January 8, 2020

Board members present: Kim Kay, Denise Reynolds, Doug Hughes, Dallas Carter, Jordan Selburn, Steve Sammonds, Jen Maggio, Barbara Heninger, Michael Hirsch

Ex officio: Sara Dean (Executive Director), Doug Hughes (Marketing Director)

Contents

Actions

  • Jen Maggio is going to check out the per diem rules.
  • Sara is planning to talk to Earl from WVLO about what they plan to do to pay persons.
  • Dallas will follow up with lawyers in his office for recommendations for an employment lawyer
  • Jen, Jay, and Sara meet to discuss the past intention around ED bonus, and the current salary requirements to match Sara’s current full-time hours
  • Board to hold an executive session, either in person or virtually (by phone) to discuss Sara’s salary and bonus situation within the next three weeks.

Motions

Motion to add the $2.50 city surcharge to the tickets for all future ticket sales for this season effective as soon as feasible. – PASSED 6 Aye, 1 abstention

Motion to adopt a $15 per diem for volunteer cast, crew, and musicians for rehearsals and performances that are full company call, in order to comply with AB5 law. Applies to shows after She Loves Me. This supersedes the decision made at the January 3 Board meeting. – PASSED 5 Aye, 2 abstentions.

Reports Sent Separately – See Board Drive

AB5 Follow-up

Local theaters (Hillbarn, Tabard, City Lights, South Valley, SBMT, WVLO, others) met Monday to discuss their plans to address AB5. It is not possible to come up with a ‘one size fits all’ policy at this time – situations are different, and the law is still vague.

Several groups have learned that if you pay musicians as independent contractors, it is a direct violation of AB5.

Per diem payments

Suggestion arose to treat musicians, performers, and crew as volunteers only, and pay them a ‘per diem’ for services. Sara has not had a chance to research per diem completely, but in California it appears that volunteers can be paid a per diem up to $65. That is non taxable. It doesn’t count toward the $500 volunteer payment limit. City Lights seems to be planning to use this that for actor volunteers. Rehearsal and performance days would be kept track of, the actor would receive a lump sum at the end.

Every volunteer must be the same rate. So, musicians and actors would receive the same daily rate.

Right now musicians get about $23.50 per service for 17 services – both rehearsals and performance.

Sara calculated that if all actors, crew, and musicians received $15/per diem, everyone makes $255. This means the orchestra would make less. Therefore, for She Loves Me, we would pay what we had already promised the musicians, which is more.

Ticket surcharges from Saratoga

We currently do not ask our patrons to pay the Saratoga ticket surcharge (WVLO does). Suggest adding the ticket surcharge back for any tickets sold going forward (including remaining tickets for She Loves Me). Rough calculation of the tickets remaining to be sold for this season, we would make back $7,500. We would have to make an announcement to customers that due to AB5, we have to add the service charge back onto the tickets

Other Ideas

Should we consider not paying actors again? (No response recorded)

This affects stage managers as well, they fall into the same category as cast, crew, and orchestra. We are making them volunteers, because we cannot afford to pay them as an employee for rehearsals. So consider having a volunteer stage manager for rehearsals, and a hired stage manager for performances.

Motions re AB5

Motion to add the $2.50 city surcharge to the tickets for all future ticket sales for this season effective as soon as feasible. – PASSED

Motion to adopt a $15 per diem for volunteer cast, crew, and musicians for rehearsals and performances that are full company call, in order to comply with AB5 law. Applies to shows after She Loves Me. This supersedes the decision made at the January 3 Board meeting. – PASSED 5 Aye, 2 abstentions.

Budget / ED Compensation

Jen Maggio estimates that we would show a loss of about $25,000 for the season with the current budget changes for AB5. We currently have about $87,000 unallocated in cash reserves. By the end of June, our reserves would be $58,000. We could address some of that with ticket prices for next year (and charge the surcharge starting this year).

The ED was promised a bonus of whatever income we earned over budget in this season. Due to AB5, that does not seem likely this year. How could we honor the bonus agreement? Suggest we remove the increase in expenses for AB5, and give her the bonus promised.

In addition, the ED is now a full-time position, but Sara is only being paid for part-time. We need to address this. We proposed:

  • Jen, Jay, and Sara meet to discuss the bonus intention and the salary requirements of Sara,
  • Board to hold an executive session, either in person or virtually (by phone) to discuss Sara’s salary and bonus situation within the next three weeks.

See Jen’s report for the rest of treasurer details.

Reports

Marketing

see Doug’s report. Showed the draft for the classes.

Executive Director

There are now only two rights managements organizations, MTI and Concord (new). We were pursuing these shows for 2021-22:

Little Night Music, Sound of Music, and Little Shop of Horrors

However, Little Shop of Horrors is very expensive just to rent (not including the rest of the production), so now we are looking at Joseph and Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (unit set, large dancing cast, children to pull in parents, simple costumes, easy to do).

Brad’s show (Songs I Wish I’d Written) is coming along, Sara is trying to fill some staffing gaps/

Artistic Development & Vision team

  • Will focus on services over goods, (e.g rentals is not the group’s focus). Classes fit in with our organization’s core values so focus more on that. New classes and curriculum for next round are being set up.
  • Artistic vision, looking at Starbright as a small theater to do small cast shows for a second, alternate season.
  • Trying to populate the board site for classes, adding performers and musicians.

Organization team

There is a statement of purpose, from Jen M. (See her minutes). Looking at SBMT’s system infrastructure; looking at contingency planning (but now AB5 changes all that); looking at all our shared drive information. Suggest expanding the financial budget to a 3-5 year budget. Look at Board recruitment.

Minutes: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fiVjl1LyPdWvuSobR1XQeRBouor-nSRa

Outreach committee

Came up with a list of 8 people who might help us with outreach. Jen P was going to talk to those people, but she’s very sick. Community outreach – little videos with minorities and people about inclusiveness.

Fundraising

See Jen M’s treasurer’s report. Donation drive is at $13,000 toward our $25K goal.

Respectfully submitted by Barbara Heninger, January 12, 2020