Crafting and curating the look and feel of Langley may become the purview of the city’s Design Review Board sooner rather than later.

Board member Ron Kasprisin reported to the city council at its Sept. 8 meeting with a short and complicated message. He asked the council to expand the design board’s role so that it could create design standards for the city, potentially setting parameters for a distinct look or options for what Langley will look like.

Fellow Design Review Board member Janet Ploof confirmed that the board is unanimous in its willingness to accept a bigger role with city aesthetics.

Langley’s current Design Review Standards are encompassed in a five-page document. It covers the process of a pre-application meeting, formal application procedure, design documents, siting, landscape considerations, building considerations, etc. — but applications go before the city’s building officials, not the review board.

Most of the board’s duties in recent years have been to review, reject or approve signs and painting requests for downtown Langley. Business signs are limited by size restrictions and construction materials; that’s why there are no billboards or large neon signs in the city.

“We like doing signs, we’ll continue doing signs,” said Kasprisin, a retired professor of architecture and urban design at the University of Washington.

But the design board is prepared to make a leap from those responsibilities to something greater. Establishing guidelines for what a development or a building will look like — its exterior, shrubbery, lighting, etc. — is a way to ensure greater control over Langley’s character.

“My feeling is our standards are kind of loose, but we’ve got an artist community,” said Design Review Board Chairman Bob Dalton in a phone interview Thursday. “If we try to become a cookie cutter town, that’s not going to work either.”

“We walk that minefield into a town that looks really nice,” he added.

As an example of the sometimes ambiguous nature of the design standards, the facade and exterior surfaces section of the building consideration calls for “surface color, finishes and articulation should be appropriate to the building and townscape. Long, monotonous, unlandscaped walls shall be avoided.” It also calls for historical references, such as classic moldings, door and window pediments, and roof finials “when appropriate.”

The change, said Dalton, would be a restoration of authority for the citizen board. It was not immediately clear when an old system changed, and attempts to clarify by press time were unsuccessful.

True design and architecture, what a building looks like and how those elements combined create a vibe in a small city, are what the DRB is pursuing.

Jack Lynch, a former planner of 22 years for Langley, said the Design Review Board was formed while he worked for the city. At the time, the board had authority to review commercial and multi-family housing projects — not single family residences — against design standards.

“I thought for the most part, it worked quite well,” Lynch said.

“The actual experience was that they weren’t a burden. In fact, in some cases, they helped make for a better project,” he added.

Why the board’s duty of reviewing such projects was later abandoned was not known by Lynch, who said that it happened several years after his tenure ended in 2004.

Kasprisin said the city wanted to curate a unified, not uniform, aesthetic. Something less monotone than a place like Leavenworth, with its fabricated and successful Bavarian design, but more identifiable than a place like Freeland.

Such guidance would have helped the owners of the Dog House Tavern, who for years have claimed that the city has stalled their restoration and renovation process because, as owner Charlie Kleiner said, the city didn’t know what it wanted other than to see everything done the same as it was.

Kasprisin and the other design board members were not alone in their vision of Langley needing more and better defined design standards. Councilwoman Rene Neff voiced her support for expanding the board’s role.

“I agree with you,” she said to Kasprisin. “I think we’re at a precipice and need some really solid help.”

Something for the board and city to sort out is where the authority will begin and end. Kasprisin said he would like to help lay the groundwork for future housing and development, while Dalton said he has no interest in telling people what their home can look like.

“I personally don’t want to look at people’s houses,” Dalton said. “That’s a personal choice. If you want to build a hovel and live in it, your neighbors aren’t going to love it, but that’s great.”

To help craft the standards, the board is reviewing several other cities such as Issaquah and Redmond, as well as some small coastal towns in Oregon more akin to Langley’s size. From there, they may seek public input on what commercial and/or housing elements should be cemented into code, and which should be left to the builder and owner.

“We don’t want to be so rigid that we’ll scare people away,” Kasprisin said.

“We want to protect the historic stuff and preserve what is historical architecture, but we also want to encourage authentic identity,” he added.

The next Langley Design Review Board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15.