By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times
The Girdwood Board of Supervisors voted on its 2008 non-profit grant requests at its Dec. 17 meeting. Usually the requests are approved without a hitch, but this year, one request that was granted on a 4-1 vote has come under scrutiny—a grant for $14,800 for KEUL radio, Girdwood’s non-profit FM radio station.
KEUL is owned and operated by Girdwood Community Club, Inc. and known locally as Glacier City Radio and has been on the air for ten years. The station has received the Municipality of Anchorage non-profit recreation grants since 2005. The Municipality supports recreation in Anchorage but it didn’t extend to Girdwood, so the city added a $90,000 grant that the GBOS allocates as they see fit. The money provided by the grants comes directly from property taxes collected in Girdwood.
KEUL’s full request was for $19,785, but the GBOS approved 75 percent for a total of $14,800.
KEUL’s past grants include funding in 2005 when the station received $4,690. In 2006 the station received $5,000, and last year the GBOS approved a grant for nearly triple the amount at $13,000, including another $2,000 from a second grant from the municipality.
In addition to the 2008 parks and recreation grant, KEUL also received an additional $1,270 to replace the roof on a building that was donated to the Girdwood Community Club, Inc. back in the 50’s; the building is located next to Little Bears and will soon be the new home of KEUL after it’s remodeled.
Lewis Leonard is the President of Girdwood Community Club, Inc. He was contacted for this article but would not comment.
GBOS member Jim Henderson was the lone vote against KEUL’s grant request. Henderson said the funding amount was excessive and feels the grant money could be spent more judiciously.
“I think the contribution was far in excess of other public contributors,” he said. “I’ll do what the norm is, but I’m not going to do more than that.”
Since the board approved KEUL’s funding, Henderson has inquired about public funding for non-profit public radio stations like KSKA in Anchorage, which also services Girdwood through a translator and provides National Public Radio Programming. KEUL and KSKA are the only radio stations on the FM dial with clear signals in the valley. Henderson also contacted the National Foundation of Community Broadcasters in order to gain a better understanding of the type of funding provided to local non-commercial radio stations.
At KSKA, Henderson found that the radio station receives 75 percent of its funding from support from listeners and businesses, and the remainder of its funding is generated by grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as well as state funding; however, the station does not receive any funding from the municipality. Part of KSKA’s funding also comes from local donations by Girdwood listeners and businesses like Alyeska Resort.
The estimated operating cost for KEUL in actual cash paid out for programming and other services in 2007 was $35,350. With the current grant funding allotted, the station is relying on close to 50 percent of its funding from local grants, which may or may not be available in coming years.
Tim Cabana, chair of the GBOS, said the board inherited the grant program established by past GBOS members. Cabana is not supportive of the program and would like to eliminate the grants entirely because he feels it’s a waste of tax payer dollars.
“I’m not a big fan of the whole grant thing,” he said, “and we’re going to send everybody a little note about weaning people off,”
Other non-profits have received a steady stream of grants in the past five years like the Four Valleys Community School, which was given a grant this year for $25,000. Cabana said the FVCS was the first organization to receive a grant five years ago when it requested $20,000 to offset the loss of other funding.
Cabana said that once you allow one organization to apply for a grant, other non-profits must also be allowed to apply for grants, which lead to the current level of local grant allocations.
Other non-profit organizations that received grants this year were: Glacier Valley Ski Education Association ($11,000) and the Forest Fair Committee, which received two grants, one for the Campground ($6,538) and one to maintain the Park path ($13,000).
Cabana said he realizes the grants are a sensitive issue, and it’s difficult to say ‘no’ to community organizations that offer local services, but, he added, not everybody is happy in the community about using their tax dollars to fund these organizations.
Cabana and other GBOS members would like to see the non-profit organizations in Girdwood begin to be self-reliant financially, because there are a lot of needs in the community, Cabana said, and not enough money in the budget to meet all those needs.
KEUL services a year-round population in Girdwood of about 2,000 residents and another 2,000 second home owners. It’s a market size that is much larger than many rural commercial and noncommercial radio stations operate in.
For newly elected GBOS member, Bryan Epley, he believes the listener base in Girdwood could be a significant source of funding for KEUL.
“I’d like to see the radio station be more self-supporting,” Epley said. “They are providing a service, especially in emergency situations. The radio station is fairly limited where they can get funding, but if it’s always easy to get money from tax payers then they’ll always choose the path of least resistance. It’s definitely not an infinite pile of money.”
In general, the board members expressed their support for KEUL and the service it provides. The money provided to KEUL for 2008 will be used to pay the salary of a Volunteer Coordinator in order to “operate with day-to-day continuity” as was written in its application for the grant. It was further stated in their grant request that 50 percent funding ($9,900) would be the minimum level they would need to occupy the new KEUL in the Park. “Funding at this level will eliminate the Volunteer Coordinator’s position,” they wrote.
The application request further stated that funding of 25 percent ($5,000) would be “a no growth situation that would bring us to our minimum operational level and severely limit our music library archiving project…”
Finally, they wrote that if no funding was approved it would “bring us way below the value of our past service to the community and harms our commitment to the community.”
Henderson believes the community needs a local radio station, but he does not feel the community should shoulder the burden of responsibility to fund it.
“I think the station should be able to fund the majority of their costs,” he said, “but not through tax payer dollars.”
For GBOS member John Gallup, the Parks and Recreation Director, he said he has no problem with the grants KEUL received.
“I don’t mind supporting it with public money,” he said. “There’s a lot of things it does for the community. I’d like come up with a long-term formula for matching funds, so if he (Lewis) didn’t fundraise, we wouldn’t support him, and if he did fundraise, we would support him more.”
Whether this board or future board members (there are three seats up for election April 1) continue with offering grants to KEUL or any other non-profits is unclear. But if Cabana has his way, the grants will be eliminated entirely after next year.
“The way I’d do it,” he said, “with grant requests for next year is don’t ask for any more than half of what you got this year, and you need to show how you’re going to wean yourself off this next year, or else you’re not going to get anything. I don’t think the tax payer should be paying for this anymore.”