Clearly, problems have occurred at the Natchez Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Executive Director Kevin Kirby was hired in late 2014 to help clean up what had been a mess of inefficiency and unprofessionalism for years.

Turning the CVB’s ship would certainly be no easy task. Kirby obviously knew that and agreed to the challenge and made a commitment to Natchez.

What’s happened since seems unclear. We do not know whether Kirby went rogue, was left undirected, was undermined by others or perhaps some combination of those.

Some kind of altercation appears to have occurred a few weeks ago, which prompted Kirby to be asked to leave the building where he works. To our knowledge no physical harm occurred in the incident, no threat of violence occurred and no police report was filed.

Natchez Mayor Butch Brown asked that the upset parties simply have a cooling off period until he and the aldermen — for whom Kirby appears to answer to as an employee of the city — had a chance to investigate.

Obviously, the CVB’s board believes Kirby may have either misspent or overstepped his bounds financially and thus publicly called him to the carpet on Monday, removing all authority from him.

The CVB board is correct to question spending matters. Fiscal responsibility is on their watch, but perhaps more careful coordination with the city would have prevented what has now become an unfortunate, public drama in which a man’s reputation is on the line.

The matter needed to be handled more delicately than to effectively demote the man publicly before the city’s mayor and board of aldermen were allowed to investigate the matter.

Today, the CVB board is expected to meet with the board of aldermen. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail and we can work quickly to get any potential wrongdoings fixed and in the past and get on with the job of professionally promoting Natchez. All of the rest of the drama is simply distracting and unnecessary.