January 11 Council Meeting: Volunteer committee accomplishments, $400,000 pedestrian bridge replacement, declaring a national opioid overdose crisis

Usually, Langley City will host in-person Youth Week activities in May, Community Day celebrations in June, and the Magic of Christmas parade in December. The Youth Committee, Community Day Committee, and Magic of Christmas Committee handle these events. The committees include City staff, students, volunteers from the community, and City council.

In-person events could not occur in 2020, so these committees pivoted to providing other community-based experiences.

For example, the Community Day Committee put together a scavenger hunt consisting of ten riddles to solve, requiring people to visit local parks this summer.

The Magic of Christmas Committee produced a local holiday lights virtual tour and a social media ‘Countdown to Christmas’. The committee provided funding for additional Christmas lights in McBurney Plaza.

The Youth Committee suspended their work on Youth Week 2020 to plan for future years. As a result, they shifted to raising awareness around social and environmental issues in our community.

Council received a report about these committees on Monday. I was impressed by the creative ideas that our committees came up with to enable community building experiences that were not in-person events.

On Monday, Langley City council approved applying for a $400,000 grant from the federal “COVID-19 resilience infrastructure stream” to replace the safe but rickety pedestrian bridge near 206A Street with an accessible 3-metre wide steel bridge.

Location of the bridge to be replaced in the Nicomekl River Floodplain near 206A Street

Langley City council received a letter from the City of Kamloops calling for the federal government to declare the opioid overdose crisis a national public health emergency, decriminalize person use of drugs, and ensure that there are pharmaceutical alternatives to toxic street drugs. Council referred this letter to City staff to formula a potential letter that City council could send to the federal government on the same topic.

Council indirectly received an email from our MP Tamara Jansen regarding her comments that Langley City is a “Ghost Town.” Due to technical issues, the discussion of this email was cut-short and deferred to a future council meeting.