NATCHEZ — After two months of ongoing negotiations, the City of Natchez and the Natchez Convention Promotion Convention have come to terms on a new management agreement.

Natchez Mayor Darryl Grennell said city attorney Bob Latham would draw up a final draft of the agreement that the board of aldermen would approve at the board’s next regularly scheduled meeting the on Aug. 22.

The two groups met at a specially called meeting 5 p.m. Monday, with most discussions held behind closed doors.

For approximately the first hour of the meeting, the board of aldermen convened in executive session. Then, Natchez Mayor Darryl Grennell called the NCPC board members, including chair Lance Harris, into the meeting room of the Council Chambers.

Approximately 45 minutes later, the NCPC board members held their own executive session to discuss what the aldermen had “put on the table,” as NCPC member Helen Smith said.

After another 20 minutes, the two groups reconvened for another closed-door discussion and finally emerged with an apparent compromise just after 8 p.m.

The agreement will be the first contract between the two entities since 2012, when the prior agreement expired.

Neither party offered particular details about the discussions or specific items where the sides reached a compromise, but Grennell said the main component of the negotiations pertained to clarity.

“To make sure that everybody understood the changes and modifications that were being proposed … to make sure that everything was going to work: that was the whole mission,” Grennell said.

That clarity is something Harris has said was missing from the prior management agreement between the city and NCPC.

“I think we’ve got something that we can work with,” Harris said.

Harris said he believed the details of the agreement would be made available to the public at the Aug. 22 meeting.

In regards to the closed-door discussions, City attorney Bob Latham said the meeting qualified for executive session because the aspects being discussed concerned leasing of city property — in this case, portions of the visitor center — and potential litigation.

“Because it’s been contentious here lately, we possibly could have ended in litigation. That’s what we were trying to avoid,” Latham said.

The two sides have been working to reach a middle ground since July 17, when Harris approached the mayor and board of aldermen requesting the approval of the management agreement.

At that meeting, some aldermen expressed concerns about portions of the contract, particularly over whether the NCPC should have complete control over who is hired to do the commission’s work.

Harris had stated that the NCPC should have that oversight because it would be reimbursing the city dollar-for-dollar to pay those employees, which is another new tenet of the agreement.

Then, the two sides each sent representatives to hash out details of the proposed agreement at a closed-door meeting in City Hall. Neither side reached a quorum, so they were not required to hold that meeting publically.

Though neither side divulged what exact portions of the agreement had been altered during the course of Monday’s meeting, both parties appeared pleased. Both Grennell and Harris said coming to terms would allow the city and tourism department to move forward.