KLTV BOARD MEETING MINUTES
September 17th, 2007

President Mark called the meeting to order at 5:35 p.m.

Secretary Arleen called the roll. Board Members present included: Post 1 – George Ford, Post. 2 – Mike Kayser,  Post. 3 - Brian Magnuson, Post 4 – Joe Daggy, Post. 5 - Mark McCrady, Post. 6 - Arleen Hubble, Post. 7 - Don MacDonald, Post. 8 - Hal Phillips. Post 9 – James Johnston. All Board Members were present.    

Members present: Allan Rudberg, Bruce Norris, Ric King, Adora Greenwood, Doug Parr, and Vonda Kay Brock.

Guest includes: Judy Jones.

Staff present included: Marilyn Freerks, Linda Manning, Steve Harvey, Frank Huckstep, Roy Royston, Eric Anderson, and Gary Hill.

President Mark asked Gary to rearrange the roll call and changes to the agenda around for future meetings. Mark also asked if there were any recommended changes to the agenda from any Board member.

The next item for approval is the minutes of the August 20th 2007 meeting. Secretary Arleen made the motion to approve the minutes, and Mike Kaiser seconded the motion. There was no discussion and the motion passed.

 Brian Magnuson provided the Treasurers Report, which included the Financial Statement through September 30th as prepared by Chace & Spurgeon. Brian noted that Bob Chace has agreed to be present at the November Board Meeting to answer questions about formatting these financial reports.

He commented the balance sheet is very strong with assets of $266,000. If you look at the supplement provided by Gary we are on budget, and expect to end the year quite a bit stronger with our revenues from Comcast. Brian suggested an increase of revenue of 15 per cent. Gary thought roughly $50,000 to the good after additional expenditures were calculated into the equation.
 
Mark added the difference in salary and benefits from not paying an Executive Director for several months should also provide a surplus to the expenditure side.

Brian also reported a preliminary 2006 Audit report should be ready with in a couple weeks. Hopefully we will have it available by next Board Meeting.

Mark shared a portion of a conversation with Hal that revealed a little more background should be shared with the newer Board Members. So Mark asked Brian to elaborate on the need for a second audit. 

Brian explained that although the 2005 Audit revealed no malfeasance it was the first actual audit conducted in the history of the organization. There were some procedural recommendations made that would bring us into accepted bookkeeping practices and this second audit is an endeavor to train staff to follow those industry guidelines and to provide better documentation. Brian continued that while it is prudent to conduct audits more frequently than once every 34 years, the board has agreed to have an audit conducted every 3 or 4 years.

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President Mark also commented on the negative publicity of a year and a half ago and all the accusations pertaining to our financial picture or lack thereof, he and other board members are determined to establish a transparent view of the KLTV operation to its membership and to the community as well. Mark also noted that audits are not cheap roughly $10-15,000 which is another reason to plan ahead and schedule on a 3 or 4 year cycle. 

Joe Daggy questioned if he understood the financial report correctly, on the Statement of Activities page and under income from operations, did we actually expect to spend $56,000 more on operations than we actually brought in positive ? 

Brian explained that the entire $335,000 equipment purchase monies were imported from various savings and investment accounts and that perhaps the $50,000 depreciation could be a factor in that figure. 

Mark asked Brian to remove his money hat and put on the engineering hat and give us an update on the equipment installation. Brian felt he stole the thunder from Linda’s report last month so he asked Linda to provide the update.

Linda said during the last week Longview’s installation was complete except for adding the bar coded inventory labels on the equipment which should have been done prior to the installation. Kris Gurrad was in last Friday to fine tune the control equipment.

Kelso will be next, but there are some major concerns dealing with running the wiring due to way the council chambers were wired initially, using extremely small conduit. We hope to get a head start on the wiring before tackling the other aspects of the install. We’re waiting for two spools of cable that are on order before we can get started with that.

There are just a couple of details that need to be addressed at the county before we can call that project complete. They are just cleanup issues - replacing yellow cables with black ones then covering the cables where they run down the walls.

Hal asked if the black spot between camera switches has been eliminated ?  She explained that one of the Kramer digital switcher was faulty but our contract engineer Marcus had taken it home to repair it. The Kramers that were installed in Longview work beautifully.

She further reported that we are behind on editing the Graduations. The power supply on the VT switcher she was using to edit died right near the end of the Mark Morris project and other projects were loaded on the VT hard drive. The power supply is an older device and is no longer available through the manufacturer. Other sources are being tapped for a replacement.

Mark and Linda agreed on the third week of October to start the install in Kelso.

Marilyn provided her Volunteer Coordinators by highlighting the Unique Tin Car Show and KLOG Car Cruise of August 27th. Four volunteers covered the events of the Car Show held at the Expo Center, while 2 volunteers assisted staff with the cruise later that evening for a total of 40.5 volunteer hours.  

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The Following weekend was the Highlander Festival. We borrowed Linda’s canopy tent, which worked great as a central meeting place for the volunteers. Although, next year we should have a banner that states who we are, evidently people thought we were an information booth. But even that worked out great for KLTV because we got to explain who we are and what we are about.

Thirteen volunteers provided coverage of  the Highlander Games, Piping Competitions, Dancers, and Musical Presentations for a total of 101 hours.

To recap the Go 4th Festival, The Cowlitz County Fair, The Car Show / Cruise and the Kelso Highlander Festival, KLTV Volunteers provided 840 hours of service and programming to the community.  At minimum wage our costs would be roughly $6,350.77.  The State L& I figure equates to $48.26 at 6 cents per hour. However, the figure changed during our application process and is now 9 cents per hour or $75.60.

