It’s unusual for municipal councils to spend much time on approving their meeting agendas, but that process turned into a 20-minute argument at Langley Township on Monday, Jan. 26.
The current council is divided between five members of Mayor Eric Woodward’s Progress for Langley slate and four independent councillors.
Independent Councillor Margaret Kunst had a motion on Monday’s agenda about municipal wells, and the potential to drill new ones to reduce Township reliance on Metro Vancouver water during emergencies and peak water usage times.
Coun. Michael Pratt, elected as an independent but now with Progress for Langley slate, made a motion to change the agenda, removing Kunst’s motion and also a delegation by Cheryl Wiens on the same issue. He proposed moving both Kunst’s motion and Wiens’ delegation to the Feb. 23 meeting.
When Kunst asked why he wanted to defer those items, Pratt said he hadn’t had enough time to talk to Township staff about the motion.
“I think we’ve had almost a month and a half with this,” Kunst said.
The motion was originally to have been heard at a December meeting, but it was delayed after Kunst was ill and couldn’t attend.
Councillors Kim Richter and Blair Whitmarsh then noted that Wiens was there and ready to speak, and had likely cleared her scheduled to be available in the middle of a weekday afternoon.
“They have taken time off work to be here,” said Coun. Barb Martens, who was elected as a Progress for Langley member but has since left the slate.
With all the independent councillors favouring at least hearing from Wiens, the Progress for Langley councillors stuck to pushing both items off for a month. By a five-to-four vote, the agenda was changed, and both Kunst’s motion and Wiens’ delegation were removed.
Before that vote there was considerable back and forth. Progress Councillor Steve Ferguson mentioned that Richter hadn’t been at the last meeting in December, which the mayor picked up on.
“I believe you were on a cruise at the last council meeting,” Woodward said to Richter.
“What does me being on a cruise have anything to do with this meeting?” Richter said.
There were a number of calls for a “point of order,” which is an objection to a breach of meeting procedures.
“Can we stop with the personal jabs at people?” said Martens, saying she was calling for a point of order on the basis of decorum. The mayor said that was not a legitimate point of order so the meeting would move on.
“What a wonderful start to 2026 everyone, this is fabulous,” Woodward said sarcastically after the vote on the agenda.
Following the meeting, Kunst told the Langley Advance Times that she would have been happy to defer her motion to a later date if other councillors wanted more time, but her request didn’t even get a chance.
“We could do better,” she said of the way meetings are taking place.
She said there’s been issues since the start of the term.
“I just felt like it’s always had a lot of tension at the council table,” she said.
It feels like as an independent councillor, she has to jump through a lot of hoops, she said.
The mayor, asked after the meeting, said the opposition was making increasingly provocative behaviour to elicit a reaction.
“They’re just levelling non-stop personal attacks,” he said.
Civic elections take place this October.