Other than one Record reporter, a few passing cars and people walking by, Thomas Gill was all alone at his first meet-the-candidate stint Monday night.

Gill, who was elected to the city council in an unopposed race in 2013, spent nearly two hours chatting about the city from a table with three empty chairs in the Second Street plaza. He is running for mayor against two other candidates, Tim Callison and Sharon Emerson, who have both held public meet-and-greets.

Gill said the lack of attendance might have been due to the event being held on a Monday night. Also, he didn’t do much to publicize the meet-and-greet other than send a notice to the paper late last week; it was published in the Saturday Record but the time of the event was accidentally omitted. The online story had all the details.

So, with his only audience a Record reporter, Gill highlighted some of the successes of the city and discussed some of the challenges it has faced and continues to confront. People come to Langley, so he feels it would be important as mayor to continue to see the city’s tourism draw grow. But Gill said there were other issues the mayor should tackle, such as the perception that the city is unfriendly to new businesses.

“I see a lot more people out and about,” he said.

If elected, he would want to continue that legacy of making Langley inviting for visitors and residents by pushing for improved infrastructure. One idea is to add a plaza feature to First Street and Anthes Avenue, similar to the one installed on Second Street in 2014. It would help connect the look of the city, he said, and improve pedestrian access, “to make it feel like a place we want to hang out and be.”

“The mayor needs to be an advocate of the city to the people who live here and also out to others to bring them here,” Gill said.

Diversifying the city’s businesses is also important, he said. Back in 2008 when the economy was in the doldrums, tourism spending dropped significantly, which drastically impacted Langley’s commerce and city hall’s revenue.

“There’s going to be a point, we saw it in 2008, when disposable income may dry up,” he said.

That led him to consider an idea previously touted by other city leaders, most recently Mayor Fred McCarthy to see a light industrial or small manufacturing zone established in city limits.

McCarthy is not running for re-election.

To help combat the perception that Langley is unreceptive or has too many regulations for businesses, Gill said he’d create a form that explains why the steps are necessary and try to eliminate others. Tidying up the standards for certain design elements to help some industries breeze through the Design Review Board process, he said, may make it easier for a new company to open up in Langley. Clearly explaining the necessity of certain steps would help improve relations, too.

Gill said the city’s back-and-forth with the owners of the Dog House Tavern served as a good learning lesson in the power of miscommunication. The city could have done a better job explaining its position to the property’s owners and to residents, rather than being slapped with a stigma that City Hall was dragging its heels just to be difficult.

“I’m glad to see progress is being made, but it should have been done a lot sooner,” he said.

Given the lack of participants in his first meet and greet, Gill said he planned to be back out in the Second Street plaza from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, July 16.