The May meeting of the board of directors of the New Wave Corporation/KOPN took place on the 17th of the month at the Cope Ashlock room at the station, 916 E. Broadway.

In attendance: Laird Okie, Ellen Schlie, Dan Hemmelgarn, Tao Weilundemo, Curt Wohleber, David Owens, Heather O’Connor, John Betz, and Gail Plemmons. Heather O’Connor took minutes for this meeting, as board secretary.

The meeting began at 7:15, after some time was allowed for board members to look over the audit, audit communications letter, minutes, agenda, balance sheet, and profit and loss statements. The minutes were approved via voice vote.

The financial report was delivered by John Betz. He had requested that Kara provide a Profit and Loss statement for the year to date, so at this meeting, board members were presented with a statement that reflects net profit and loss between October 2015 and April 2016. The net income reflected on this statement is 9447.40. The financial reports were approved by voice vote after motion to approve was made by Tao and seconded by Heather.

Dan mentioned an email that was received from Socket about outstanding debt to them. He would like to request that Kara provide an email each month breaking down current accounts payable, approximately coordinated with the third Tuesday when the board meeting occurs.

Station Manager’s report:

During the recent pledge drive, May 1-7, $12,785.50 was raised.

The audit is finished and was made available for board members to review.

The Financial Summary Report, required by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was completed, submitted and accepted. On the basis of that, we have received the second and final payment for the second half of 2016 for the community service grant, $21,648.

There should be another payment from a MO public radio grant.

Upcoming events:

Veterans for Peace will be holding their annual event on Memorial Day, which will feature a live remote. John Betz agreed to arrange for a person to be in studio to handle the live remote.

Farmer’s Market on the 28th will be a live remote with Rae Fitzgerald. The Farmer’s Market event is generally the last Saturday of the month.

A live broadcast will be held Friday June 3rd for First Friday.

Art in the Park June 4&5: our presence will be a tent near the entrance, handing out bubbles, t-shirts, etc. The event is 8-5 Saturday and Sunday. Signup sheets will be available for volunteers.

The 7th of June, there will be a Ramblers’ Club remote at Rose Music Hall.

JeromeFest is also at Rose Music Hall, Sunday the 12th, and it will be a benefit for KOPN.

June 17th and 18th, MO Contemporary Ballet and MO Symphony Society are having a benefit at which we’ll have a table.

There was a staff meeting this week. David delegated the task of communicating about events to Jackie, as part of her job as Outreach Coordinator. Meg Poche announced her intention to leave her paid position in 6 months or so. Her job as Underwriting Coordinator takes about 15 hours a week.

John Betz agreed to take the lead in creating a budget for the organization, in cooperation with Kara.

The Community Advisory Board had a second meeting and will issue minutes, which Dan will post to Dropbox or send as an email attachment.

The new website is very close to being ready to debut. Tao is including a form for programmers to provide new information about their show or photos for the new site.

His plan is to create a screencast so that volunteers can easily contribute to the work of updating the website.

Status of lease negotiations: The lease has been signed. Dan has a concern about getting out of the lease at the appropriate time to make the move to a new location without having to continue to pay rent on the existing space for the remaining time. He suggests speaking with the Dalton family and asking if they would be willing to sign an amendment to the lease that would enable us to break the lease with 6 months’ notice. Dan made a motion to this effect which was seconded by Tao and passed by unanimous voice vote.

Joy Rushing is a volunteer who is an attorney who may be willing to write an addendum to the lease. Dan will send her an email to inquire.

Gail would like to set July 22 as a date for a trivia night, at the Cope Ashlock room at the station. The trivia night “run-through” will be July 8th, a practice run for the trivia night fund-raiser.

Tao and Ellen met during the pledge drive, representing the Capital Campaign committee.

Dan spoke with the manager of the Parkade Center, Ben Gakinya. He would be happy to provide a space for us of approximately 1800 square feet, at $1950 per month, which may be available soon. There’s also an undeveloped space, somewhat smaller. There have been CAT TV negotiations too, so it’s possible they would be there also. It was generally agreed that this is worthy of further exploration. David already has a list of design and utility requirements that would be required for the station in any new space.

Tao spoke with Socket and learned that there is already fiber at Parkade, and it has also been run within 500 feet of the tower, meaning that they would run it to the tower for no additional fee. The potential exists to use fiber to communicate the signal from Parkade to the tower, without the necessity of relaying through Paquin tower.

David is working on communicating with former volunteers and participants, with an eye toward the capital campaign.

The date of the Station Manager evaluation will be Tuesday May 24th at 7 p.m.