For the City of Langley there are some very exciting opportunities on the horizon but to achieve our potential we will need to deal with some very real weaknesses and challenges.
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Our main challenge for the next two years - Updating our finance and records management.
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The challenge of operating a small government agency has become increasingly difficult in the past few decades. State mandated requirements for financial and records management have put many small towns in a bind because they often didn't have enough revenue to hire qualified staff and purchase the software upgrades necessary to keep up. As a result, Langley has received bad financial audits from the State Auditor's Office for the past 6 years of audits and we fell far behind on our records management. To cut to the chase, our small community of 1,147 does not generate enough annual revenue to pay for the $300-500,000 cost of a software upgrade and to bring our records management up to par. While we have obtained a small grant to help, we will need to borrow internally so that we can pay for these improvements over a 4-8 year time frame. The problems took a couple of decades to get to the current state we are in and we will need to spread the costs out to catch up. Thinking that we can simply cut back on our already meager general fund expenses to be able to afford this desperately needed improvement is not realistic. Luckily, but spreading the costs out over several years and allowing the General Fund to borrow from other City Funds or a private lender, the financial impacts of these upgrades will be negligible, and we won't have to compromise the functioning of our City government with unnecessary cutbacks. If elected, I will fully support a multi-year financing solution to our records and finance department challenges.
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Our strengths:
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We have been very lucky to have been able to hire some highly qualified staff in the past two years, including a new city planner, police chief, hearing examiner, finance director, building inspector, administrative assistant, finance assistant, legal team, archive specialist and city administrator. I believe we now have the crew needed to face the challenges of 21st century governance. In particular, since we hired a specialist with a Master's Degree in Library Science, I am very please to be able to say that the situation with the City's records management has now been stabilized. While there is a lot of work yet to be done to organize digitize past records, if the City continues to invest in this position, we be in great shape in a relatively short period of time. With regards to our finance management, we need to buy a new software system as soon as possible ($100,000+ just for the software) and we will need. to run it in parallel with our existing system for 4-6 months for the transition period. This may require additional expenses and staff.
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Exciting Opportunities are on the horizon:
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In 2024, after several years of hard work from the City's planning staff and volunteer communities, as well as interest from other agencies and organizations, I believe we will see some major breakthroughs in terms of the creation of affordable workforce housing in Langley and surrounding areas. As your Council Member, I will fully support projects that fit with the needs and character of our community. Other areas I see improvement or exciting programs/projects:
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* Solar electricity produced on top of City Hall, the Library and other city facilities with back-up batteries to provide more resiliency in the face of power outages. In the long run, as more buildings and homes have renewable energy systems installed, Langley will be able to connect these systems with Micro-grids and achieve 100% freedom from the centralized grid that is highly prone to outages during storms. Micro-girds are popping up all over the world and the City of Ann Arbor has plans to run micro grids in parallel with the traditional grid until 2030, when they expect to achieve 100% self-reliance on locally produced clean energy. See this link for more details: https://www.a2gov.org/departments/sustainability/Documents/SEU%20FAQ_April%202022.pdf#search=SEU
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* Increased support for our small business community by using our Lodging Tax funds to encourage more business during the slow seasons.
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* Improved environmental efforts to protect our bluffs, restore our streams, deal with climate change and potential sea level rise.
* Improved street planning to decrease traffic speeds in certain areas and make our right of ways safer for bikes and pedestrians (Check out www.activetowns.org )
* Continue improvements in relations with local tribes and other government agencies, including with our ongoing efforts with the Tulalip Tribes to restore Saratoga Creek, and with the Port of South Whidbey on workforce housing and passenger only ferry service to South Whidbey.
* Intentional efforts for the Langley area to become a "Blue Zone," where seniors live happier, healthier and longer lives? Check out Secrets of the Blue Zones on Net Flix or visit: https://www.bluezones.com or see this article from the National Library of Medicine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6125071/
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