Langley City Council adopted a revision of the city’s code of ethics at its regular monthly meeting April 18, which was crafted by the Langley Ethics Board. Board Chairman Bob Frause presented the updates to the city council at a meeting April 4.

The ordinance structure changed from five to seven sections, which outline the preamble, purpose, values, definitions, principles of conduct, administrative provisions, and review of an ethics training and advisory board. Frause said the board came to the conclusion that their main mission was to serve as an educational platform rather than looking to inflict punishment.

“We think we can make a lot more headway this way,” Frause said. “To try to explain how to be ethical rather than looking at punishing somebody that was accused of being unethical.”

Frause said another objective was to create core values for Langley. They added new definitions of ethics, restructured basic principles of conduct and eliminated punitive provisions.

The city council did not have any comments on the code for Frause, but added that they were thankful for the work the board has done. The board began work late last year.

“We’ve been working on that twice a month since September (2015) and this is sort of the culmination for our proposed revisions for you to take a look at,” Frause said.

Callison said at the April 18 meeting that the city’s attorney also looked at the ordinance and that he didn’t propose any changes.

The ethics board is responsible for leading ethics training for city staff, reviewing and revising the city’s ethics code, and reviewing any ethical complaints they receive.