Bad idea, or bad timing.

And maybe a bit of both.

Four of five members of the Langley City Council said they don’t support the movement now afoot in the Village by the Sea to change the city’s form of government.

A clandestine group of Langley residents are currently circulating petitions to force a vote on the proposal during the August primary. If successful, the city would lose its elected mayor and instead, the day-to-day operations of city hall would be guided by a city manager, and not the mayor.

Four council members said the suggestion to adopt the council-manager form of government will prompt a hasty and divisive decision at a time when the city doesn’t need it.

Councilwoman Fran Abel said she strongly supports the current system, one where the citizens are in charge of picking their mayor.

“My mind’s made up and it has been for some time,” Abel said. “I want to vote for my mayor, or not.”

Abel said her decision wasn’t based on who is or gets to be mayor — it’s about those who make the choice.

“It’s not about personalities,” she said.

“It’s about the form of government we want. And if we have a manager, then the council is really in charge of the city,” Abel added.

Changing the system would mean less power to the people.

“I would like the citizens to be in charge of their government as much as possible,” she said. “I want as much citizen participation as I can possibly squeeze out of the situation. That’s the best we can do for our democracy.

“That means having citizens involved. And that means electing the mayor,” she said.

Councilman Bob Waterman acknowledged a point made by some who have suggested the switch — the mention made in the city’s comprehensive plan that the city should, sometime, consider the prospects of moving to the council-manager form of government.

It’s a valid idea to explore, he added.

But the council-mayor model, Waterman said, “has worked and is working quite well.”

“Personally, I think I don’t see the advantage of doing it, particularly at this time,” Waterman said.

It would be a costly change, he said, and hard to justify given the current economic climate.

“I don’t think it’s the appropriate time,” he said.

Councilman Hal Seligson agreed.

“I think that this is an extremely serious decision to be made, with long-term potential repercussions,” Seligson said.

He said he’d talked to some of the proponents of the change, suggesting they “might want to hold off on having an actual call for a referendum until there’s … more time to discuss the pros and cons.”

The petition drive has been a low-key affair. The few people who have been involved describe the effort as a grassroots attempt, and have declined to say who, if anyone, is leading the effort or the names of other organizers. That’s prompted some suspicion, and criticism, of the stealth effort in a town usually noted for high-profile and public activist efforts.

Mark Wahl, one of those involved in the petition drive, said earlier that supporters were hoping to get the proposition on the August primary ballot.

Given Langley’s population and number of registered voters, it’s been estimated that only 60 or so valid signatures would be needed to force a vote.

Seligson said he, too, wanted more time to learn about the experiences of other cities that have had city managers, and also wanted to know why some cities with that system had switched back to having a mayor on the ballot.

“I haven’t fully made up my mind about it,” he said.

“I really don’t feel that I know enough right now to make such a decision,” Seligson said. “And it’s too important of a decision to be making in the absence of sufficient facts.”

Most cities in Washington state use the council-mayor form of government. But in 54 of the 281 cities and towns in Washington, a professional manager is in charge of the operations of city hall.

Langley has flirted with the idea, but the proposal has never been blessed at the ballot box.

At the next council meeting, on Monday, council members are scheduled to discuss the attempt to change the city’s form of government.

Seligson, noting comments at a recent forum hosted by the League of Women Voters on alternative forms of city government, remembered how city managers work at the behest of the council, and not the citizens. A manager can keep three of five on the council happy, and stay employed.

Mayors answer to the people, lose office if they don’t, and can rein in the council with a veto pen.

“Even as a council person, I would prefer to have someone who had some degree of influence over my decision-making process than not,” Seligson said. “Someone who would be representing, working for the people of Langley, unlike working for the council.”

Councilwoman Rene Neff said she is “adamantly opposed” to putting the proposal on the ballot.

“The timing on this issue couldn’t be worse,” she said. “We have just begun to crawl out of the worst economy in decades.”

City staff have been bearing the brunt of cutbacks and an increased workload, Neff added, and changing the workings of city hall would be disruptive.

“To change governments now creates more instability at a time when we need to get our feet back under us,” she said. “To ask our dedicated staff to be in limbo about the direction the city is going is unsettling. The staff is very vulnerable at the moment and frankly I think feels threatened that this new form of government could put their jobs in jeopardy.”

Neff praised the job that Mayor Paul Samuelson has done as mayor, and said the petition drive seems politically motivated.

“We need to be looking at what is best for Langley, not what is best for individuals. This movement feels motivated by self-interests that are dissatisfied with the way things have gone, not because this new form of government would be the best thing for Langley,” she said.

“This feels very politically motivated and is being used to push an unspoken agenda. If you don’t like the current mayor, don’t vote for him. But putting this forward at this time is not the right thing to do,” she said.

Councilman Robert Gilman, however, said he supports the petition drive and has already signed one of the petitions.

“For what I hear from people in the community who have let me know they have signed the petition, they really want to have the conversation. If there are enough signatures, they are entitled to it,” Gilman said.

When pressed, Gilman said his support extends past the discussion of the merits of the proposed change in city government.

“If I had to vote today, my sense is that I would be in favor of it,” Gilman said.