always low-ball everything so it’ll come out being higher than these numbers when it’s all said and done,” Seratt said. “We’re at 85 percent of the budget right now. These numbers will fill out and it’ll come back to where the numbers are very close.”

In hospitality tax collections there has been at 4.8 percent growth, which is more than the 4 percent they projected for growth.

“And again, I think it’s going to be higher than that,” Seratt said.

Seratt and the staff of the VCVB have put together a projected budget for the 2016 year totaling $1.35 million. They have projected to make about $39,000 more from the Food and Lodging Tax next year than was projected last year.

Postage and shipping is projected to be $3,000 less than last year with a 2015 projection of $16,000 and a 2016 projection of $13,000. For 2016 they projected to spend $3,500 in building improvements where no money was allocated last year.

Advertising expenses will go up with the new web design project being budgeted to cost $65,000.

Advertising projections dropped drastically in the areas of specialty items, production, radio/television and space/print but grew or stayed the same in other categories. One of those categories is film production that is projected at $15,000 in 2016, which is up $10,000 compared to last years $5,000 projected. However, in 2015 no money was actually spent on film production. Also, local event sponsorships are projected to cost $20,000 more from last year’s $20,000 projection to 2016’s $40,000 projection.

In other news, the board also discussed future plans and projects the staff of the VCVB are currently working on.

For the new Visit Vicksburg website coming in 2016, the visual arrangement is completed and now they are working on gathering content.

“We’ve got the wireframe done, but we’re getting ready to make it all pretty and very functional,” Seratt said.

Historian and writer Gordon Cotton is working with city landscape architect Jeff Richardson to set up about 36 tableaus and directional signs on four different walking trails around Vicksburg.

The VCVB is working on this project with Vicksburg Main Street and the city. It should be completed sometime in the spring.