Pittsburgh Filmmakers has approved a merger of the Oakland-based organization with Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, a Point Breeze facility.

Of the 39 artist members eligible to vote, 22 favored the merger while four opposed it during Filmmakers' annual meeting on Sunday. The group's bylaws require that two-thirds of those people casting votes approve the merger.

"Everyone who was eligible to vote was sent an absentee ballot. We had quite a few absentee ballots cast," said Charlie Humphrey, executive director of Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

In September, the boards of directors of each organization had met and approved the merger. The final step is approval from the state attorney general's office and a state court judge.

Once the merger is executed, Humphrey said, a new leader will be chosen for the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Humphrey hopes that a new director for the center will be named by the end of January.

Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts will become programs that are divisions of a larger nonprofit entity that has yet to be named, Humphrey said.

"The hope is that we will spend the first six months of 2006 doing all of the internal kind of work that has to be done to effect a merger. The merger will be a legal reality by Jan. 1, 2006," Humphrey said.

The two organizations will merge their budgets as of July 1, and the combined preliminary budget will be $3.4 million.

The 2005-06 total budget for the Center for the Arts is $1.1 million, down from $2.35 million in 2003-04. Pittsburgh Filmmakers' $2.2 million is down from $2.35 million.

In August 2004, the Center for the Arts had a debt of more than $1 million, and the center's board closed the facility and laid off 13 staff members.

A month later, Filmmakers agreed to lend Humphrey to the center, and he has divided his time between the organizations since then. By the end of this year, the center's debt should be whittled to $420,000.

In the first six months of 2006, the two organizations will merge accounting systems, marketing and development. LaPiana and Associates, a consultant from California, has been hired to facilitate the assimilation of staff and board members.