Kennedy: Board president ignores LynnCam’s rules

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a two-part series about the problems at Lynn Community Access & Media, or LynnCam.LYNN – Ed Sweeney, the former interim executive director of LynnCam, the city’s public access television station, got the word that he had been let go via e-mail at around 10:30 at night.”It just came out of nowhere,” Sweeney said during a telephone interview. “I happened to be checking my e-mails when I saw one from Karen (Chapman, president of LynnCam’s Board of Directors) saying they no longer needed me.”Sweeney said he had been hired as the temporary interim executive director after the board voted to replace Ken Kinnea, the longtime executive director, in October and actually agreed to move to Lynn before he could take the job.Former board member Jim Chalmers and current board member Dave Johnson say they are not only upset with the way Sweeney heard about his dismissal, but then by Chapman’s later decision to call the police to have the former interim executive director escorted out of the building after he was brought back following a meeting in February.Chalmers was out of state at the time and did not vote on the issue, but Johnson voted to let Sweeney go.”I had no idea until I got there that he was going to be released. I had nothing to substantiate his work. I had no position to starve them off? It was a kangaroo court. They had a plan to get rid of him,” Johnson said.But Chapman defended her decision to remove Sweeney, saying the board did not fire him, they just didn’t extend his interim executive director position.She also pointed out that the board sent Sweeney a letter inviting him to reapply for the permanent executive director position.Asked about the decision to notify him via e-mail, Chapman said she did that because she was writing up the minutes at home after the board meeting.”I said I’ll e-mail it to him. Yeah, it was 10 o’clock at night,” she said. “They (Chalmers and Johnson) feel bad for him. How about me? I’m the one who’s up at 10 o’clock at night doing work that’s not my work. But I never said a word. What am I going to say, I’m helping out. I’m doing everything for nothing here.”Chapman also maintains that she had the police escort Sweeney out of the building after the February meeting because he continued to show up for work and put in time sheets when – despite what Chalmers and Johnson say – the board never voted to bring Sweeney back in a temporary position.Making a point”He kept coming back. I’m like, what the heck’s going on?” Chapman said about Sweeney’s decision to keep working when she contends he had not been told by the board to return to work. “We’re supposed to keep paying somebody who’s not legal. ? “Chapman added, “He’s not supposed to be here. It was a point. There was a point made there.”And LynnCam attorney Emmanuel Papanickolas noted that the board then voted to pay Sweeney $4,500 for his work, even though they didn’t have to.”But in order to be fair, because he alleged he was here, we compensated him for when he was here.”But Sweeney contends the board did vote to bring him back in a temporary position and that he was stunned when he received another e-mail from Chapman.There was no reason given for his second dismissal, Sweeney said, but he decided to stay on because Chalmers and Johnson told him to stay.”Then Cynthia Demarcus (another LynnCam board member) showed up with the police to escort me out of the building,” he said of the day in April when the incident occurred. “That was my last day obviously.”Asked if he had any inkling about what was going to happen, Sweeney said, “No, none at all, I was with a few members and I went out to the reception area to give them some paperwork and the police were standing there ? “Sweeney had earlier attended a meeting on Feb. 10 that was attended by Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy, who he said spent most of her time “trying to bring the meeting into order.””People were yelling at each other, people were crying,” Sweeney