BOARD of DIRECTORS MEETING
NEW WAVE CORPORATION, KOPN
915 East Broadway, Columbia March 25, 2008
Approved April 15, 2008
CALL TO ORDER
A meeting of the Board of Directors of the New Wave Corporation was held in the Ashlock Room at the KOPN offices and studios on Tuesday, March 25, 2008. Board Vice President Thomas Sobieck called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. In attendance were Board members Jim Baker, Bridget Early, Scott Meiner, Tom Verdot, Randi Bishop, Ryan Kind, and Kyle Cook. Also attending the meeting were General Manager David Owens and John Betz, who took the minutes of the meeting.
Vice President Thomas Sobieck asked if there was any discussion of or changes to the minutes of the previous Board meeting. Ryan Kind said that changes should be made to the section in the minutes for the approval of the employee health care plan. The submitted minutes stated that the KOPN employee plan would be based on the “Wisconsin Plan.” Ryan noted that this was incorrect and that the minutes should be changed to state that the motion for the health care plan was for the approval of the KOPN plan developed by the Board committee and not for the Wisconsin plan. The Board agreed to the changes in the minutes. General Manager David Owens said that there was some confusion in the minutes about whether the Board had voted to have Ann Mehr’s name on the KOPN bank signature cards. The submitted minutes stated that Ann’s name was on the list of those who would be approved to sign checks. The Board said that at the meeting Ann had volunteered to add her name to the signature card if it were needed; during the discussion the Board determined that they did not need Ann’s name at the present time. Jim Baker made a motion to accept the suggested changes to February’s Board minutes. The motion was seconded by Ryan Kind. The motion passed.
Because of the addition of new names to the signature cards for check writing, a motion was made by Randi Bishop to remove Ryan Kind’s name from the list. The motion was seconded by Ryan. The motion was approved.
STAFF REPORTS
David Owens told the Board that KOPN had been invited to host a booth on Friday, April 18, for Lowe’s Customer Appreciation Day, from 10:00 a.m. to 2;00 p.m. He said he will be recruiting volunteers to help out at the booth.
David reported that KOPN would be hosting another Audiodacious exhibit as part of the Artrageous Gallery Crawl. The date for the event will be Friday, April 25, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. David said that the station would be presenting a display of work by Lee Dale Nigh from Fulton, an artist and violinmaker.
David is working with a group of University of Missouri students affiliated with Adelanteand who are interested in developing a Spanish/English news program.
Amy Goodman and her brother David will be in Columbia on Sunday, April 27, as part of a national book tour. David said that KOPN will be co-hosting with CAT3 a reception, talk, and book signing for Amy’s visit. He said he and John Clark have been working with Beth Federici for the upcoming event. KOPN and CAT3 will be retaining the receipts less some travel expenses for Democracy Now.
Financial statements and a report from the financial officer, John Clark, were distributed to the Board. General Manager David Owens gave the report. David said that the 35th Birthday Celebration will show a $600 to $700 cash loss. He then reported that, to date, the 2008 Winter Drive has raised $45,066 with a total of 525 pledges. This compares with $46,665 and 602 pledges for the 2007 Winter Drive. David thought there were probably a number of reasons for the difference: the economy and the staff shortage problems at KOPN being among the chief reasons. He said that without a director of development and a volunteer coordinator, the station’s “outreach” programs were not functioning well. Salaries and related expenses in the financial report showed expenses to be lower than expected, because of Julie Baka’s departure and Julie Rain’s leave of absence. John Clark noted in his financial report that March 31 will be the end of the 6th month of the FY08 fiscal year. At that time, the Board will need to carefully examine the expenditure budget for the remaining six months. John also pointed out in his report that the Board should not consider the lower salary expenses to be a windfall for KOPN because the remaining staff has had to make up for the personnel shortage. Ryan Kind and Tom Verdot expressed their concerns about the need to fill the director of development position. Ryan wanted the budget concerns to be a major focus of the April Board meeting. He said he thought the Board should schedule an executive committee meeting in the coming week to look through job applications for the director of development and at the same time to look at other staffing problems as well as budget difficulties. A meeting was set for Wednesday, April 2 at 7:00 p.m.
COMMITTEE REPORTS
David Owens submitted to the Board a report from the Programming Committee. He said the committee was doing an extremely good job. Woody Adkins is attempting to archive all KOPN shows for a website so that programmers and others will have the opportunity to listen and critique their on-air performance. David and the Board talked about problems associated with doing this, particularly with music shows, because of possible copyright concerns. David said that he had plans to visit with other stations to see how they handle these same concerns.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
David said that the programming committee since their last meeting had not made any decisions about new appointments. He informed the Board that the committee is always looking for qualified members, especially those who will bring along with them insight into programming and new ideas. David said that he thought the present makeup of the programming committee was an excellent mixture of both programmers and non- programmers. The Board discussed the possibility that there might be a need to recruit more students for the committee to ensure that the needs and interest of younger people were being met in KOPN programming.
NEW BUSINESS
Thomas Sobieck passed along to the Board his concerns about the KOPN website not being regularly updated. He said that we needed to have items such as the names of new Board members and contact information kept up-to-date. He and a majority of the Board felt that it would be a good idea to post New Wave corporate documents on the website (by-laws, financial statements, income tax forms, Board member and volunteer names, audits, and other information that would be of interest to KOPN members). Kyle Cook offered to take responsibility for scanning, saving to PDF files and then passing along the necessary corporate information to the office for inclusion on the station website. Kyle said that he would take care of finding volunteers to assist him. Tom Verdot told the Board that he had concerns about ensuring that the station had “hard copies” of all KOPN documents and to not rely totally on “electronic filing and record keeping.” David assured the Board that there were hard copies for all corporate documents. Tom Sobieck asked David about the status of the “Board Notebook” that John Clark was putting together that will have hard copies of most of this information. David said that John Clark and John Betz were still working on collecting all necessary documents for the notebook.
OTHER BUSINESS
Organization Development Training:
David reported to the Board that the March 22 Organization Development Workshop on Problem Solving had been well attended. David talked about the upcoming workshop sessions and encouraged Board members to attend.
General Manager Evaluation:
Thomas Sobieck and Ryan Kind asked the Board to go into an executive session to discuss the evaluation of the general manager. David Owens and John Betz left the Ashlock room before the beginning of the session. At the conclusion of the executive session David and John rejoined the Board. Ryan submitted a report to the Board secretary Kyle Cook and to John Betz that outlined the executive committee’s thoughts about future evaluations for the general manager. The committee felt that recent evaluations had tended to use criteria that were over-specific and detailed. David Owens had been consulted by the committee working on the evaluation criteria while they were being drafted and that the General Manager had had no objections to the final criteria. Because of this, the committee has revised the evaluation criteria and in the future will concentrate more on and encompass the broad major areas of general manager responsibility.
As a result of the closed executive session, Vice President Thomas Sobieck asked if there were a motion to approve the performance evaluation of the general manager. Kyle Cook made a motion to approve the evaluation for the date ending September 30, 2007. The motion was seconded by Ryan Kind. The motion was approved. There was a discussion by the Board about when the raise should go into effect. The Board thought the starting date should be made retroactive to October 1, 2007. Randi Bishop made a motion to do this; Ryan Kind seconded the motion. The motion was approved.
The meeting adjourned at 8:20 p.m.