BCTV Executive Director Tim Lindop was supposed to return to work Friday after his nearly month long vacation was scheduled to be finished. The date was noted at a recent BCTV board meeting when Board President Michael Hebert scheduled a meeting with Lindop on August 8th after learning that Lindop was returning to work on Friday August 5th.
On Friday Lindop did not appear at BCTV and sources say that he failed to even telephone the station to inform them of yet another unplanned absence.
By the end of June Lindop had already taken at least 36 paid days off at BCTV before his almost month long planned vacation started at the beginning of July.
Lindop has told reporters that he works weekends and nights to make up for his frequent absences, but staff have rarely if ever seen him in the building at these times and his vehicle has not been seen in the parking lot either. In June Lindop furnished the BCTV board with an accounting of his May work schedule which several staff and volunteers characterized as “pure fabrication”. For example Lindop stated that he had worked for 8 hours on Memorial Day but no staff members, who were working that day, ever saw him in the office.
During the time Lindop has been away the BCTV engineer, who is known in Brattleboro as Kelly McGowan, has been arrested several times for increasingly disturbing offenses and is being held on $10,000 bail. Lindop also ended Frederic Noyes’ Access Coordinator position in late June less than two weeks before what was originally billed as a two and a half week vacation. After Noyes’ firing, Lindop elected to add another week and a half to his vacation leaving a staff of two rather than the four or five employees typically staffing the station and no one to train or assist potential volunteer producers. Last weeks selectboard meeting was not shown on channel 8 because there was no on left at BCTV who could set up and coordinate the broadcast. The former Access Coordinator awaits a report from the BCTV personnel committee regarding charges that his termination was a retaliatory firing and an unwarranted termination. Lindop’s termination letter to Noyes noted a series of dates of meetings and conversations that Noyes disputes as having never happened. Other BCTV employees have confirmed to reporters that Lindop fabricated the dates and that no one at the station has received any written notice regarding job performance.
Will Lindop return to BCTV on Monday, a full month after he left town? Stay tuned and find out.