Repair costs coupled with a drop in revenue caused the Vicksburg Convention Center to close the first half of the 2015 fiscal year showing a $27,248 deficit.

“The downside of this part of the equation is that over $20,000 (of the deficit) is repair and maintenance,” executive director Annette Kirklin told the center’s Advisory Board Wednesday. “When things break, you have to fix them.”

Added to that cost is a drop in revenue for the convention center’s second quarter which totaled $107,376, 12 percent less than the $122,036 anticipated in the fiscal 2015 budget, with catering revenue at $8,220, 16 percent less than anticipated. Revenue for the dedicated 2 percent hotel tax that forms a large part of the center’s revenue stream was $107,144 for the second quarter, or 9.3 percent below the anticipated $118,165. The second quarter runs from January through March.

“When we do the budget each year, we try to anticipate what we expect to get in revenue, but you never know what will happen,” Kirklin said, adding she believes the convention center’s economic picture will improve. “We are coming into a very busy period.”

“From the numbers from our visitor centers and our market survey, everybody was down except for the Old Court House Museum. Everybody was down considerably in March,” Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau executive director Bill Seratt said. “With ice threatening every weekend, it just killed the traditional spring break weekend.”

Convention center events and operations manager Erin Southard said 15 items were repaired or replaced during the first half of the fiscal year, including repairs to the center’s escalator system, installing a new public address system, repairs to heating and air conditioning units for the administrative offices, and repairs to walls in four meeting rooms.

Still on the list for the future is a new roof for the center, new lighting and windows.

Southard said JH&H Architects, the company hired by the city to design the new roof, has been inspecting the roof for potential problems, adding she was not sure when the city will get an estimate for the repairs.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen in August included $454,000 for a new roof and new lighting at the convention center in a special $1.1 million capital budget using money remaining from a $3.7 million bond issue passed in 2007. The roof repairs were estimated at $350,000. Kirklin said that estimate could go higher, depending on the architect’s recommendations.

She said the convention center has $660,750 in its capital projects budget, adding, “We may have to use all of that for the roof, depending on the estimate.”

Southard said the wait on the roof estimate has delayed moving ahead on the new lighting system and the windows.

“We can’t do anything until we get the estimate for the roof,” she said. “They (JH&H) said they would have an estimate at the first of the year, and here it’s April. They’re still looking at it because they want to make sure everything will be waterproofed and they find all the leaks we may not be aware of.”