Editor,

As I write this letter I am holding a slight lead in the primary election returns for the office of mayor of Langley. To this I would have to say, “somebody pinch me.” There is no way that when I arrived here three years ago that I would have imagined that I would be in this position.

I want to thank those community leaders who first saw me as a viable candidate and encouraged me to run. Thanks as well to the supporters, volunteers, and contributors who helped me every step of the way, so I didn’t feel like I was going it alone. Your trust and hopes for me and the City of Langley have kept me upbeat and positive when it would have been easy to be discouraged or negative.

Most of all, I want to thank the voters of the city who had enough faith in me and our shared vision for Langley that they spent their precious vote on me. I have been incredibly impressed by those of you who I have already met and spoken to, and hope to meet every resident before the general election in November.

I have never been in a place that had such a rich pool of experience, talent, creativity, and education in its residents before and I am awed by it every time I meet someone new. That has been the biggest upside to the campaign for me — all the interesting people I have met and to be able to hear their stories.

Congratulations to Thomas Gill for running a positive and professional campaign. I have a lot of respect for him and his service to the City of Langley. I would have enjoyed running against him in the general election. He is going to continue with what I believe to be a long and distinguished record of service in government.

My vision for Langley is simple and remains the same — sustainable growth coupled with economic and demographic diversification. We will all do the hard work together to fill in the details of how we will accomplish it. I will not insult you by promising you a lot of specific things now and later tell you that I can’t deliver them because of resource or jurisdictional constraints. You are too intelligent and would see right through that.

I look forward to serving Langley with pride.

TIM CALLISON

Langley