Marilyn emphasized it had been a busy summer and she appreciated the commitment everyone had during all the events. Volunteers ranged from 13 – 55 years of age.

George committed that during the cruise he saw a crewmember in snorkel lift suspended over the street. It looked great, and professional, like a Portland TV channel.

Linda explained that due to a commitment to carry a Mariner Game – KLOG could not cover the event over the radio but had provided a radio crew to cover the event – play music and announce the event just for our television audience. A woman stopped at the announcer’s booth who had a friend  in St John’s Hospital watching the cruise. She was able to say hello and sorry he could not be there.

We frequently receive comments from people who are laid up in the hospital or are homebound that really appreciate our community programming. She cited our own Roy Royston who was in the hospital during the 4th of July, who watched the live shows.

Brian thought those testimonials would be great as letters to the editor of even for use on our own web page.

Mark praised Boone Wallace for his involvement and the exposure he gives to people and places with those man on the street type interviews, what wonderful exposure for the station as well.

Marilyn shared that Boone interviewed a man from Scotland during the Highlander Festival, and that interview was played in Scotland.

Gary started his report by sharing a phone call he received several weeks ago from a viewer who says our programming is not always in the TV Times and it sure would be helpful to know what it is he was watching with a periodic message on screen. Well it just so happens Linda got the Chyron up and working with what she calls SNIPES, little notes that simply state what program is on and even highlights what show is coming up next. Linda and Eric are to be commended for this wonderful addition to programming.

Marilyn piped in that she finally got channel 29 programming approved to be included in the TV TIMES.  Her two months of persistent pleads netting results. They said they did not have room for all our channels but gave us the choice, so she chose channel 29.

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Gary continued his report by saying nearly all franchise fees and checks are in for the Second Quarter 2007. The exceptions are the 1% fees pledged from Kelso and Kalama. He has made several calls to follow up with when we may expect them. But neither finance clerk has responded with a commitment. 

The upstairs rental space has come up in discussion earlier this evening. Gary has shown the space several times as of late. The most recent gentleman, a contractor, did not want to rent the entire space. He was only interested in about half of the warehouse, but was interested in the apartment space for his church group. He also wanted to open up the windows for the natural light and was willing to provide the labor and materials.

Gary asked if the board first of all was willing to split up the warehouse space and secondly would allow the modification to the windows considering future façade remodeling may or may not reveal the second floor windows.

After much discussion the window exposure was approved with the understanding that they may not stay that way forever. Relating to splitting the warehouse space the consensus was it would be more difficult to rent the remaining half. Therefore Gary was directed to tell Mr. Newhouse it was best to rent the entire space and if he wanted to sub-lent, that would be up to him.

Gary was also directed to advertise the space in the Nickel Ads newspaper if this potential tenant was not interested. It was suggested that he also contact the Dollar Tree to see if they need any additional warehousing.

Suggestion of KLTV improving the property then renting it out office spaces was discussed and agreed the one final flaw would be that there is no parking space for this location. It was decided that warehousing was the best solution, unless someone signed a long-term lease and requested us to remodel the facility for their needs.

Under Unfinished Business Don MacDonald asked if we were going to entertain the Bingo Parlor offer or did it not die for lack of interest ? Gary explained that he understood Mr. Hiatt had approached a couple other non-profit organizations – one of which is giving the offer some serious consideration.

Hal Phillips was asked to address the Channel 11 Committee under New Business. Hal reported the committee met last Tuesday ( Sept 11) and had some good exchanges and some good ideas. One issue brought up that Hal particularly wanted to bring to board attention was an informal policy to allow independent producers to use the copy machine. Evidently, over the past couple months, use of the machine was abused, we ended up with a pretty good size copy bill and now no one other than staff is allowed to use it. Hal was curious if Linda had investigated the ability to assign codes to individuals so that copies could be tracked independently ?  Linda said that codes could be assigned and usage tracked. Hal then asked if the board wanted to allow such a use ?

Mark said he had comprised Barry Verrill about the subject and that each Access Center across the country is faced with the same thing. Barry suggests a tracking system with a monthly collection frame. 

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Hal made a motion to assign the machines coding system to independent producers who request it and charge them at cost price per page, to be billed on a monthly basis. Mike Kayser seconded the motion. Discussion surrounded the 20,000 copies that went through the machine some months earlier and focused on limiting use of the machine to immediate needs and not intended to compete with copy store prices. The question was called and the motion was passed.

Mark clarified the channel committee was formed to bring out for discussion a number of topics dealing with operation and procedures. Now that we will soon have an Executive Director we’ll leave it to him to make these type of decisions. Mark instructed the Channel 11 to meet one more time and report it’s findings to Barry.

Allan Rudberg suggested as Good of the Order that at the next Board Meeting we have an open house sort of affair to welcome the new Executive Director with open arms. Mark agreed that a meet the community night was a great idea would be in order, but felt he needed to clear with Barry a proper time to schedule such an event.

Gary shared a conversation with Rick Winsman of the Chamber who suggested a meet Barry function as well. Arlene suggested that KLTV should host an After Hours party with the intent to meet Barry and acquaint the community to the studio.

The Board recessed to executive session to discuss personnel matters. Mark explained there would be no formal decisions or matters voted on so for all practical matters the meeting was adjourned at 6:36 pm.

Minutes Approved ________________ By KLTV Board __________________________________
                                    Date                                                                       Secretary’s Signature