Letters to the Editor
Letter to the Editor | Former Gig Harbor mayor says PenLight needs to change
Every person that has a Penlight bill is an owner of the company. That is right, it is owned by everyone that has a power bill. You paid a share at the beginning to be an owner.
Yet CEO Jafar Taghavi runs Penlight like a dictator where he chooses to do whatever he wants and the board is not approachable to us.
I got my first taste of this when I was Mayor of Gig Harbor. In 2019 Penlight hacked the trees on the East side of Stinson by the sidewalk in half without even talking to the city. When we contacted them, their answer was, “We can do whatever we want and do not have to ask you”. Then we realized the city’s Franchise agreement with them had expired. So, Jeff Langhelm, head of Public Works, and I proceeded to meet with Jafar to discuss so we had some say within our city as to what they do.
We set up an appointment. When we met, we found out we were off limits to Jafar after he was rude to us in the hallway. He told us that they did not need the city and were not interested in renewing the franchise agreement as they were more powerful than us and that they did not need to abide by any city rules. Then away he went and we were only allowed to have the meeting with his right-hand person. Nothing further happened. I realized the only way we were going to get any change was to write to each individual board member as Jafar would not let us talk with the board.
The board is unapproachable as you have to go through the CEO to ok anything. Unfortunately, Covid hit and we were not able to write each board member to make some progress. To this day the city is working with an expired franchise agreement.
The board meetings are not open to the public, nor are their meetings recorded. Many of the same board members sit on the board for 20 years or more. Rotation rarely happens within the board. The CEO salary is over half a million, actually $564,000 in 2024 of our money. I believe he does not have a yearly review.
I thought the people owned it.
Now Penlight wants a very expensive headquarters for the CEO and its board members. We are not allowed to know about it, or how many tens of millions it will cost or even be allowed to vote.
But they are in trouble now with a board member, Paul Alvestad a good person and have axed him for trying to tell the public about it.
Please vote for board members that do not act like robots to the CEO. Hopefully we can find board members that allow the public they serve to have a say on the proposed new headquarters which we will be paying for.
Sincerely,
Kit Kuhn
Gig Harbor