If you’ve not been following the Capitol Public Radio financial debacle over the past year, I congratulate you, because it’s a huge mess that’s taken up way too much headspace, airtime, and legal billing hours within the Sacramento Valley public radio listening community.
For those behind the curve, after a 12% layoff in October of last year, a financial audit revealed that Capitol Public Radio had suffered greatly due to what CSUS President Luke Wood described as “Total financial mismanagement.” This led Wood to announce that the university would assume operational control of the NPR station.
Today, as reported by the Sacramento Bee, we see that the “Capital Public Radio Endowment” board has sent a letter to Luke Wood at CSUS proposing that the operations of Capitol Public Radio be taken over by KVIE, Channel 6.
Included in that letter is an alarming report on the poor condition of the KXJZ transmitter, which is located on Sorento Road in Elverta.
The letter says that the Endowment has hired experts to evaluate the land and the tower, who discovered “significant deferred maintenance.”
The laundry list of issues includes generator replacement, guy wire tensioning and corrosion repair, tower painting, installation of a new security system, pump repair and maintenance, weed and insect control, junk removal, radio frequency testing, and refitting a flood mitigation wall/door.
These repairs are estimated to cost more than $400K. It was also discovered that the KXJZ and CSUS had not obtained property and flood insurance on behalf of the Capitol Public Radio Endowment.
The letter says that the Endowment, with over $4M in assets, owns the tower and the 36 acres it sits on, and that it allows CapRadio to use the tower for free, a benefit valued at $65,000 per year. In turn, CapRadio also collects rental income of $126,000 each year from other tenants using the broadcast tower.
The letter goes on to say “Including the cost of insurance and our consultants, we expect CPRE total expenditures on the tower to exceed $500K this calendar year. The station had the duty to maintain the tower under this arrangement, and had been doing so for years, especially since it was collecting all tower rental payments.” – And deferring maintenance the whole time.
