Approval of Increase of Purchase Order No.250544, Jack Hammer Audio from $50,000 to $80,000 for monthly sound equipment rental at the Sunrise Theatre.

The Sunrise Theatre began renting sound & audio equipment in January 2025 as the equipment that had been used previously became inoperable. The Sunrise Theatre has an ongoing legal conflict with a previous contracted employee. The former staff member installed sound equipment without the consent of the Executive Director at the time. In December 2024, the former employee arrived at the Sunrise Theatre to retrieve his equipment that our venue was still using. Due to the change in leadership, the current staff of the Sunrise Theatre were unaware of the legal procedures they should have taken when the owner of said equipment arrived to uninstall it and pick it up. Enough of the equipment was obtained by its original owner that it left our audio system inoperable. The previous equipment owned by the Sunrise Theatre, that was uninstalled in early 2021 by this former employee, is also inoperable as the equipment is outdated and does not serve the needs of the events booked at the Sunrise Theatre for the 24-25 Season. It is important that the Sunrise Theatre maintains the audio system that we currently have installed as we are contractually obligated to have this specific equipment for upcoming events booked. In the long term, having this equipment saves the Sunrise Theatre money as we no longer have to rent as much audio gear on a per-show basis.

The Sunrise Theatre staff have looked into and received a quote for a lease-to-own agreement for the current equipment installed so that the amount of money spent on this year's rental can go towards ownership of this equipment. In April 2025, we were quoted $105,200 to purchase the equipment currently installed, to be paid in monthly installments. This total price is discounted based on what we have already paid to Jack Hammer Audio. Due to RFP No. 2025-017 for the Sunrise Theatre Operations Concession, the option for lease-to-own has not been looked into further, and we have been advised to continue to rent the equipment. The monthly cost of this rental is $6,720. The cost of purchasing this equipment would be well over $150,000.

In April 2025, the soundboard (a piece of equipment that is owned by the Sunrise Theatre) crashed three hours prior to our concert: Air Supply. The soundboard was over 10 years old and originally purchased used. This product would cost anywhere from $25,000-$30,000 to repurchase new. Due to this emergency, as the band refused to perform without this type of soundboard, we added a soundboard rental to our monthly cost. Our monthly sound rental cost increased to $7,995. We are planning on returning the soundboard during the months of August and September as we have no events booked in our main theater, bringing our rental cost down to $6,720 for the months of August and September.  

The Sunrise Theatre staff recommends the approval of increasing the PO No. 250544 for Jack Hammer Audio.

Deny the increase.

Marisa Quijano, Acting Executive Director
Holland Ryan, Technical Director

Finance Department