The Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau wants to leave the second floor of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Depot on Levee Street and wants some money back from the city.

VCVB officials want the city to reimburse the unused portion of the $150,000 it paid up front when the lease was signed in 2012; a total of $116,250. The request to get out of the lease was made in a May 16 letter from VCVB executive director Bill Seratt to City Attorney Nancy Thomas, who discussed the VCVB’s request Friday with the Board of Mayor and Aldermen.

The board took the request under advisement because the letter did not say whether bureau had selected a new location.

“I think it’s important to be transparent and let the public know where it’s going,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said. “They tell us, ‘We’re cancelling it,’ but they’re not telling us where they’re going. It looks like we ought to be cancelling at the same time they’re moving. We need to wait until we get some more information.”

Repeated attempts to contact Seratt, who was out of town, about the decision and the potential new location were unsuccessful.

The VCVB moved out the depot and into the City Hall Annex on Walnut Street in December as a precaution against flooding by the Mississippi River, which reached about 50 feet in January. It is still there.

VCVB and Vicksburg Main Street both signed 20-year leases in 2012, with the VCVB occupying the building’s second floor and Main Street the third.

Under the terms of its lease, the VCVB was to pay about $625 a month for 20 years, but paid the full amount of the lease, $150,000, to help provide the city’s match for a $1.65 million Mississippi Department of Transportation grant to renovate the building.

According to Seratt’s letter, the VCVB wants the city to reimburse the unused portion of the $150,000 to the bureau — a total of $116,250, which he said is the equivalent of the remaining total rent that would have been paid, with the city paying the reimbursement in installments of $2,500 a month for 46.5 months.

Seratt wrote the VCVB is leaving for several reasons:

• The Old Depot Museum wants to expand its collections and occupy the building. “We feel that the expansion will increase visitation to the museum,” Seratt wrote.

• Problems with the building’s elevator. The elevator has been a problem since the depot was renovated and reopened after the 2011 spring Mississippi River flood, which put several feet of water into the building. The State of Mississippi has condemned the elevator and it has been shut down.

The lack of an elevator has made it hard to hold meetings in the building and for people to the VCVB offices, Seratt wrote.

• Flooding. “Evacuating the building during times of high water is totally disruptive to our programs of work,” he wrote. “We have been out of the building since Dec. 30, 2015.”

The depot was the third building the VCVB had occupied since 2005. The visitors bureau occupied a building at the corner of Clay and Washington streets across from Trustmark Bank, but had to leave it in 2006 after the adjacent old Thomas Furniture Store at 713 Clay St. collapsed. The buildings shared a common wall.

The VCVB later occupied a metal building at the visitor information center on Old Highway 27 before moving into the depot and later City Hall Annex in January.