Dave Hall resigns Langley City council seat to fight cancer

Langley City Councillor Dave Hall resigned his seat on Monday, after seven years as a councillor. His resignation is for personal reasons, as he is fighting cancer.
Hall is a longtime Langley City resident, and served nine years on the Langley School Board, three as chair, before first running for council in 2008.
He and I disagreed on a number of issues over the years, particularly when he was part of the school board. He wrote a number of detailed letters to the editor which took issue with the editorial stance of The Langley Times, where I was editor from 1999-2015.
We agreed on more issues after he was elected to Langley City council. Even while on the school board, he was a proponent of financial transparency and careful spending, and this continued with his council duties. One wonders if the school district would have gotten into its financial troubles (more than $10 million was improperly accounted for, prompting a lengthy repayment process set up by the B.C. auditor general), had he remained a trustee.
When first elected to council, he pushed then-mayor Peter Fassbender and the council majority on a number of spending issues, and he was critical of a lot of city promotional projects. He felt that council expenses were too high and he questioned the fund, which uses casino profits, that council dips into from time to time to support pet projects that are not part of the regular budget process.
Most of his fellow councillors considered him a gadfly. He wasn't particularly concerned about this, as he felt his duty was to ask questions and make suggestions. 
He also wanted council to be more accountable at its public meetings, which often consisted of little more than the majority voting in favour of a motion with little or no discussion.
At budget time, he became positively prolific with his criticism. It cannot have been easy to listen to his often-lengthy presentations, particularly if you were another council member.
In my opinion, all members of council should do what he was doing - question the way your jurisdiction spends its money. That's why we elect councillors, MLAs, and MPs. If they aren't willing to do that (and many aren't), they cut administrators and deputy ministers too much slack. Taxpayers' dollars are hard-earned, and governments at all levels need to respect that, and pay more than lip service to it.
It's no coincidence that while many councillors have eased up on questioning detailed expenditures by city governments in the past 20 years, the costs of running cities has magnified far beyond the rate of inflation and population growth. Three and now four-year council terms, and political slates in many cities, have made that trend even more pronounced.
Voters in Langley City appreciated Hall's willingness to look under the rocks and question even small expenditures, and he topped the polls in last November's election, which he promised would be his last. He was more than 300 votes ahead of second-place finisher (and newcomer) Val van den Broek.
Hall seemed to get along better with Fassbender's successor, Mayor Ted Schaffer, with whom he  served while both were councillors. Schaffer is also much more willing to let council members discuss issues at the open council meetings, as it should be.
For a closer look at his political priorities, see his campaign page from last year.
I also got to know Hall better as both of us participated in the Cycling 4 Diversity ride  in Langley each year, an excellent initiative spearheaded by my friend Ken Herar of Mission. I hope he will be well enough to take part in future rides, as he is a passionate and committed cyclist.
I wish him and his family all the best as they undergo this fight, and I hope he will be sharing his opinions with the citizens of Langley City and the wider world for many years to come.