PORT TOWNSEND — Despite Jefferson County Economic Development Council leaders efforts to mend fences with Mobilisa, the Port Townsend high-tech company’s chief executive officer on Friday said the fast-growing mobile and wireless systems development powerhouse will not return as an organization member.
Troubles began swirling around the Economic Development Council after a Dec. 21 story ran in the Port Townsend-based weekly newspaper, The Leader.
The story reported that Mobilisa CEO Nelson Ludlow was offended and angered after learning about comments Economic Development Council Executive Director Tamer Kirac made to his company’s marketing director, Christina Pivarnik.
Kirac reportedly told Pivarnik that Mobilisa was not contributing to local economic development because it hires employees from outside Jefferson County.
Contacted recently, Pivarnik confirmed the conversation but declined to discuss it further.
Ludlow also was offended by Kirac’s reported criticism of the company for not participating more in last year’s Economic Summit, which Pivarnik attended.
Ludlow, who along with his wife and Mobilisa chief financial officer, Bonnie, was named Port Townsend Chamber of Commerce’s 2004 Business Leader of the Year, pulled Mobilisa’s membership immediately after the conflict.
Ludlow accepts apology
In a written statement Friday to the Peninsula Daily News, the Mobilisa founder said he accepts Kirac’s apology.
Frontier Bank Vice President Lawrence Graves, who late last year took the helm as the development council’s president, said in late December that he personally met with Ludlow and also apologized on behalf of the agency immediately after the new story appeared.
While accepting Kirac’s apology over the comments made about the company, Ludlow wrote, “We still intend to spend our efforts for improving education and bringing in jobs via means that are more productive than attending meetings at the EDC.
“Over the last few years, I have been consistent that I do not share the myth that there are not talented people on the Olympic Peninsula. I believe the opposite is true.
“This area is a goldmine in finding people with outstanding qualifications. The real problem is lack of jobs, not lack of good people.
“Even if Tamer Kirac can find some statistic that companies have to hire 80 percent of their educated and trained people from outside the local area, why would they promote that? What company would want to move here if the EDC leader is saying that rubbish?”
Ludlow calls for promoting a “positive image that this is the best location: lower cost of living than Seattle, high quality of life, with hundreds of talented people living locally that are thirsty for good jobs, even to the point that they commute to Seattle for those jobs.”
The Mobilisa founder said brining jobs to the Peninsula was the answer, “not blaming the locals for lack of talent.”