On Saturday, Langley City held the first meeting of our Citizen's Assembly on Community Safety. The Assembly will be looking into how we can meaningfully improve safety in our community and shift response away from emergency services, which is reactionary to proactive solutions. The Assembly will have experts, researchers, and facilitators to support their work.
A Citizen's Assembly differs from a regular City Committee in several ways. One difference is that the Citizen's Assembly membership reflects the makeup of people in our community and is a form of direct democratic process.
A regular City Committee has people appointed by Council from the community who are passionate about a topic, representatives from organizations working within the topic area, and members of City Council. The Arts, Recreation, Culture and Heritage Committee has specific membership requirements. For example, one person on that committee must be from the performing arts community, and another must represent heritage.
The Citizen's Assembly also has significantly more financial and staffing resources behind it as the Citizen's Assembly will be putting forward solutions for a complex challenge.
Council met the 29 people who are the Citizen's Assembly. The City hosted a welcoming ceremony. After the ceremony, the Citizen's Assembly got to business.
There has been a lot of interest in the Citizen's Assembly. You can follow along with the Assembly as the City will post information online. You can also sign up for email updates on the City's website. There will be opportunities for broader public participation throughout the process.
The City put together a small video from the welcoming ceremony.
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