NATCHEZ — Questions concerning the city’s contract with a marketing firm surfaced in the Natchez Convention and Promotion Commission meeting Thursday night.

The board discussed Thursday its $90,000 contract with The Goss Agency. Commission members voiced concerns that the Asheville, N.C., headquartered agency had not met its side of the bargain.

Visitors Bureau Director Kevin Kirby presented another proposal from Goss to have the agency do more marketing work for the city in addition to its existing contract.

The commission entered into a contract in fall 2015 to pay Goss $90,000 in exchange for its services in preparing the city for the tricentennial.

Kirby said this contract was not intended to produce advertising materials, but rather the fabric of an overarching group of brand concepts.

Board member Virginia Benoist said she remembers being promised tangible results by October of the same year that could be handed over to Lou Hammond and Associates, a public relations firm also under contract with the city.

“We were to have a brand in October,” Benoist said. “There was never any presentation that this would be just a plan … We need a finished product on the brand before we can talk about anything else. We need the brand delivered.”

Kirby said the contract was presented last year exactly as he is explaining it now — as a research phase on a larger product.

“The $90,000 was never presented as resulting in an ad campaign,” Kirby said.

The Goss agency would present the products of its work for board review, Kirby said, and then would ask for an additional contract to flesh out its marketing concepts and show how it would be brought to fruition in different forms of media.

Kirby said this type of work is different from the work performed by the city’s PR firm, Lou Hammond and Associates.

“The PR firm handles the language, and the marketing firm handles the look, the feel, and the style, the advertising (in different forms of media),” Kirby said. “Those are two separate entities… I did not falsely present it. That is the way it was discussed.”

A copy of the contract the board approved last year could not be located during the meeting.

Board member Ron Bequette said he did not recall the contract being presented as a phase in a series of products.

“I remember it being a one-time thing, and I thought they would deliver something we could give to Lou Hammond,” Bequette said. “I remember there was a (deadline), and that we would cut ties after that.”

Ward 3 Alderwoman Sarah Carter Smith and Ward 5 Alderman Mark Fortenbery attended the meeting. Smith voiced her own concerns about the status of the contract, for which the CVB has already paid.

“If we have paid the full $90,000 and we don’t have it, I’m wondering (if we will ever have it),” Smith said.

Board President David Gammill said a new contract was unlikely to come to a vote before the terms of the original contract were clarified.

“It think (the new proposal) is a separate process than the original $90,000,” Gammill said. “But with the $90,000 not being clear, it’s hard to say, ‘let’s jump back in bed.’”

Benoist said she was concerned the board may be repeating a previous mistake.

“We can’t do a repeat of what happened with Jennifer Barbee,” Benoist said, referring to the marketing consultant the CVB hired in 2013.

Barbee, fundraiser based in Dallas, Texas, originally said she could raise more than a million dollars by December 2013, but by May 2014 had raised less than $250,000 of her overall $4 million goal. The CVB paid her $180,000 for her fundraising efforts related to the tricentennial.

“Everything has to be clear and firm, and the extended things seem to be held hostage to get something that we ordered,” Benoist said.

Benoist made a motion to have Kirby contact Goss to clarify the board’s expectations of the agency’s existing contract and bring the feedback to the board. The motion was passed.

After the aldermen left, Benoist voiced concerns about the board’s financial policies.

“The CVB is on the hot seat for some of these expenses,” Benoist said. “I’m not trying to be a grouch about it, but I’m telling you, (the aldermen) are on it… we don’t want that to distract from the good work that’s being done here.”

Board member Dennis Switzer said his main concern was about the board’s own accountability, not government oversight.

“This is a government entity, and you got to follow the laws of the state of Mississippi,” Switzer said. “Whether the aldermen would question it or not isn’t the point. It’s whether we would.”

The board moved to ask Kirby’s office to bring more detailed, line-item explanations of invoices to board meetings and to ensure that outside sponsorships are approved individually by the board.

The board also asked Kirby’s office to provide a monthly check register.

Benoist asked whether Kirby’s travel expenses were approved before he went on trips, such as his trip to visit The Goss Agency in Asheville, N.C., last year.

Kirby said he had not been submitting requests to travel.

“If we need those put in, that’s different from what my understanding was of this job when I accepted the position,” Kirby said.

In other news

-The board voted to donate $2,500 to the FOR Natchez campaign for downtown revitalization from their own $15,000 sponsorship budget.

-The board called a meeting to further discuss the consolidation of visitor center’s two retail spaces into The Natchez Shop at 4 p.m. on Jan. 21. The board desired to discuss adding their signature to the contract prior to the Board of Aldermen’s expected vote on the matter Jan. 26.