May 14, 2008 KSDP Board Meeting Minutes
KSDP, Sand Point City Building
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
7:00 P.M.
MINUTES
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order at 7:00 p.m. by Chairman Jim Brown.
Roll Call
Board Members Present: Jim Brown, Robbe Gilmour, Joanna Karlsen.
Staff Present: Kells Hetherington, General Manager; Tony Gorman, News Director
Members: Justin Godbehere, Marta Varga and Peter Divine.
Approval of Agenda
The agenda is amended to advance the election report and counting of the ballots to the start of the meeting. The board unanimously approves the amended agenda.
Approval of Minutes
Joanna moves to approve the minutes. Robbe seconds the motion and the minutes are unanimously approved.
New Business
Robbe Gilmour moves to accept the resignation of Christopher Holmberg and Joanna seconds. The ballots are opened and the election results are tabulated. The election results are recorded as follows:
Peter Devine: 4 votes
Dave Dillard: 0 votes
Justin Godbehere: 15 votes
Karen Susie Hill: 2 votes
Kelly O’Keefe Bjornstad: 3 votes
Marta Varga: 11 votes
Justin Godbehere is declared the winner of the election. The board fills the vacancy created by Christopher Holmberg’s resignation by appointing Marta Varga to the Board.
Report from General Manager
Kells announces this is the Aleutian Peninsula Broadcasting, Inc. annual meeting and welcomes the new Board members. He distributes a current profit & loss statement and a current balance sheet. The stations bank balance is noted as twenty-three thousand dollars not including a more than ten-thousand dollar investment also held in the station’s Merrill Lunch account. Kells mentions that the station has several grant applications outstanding. The discretionary grant application he says will be reviewed by the AK Public Broadcasting Commission in Anchorage at the managers / commissioners meeting later in the month. He asks to go to the meeting and to take a Board member with him. The Board approves both on a motion from Justin Godbehere. The meeting is the 28th through 30th of May. Justin Godbehere is the member selected by the Board to go to the meeting.
Kells asks the Board to send Tony Gorman to the rural news training program being cosponsored by the Associated Alaska Public Broadcasting Region and the Fairbanks station KUAC located at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Kells says, a portion of the expense will be reimbursed; stating that the Region is reimbursing stations at a rate of $250.00. Kells says, the news training session will be led by KUAC and take place at KYUK in Bethel. Justin Godbehere makes the motion to approve the request and the Board approves the request.
Kells reports that the Associate Public Broadcasting Region has unanimously reelected him Chairman. The Region includes ten stations from Barrow to St. Paul to Anchorage to Dutch Harbor. Alaska Public Broadcasting is divided into four Regions and the Associated Region is the largest. The Region has provided funding for two engineering visits to KSDP in the last twelve months.
The grant reallocation process is discussed and Kells explains that the Commissioners are devising a new formula for calculating state grant amounts. The discussion has been ongoing for sometime and is expected to be a key agenda item at the upcoming meeting in Anchorage.
Kells adds that in FY ’07/’08 the radio station received $33,033.00 from the State of Alaska. Kells discusses how station grand amounts were originally set.
Kells reports that the station is in the process of preparing a grant application to acquire an additional satellite dish in order to get state programming including Alaska Nightly News from APRN and additional programs from stations with uplink capability. The purchase of associated hardware will be required in order to use the dish. The grant application for the dish will include the additional equipment, but the station cannot expect one hundred percent funding from a grant.
KSDP once primarily repeated KDLG/Dillingham’s programming. As such, KSDP was able to rely on KDLG for its emergency alert system. Now operating primarily alone, Kells says, KSDP will be required to purchase its own emergency alert system. The price of that system will be between three and four thousand dollars.
Alaska Public Broadcasting will reopen its project to install the internet connection equipment that has been sitting dormant next door for several years. This means that the engineering visit will be paid for by Alaska Public Broadcasting, Inc. The new router once installed will improve the stations internet speed and improve the internal networking capability.
Programming is changing. Virgil Porter is here as a volunteer D.J. He is also interested in working with us on the website www.ksdpradio.com. The debate hour is no longer. We have gone back to the drawing board for a public affairs show. What we have in mind is an interview intensive program. Robbe said, he thought it sounded like a move in the right direction.
News Director Tony Gorman provided an update and asked for news equipment and software. There was a general consensus that the station needed to make these acquisitions and both Robbe and Jim recommended that Tony get with Kells and pull together a specific budget for the request. Kells agreed to do that and noted that some of the things being requested by Tony had already been asked for in the Discretionary Fund Grant Application.
Tony asked for an amended job description and the one he was hired with was reviewed. Jim encouraged Tony and Kells to get together to craft a job description. Robbe and Joanna both said they wanted to see a job description for Tony. Marta Varga commented that she had never had a job description and that it was a small town and small station and that everyone needs to help out.
Joanna said the station was not playing enough new music and it was generally agreed that the station would put lots of new music into the computer and really focus on updating and expanding the music library. Kells reported that some of that had already happened, Robbe said he wanted more done and it was agreed that it would be done.
Several were eager to adjourn the meeting; Kells gave to Jim the pages for his performance review. The Board decided to postpone the performance review until June 2nd.
The meeting was adjourned.
Minutes typed by Shannon Sommer, Administrative Asistant.