To the editor:

I love our village of Langley. I love to walk into town, to meet friends at Useless Bay Coffee, to drive down Third Street with that wonderful view of the town set against the water and the mountains, the special Clyde Theater and WICA, and the many good people who volunteer to help neighbors, but I don’t love it to death.

A community electing a mayor along with a city council is as American as apple pie and Norman Rockwell, and certainly fits the image of our lovely village, interacting with its elected officials.

But I think this model of governing the city is becoming like the insect trapped in tree sap which eventually becomes hardened to amber. It’s as though we can’t see the picture of our village as part of a larger community which is becoming more and more complicated, difficult to govern and fractious.

In order to preserve what I love about this town I want us to remain flexible and able to adapt to the changes that will surely affect us. I think remodeling our city government to a more effective way of governance, a council-manager form, will provide us with a bridge that protects what we have and love here, but enable us to deal with complexities that are already at our doorstep.

MARTY KORTEBEIN

Langley