Langley officials are once again considering condensing the number of citizen-led commissions, with an eye towards preserving city staff’s time.

During a special meeting this week, Councilmember Chris Carlson brought the topic to the city council, which has been a sensitive issue in the past. Langley has a total of 12 commissions, which equates to about 60 volunteers who serve on them. Some have argued this much volunteerism is an asset to the city, while others worry about draining already limited staff resources.

As Carlson pointed out, a lack of council and staff capacity to direct, oversee and support the commissions is a risk to the city and does a disservice to the dedicated volunteers.

“When you consider public records management alone, I think we really need to get much more strategic in how we engage the public in our decision-making processes,” he said, “and that short term ad hoc committees and the involvement of independent outside advocacy groups can provide all the great benefits of engagement and subject matter expertise that we want to see without the significant overhead and risk involved with these long-term, regularly meeting city commissions.”

Mayor Kennedy Horstman expressed appreciation for the commission members. Since becoming mayor last November, she has been involved in 18 appointments and witnessed 10 resignations.

“I want you to think of that in terms of what my role is and how hard I work,” she said, adding that she was embarrassed that it recently took her two weeks to get back to someone who had submitted an application.

Carlson suggested going down the list of commissions during a workshop meeting next month and deciding whether to carry each one through to 2025.

Councilmember Rhonda Salerno said members of one commission “got word from the paper” about what the council had decided before she had a chance to meet with them individually, and that a lot of people were offended and didn’t feel appreciated — despite the fact that this discussion occurred during a council meeting open to the public.

Councilmember Craig Cyr said that while he understood the rationale for Carlson’s proposal, he was truly worried about the potential impact to city policy.

Horstman suggested having conversations with the different commissions.

“There are really smart people on these commissions, and we may have creative ways that we can address the need for the engagement and the advocacy with less overhead,” she said.

Cyr encouraged every council member who is a liaison to one of the commissions to send an email quickly, just in case the information arrives to them in the Saturday paper.

Kristen Abraham, the city’s interim deputy clerk, pointed out that every commission gets the council packet with the meeting notice, which was sent out last week, and members have likely seen it already. One committee member commented during the meeting that she had seen it on the meeting agenda.

The council agreed to continue the commission conversation at the Oct. 28 workshop meeting.