John Hedrick resigned as manager of public radio station KHNS effective Monday due to “management differences,” according to Lynn Canal Broadcasting board chair Russ Bowman.
He declined to elaborate. “That’s all personnel stuff I can’t get into.” Hedrick couldn’t be reached before press time Wednesday.
Friction between Hedrick and board members was evident at the board’s Aug. 12 meeting, where directors questioned Hedrick’s decision to terminate employee Leslie Ross and faulted him for shortcomings of the station’s annual fundraising drive, saying it got off to a late start.
Hedrick said he’d started on the fund-raiser a year ago. “I totally reject the statement that we started late.”
The station fell about $20,000 short of its $60,000 goal during its week-long marathon fund-raiser in early July. That was a drop of about $9,000 pledged during 2009.
Ross, who was hired in March, was back at the station this week and she and bookkeeper Georgia Giacobbe will share management duties until the next manager is found, Bowman said. “We’re going to take this deliberatively and we’re not going to rush anything. We’re going to evaluate what our needs are and go from there.”
The station is preparing a budget projection for its Sept. 2 meeting “to see what our financial health really looks like,” Bowman said.
A discussion of finances dominated the Aug. 12 meeting, where board treasurer Randy Wiley of Skagway lamented the situation, while Hedrick was more optimistic.
The station ended June with a loss of $25,000 and had $19,000 less in production income than it had a year ago, as well as additional payroll expenses from 2009, Wiley said. “It wouldn’t take much of these losses to do away with (our) $60,000 in the bank. We could go through $60,000 real fast.”
Skagway board member Deb Potter called the drop in fund-raiser contributions “significant” and she and Wiley called for a second, major fund-raiser to shore up finances, perhaps in the fall when Alaska permanent fund dividend checks are mailed.
Hedrick expressed reluctance for a second fund-raiser, saying it would force “a whole new way of doing things” and would be a “nightmare in the accounting department.”
Hedrick proposed saving money by not filling the program director position until after March. He said the drop in fund-raiser support was due to the economic recession and was expected. “If the creek don’t rise, we could be fully staffed by next spring.”
Wiley and Potter, however, said staff already is stretched thin and expressed concern that the station’s news director already was overworked. “The station is dying a death of a million cockroaches,” Wiley said.
Bowman said this week a second fund-raiser was unlikely. “Given what we have on our plate, that’s probably not going to happen.” He described the station’s finances as solvent. “We’re not in danger of going under.”
The station is pursuing a plan sought by Hedrick to increase hours of part-time workers to full-time and give them medical benefits. Under the plan, Giacobbe and Ross would get full-time hours and benefits.
Benefits previously went to full-time employees Hedrick and news director Tara Bicknell.
Hedrick, who has worked a variety of KHNS jobs since the mid-1980s and also served on its board of directors, was hired as manager in June 2009. He had also previously served as manager six years before he was terminated in May 2006 for complaints about his management style and relationships with station volunteers and community members.