LANGLEY — Just go with whatever works.

That was the message from Ken Carter, the city manager of Carnation, to Langley residents who have been wondering if there may be a better way to run city hall.

The League of Women Voters of Whidbey Island hosted a “community conversation” on the two basic forms of city government, and brought in Carter and Pat Mason, a senior legal consultant for the Municipal Research and Services Center, to explain how a city manager-council model would differ from the mayor-council model that Langley now uses.

How city hall should be run has been a simmering topic in the Village by the Sea since controversy erupted last year over Mayor Paul Samuelson’s pay.

Carter, a seasoned veteran of city halls across the west, has more than 35 years in government and has served as both a city administrator and a city manager.

“I’ve been there,” he told the audience, adding that both models are appropriate ways of running a municipality.

“They all work,” Carter said.

What Langley really needs to decide, he said, was something that went beyond personalities.

“What do you as a community want?” Carter asked.

The city shouldn’t change its form of government simply because it doesn’t like the person who is currently calling the shots at city hall. That’s what elections are for, he said.

Moving to the city-manager model doesn’t guarantee a reduction in politics, either.

“If someone tells you a city manager is not political, they are lying. They are,” Carter said.

Even so, it’s the elected officials who set the vision for the city, he said.

“Carnation is not my town,” he said, stressing that elected council members set policy and give him his marching orders.

“I work there, I love the town, I love the people, I love the staff; it’s not my town,” he said.

City managers work for their councils, not the residents.

“They are the political leaders of the town,” Carter said. “I work for them.

“If I recommend X and they do Y, and I’m going, ‘Dadgummit, I didn’t like that.’ I have to put that smile on my face and go out and do exactly what they said to do. That’s my job, whether I like it, whether I don’t,” he said.

Managers give professional recommendations, give options, then implement what the council has enacted.

They also come and go, Carter said.

“On average, a city manager lasts about five or six years in a community,” he said. “There are some that only last a year or two.”

It’s a fact that calls to mind an old saying among city managers, Carter told the audience.

“A city manager should leave the same way he came in: Fired with enthusiasm,” he said.

The city manager-council form of government dates back to the Progressive Era, and found favor in cities that were plagued by corruption and political machines.

“The idea is to remove politics, to some extent, away from the administration of the city,” Mason said.

Even so, most cities in Washington use the mayor-council form of government, the model now used in Langley.

According to Municipal Research and Services Center, 226 of Washington’s 281 cities and towns — or roughly 80 percent — have a mayor-council form of government. A total of 54 cities and towns use the council-manager form. Carnation, a city with a population of 1,915, nearly twice the size of Langley, is the smallest town in Washington that has a city manager.

In a city manager-council form of government, residents do not get to vote for a mayor. Instead, the mayor is chosen by council members from their ranks, and the mayor serves as the ceremonial head of the city while the manager runs the day-to-day operations of city hall.

Under the mayor-council form, citizens elect a mayor to run the city. Mayors in that model sometimes hire city administrators to oversee operations.

Mason said there were two ways that a city can change its form of government, through a resolution passed by the city council to hold an election calling for a change, or by a citizens’ petition for an election. The citizens’ petition must be signed by registered voters who number 10 percent of the votes cast at the last general municipal election; in Langley’s case, that number is estimated at 50.

Then, a simple majority vote is needed to change the form of government.

Many in the crowd gathered in the Brookhaven Community Room had questions about what would happen next if Langley approved such a move. What would happen if the election were held in November, when the mayor’s position is also on the ballot?

Mason said if the measure passed, the person who received the most votes as mayor would still serve — but only in a temporary, four-year term as a council member. The council would grow to six members, but then revert back to five at the close of the mayor-turned-council member’s term.

“At the end of the term, that position goes away and you would go back to your five-member council,” Mason explained.