Frankly Speaking

On a night of many surprising civic election results across the region, there were a few mild surprises in Langley as well. Peter Fassbender failed in his attempt to become Langley City mayor again. While many expected a closer race, incumbent councillor Val van den Broek won the mayor’s chair by a healthy margin. She beat the former three-term mayor and one-term MLA by 206 votes. Also surprising in the City was the defeat of longtime councillor Jack Arnold, who has been a fixture on council for more than two decades. He finished 11 th out of the 16 candidates seeking election to the six councillors’ seats. Former councillors Rosemary Wallace and Teri James join the other four incumbents to form the next council. A third surprise was the second defeat in a row for former school trustee Candy Ashdown. She finished third out of five candidates for the two Langley City positions on the board of education. Newcomer Tony Ward topped the polls, and incumbent trustee Shelley Cobur...

Affordable housing and preservation of the existing rental stock have been important issues in the Langley City election. The City has some of the most affordable rental units in the Lower Mainland. It also has a much larger stock of social housing (per capita) than many other cities. The race for mayor in Langley City will likely be a close one – which should give voters in that community even more incentive than usual to get out to the polls on Saturday. Former mayor Peter Fassbender is seeking his old job back. Fassbender served as mayor from 2005 until he resigned in January, 2014 (in order to prevent a byelection). He had been elected as a BC Liberal MLA for Surrey-Fleetwood in May, 2013, and served in several cabinet positions during the 2013-17 term of the Christy Clark government. He lost his seat in the 2017 election. Ted Schaffer took over as acting mayor after Fassbender resigned, and ran and won election as mayor in 2014. He is not running again. Fassbe...

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 ge...