About LCF

The Langley Community Forum is an unusual and innovative organization -- don't be surprised to discover that it is different from what you first thought!

It exists to help those of us who are concerned about the town of Langley, WA to better communicate and cooperate with each other. It is open to everyone and is not tied to any particular political or special-interest point of view.

Our mission is to:

• Serve the long-term common good of the Langley community.
• Start and sustain a community conversation that is ongoing.
• Establish Langley as a model for local governance with significant informal citizen involvement.
• Be an information resource about Langley.
• Facilitate a community process for developing a vision for Langley, which guides the community and its local government.

The following diagram illustrates how LCF is organized:

We are a very open group and welcome participation from everyone. The Forum as a whole is made up of everyone on the e-mail list. This is the closest we get to having a 'membership'. Anyone who requests to be put on the e-mail list is put on and provision is made for including those without e-mail addresses. There are no dues or other requirements. (If you would like to get on the e-mail list, just click here. If you would like to find out more about what's involved in being on the e-mail list, click here.)

Most of the real activity within the Forum goes on in the working groups, each of which is focused on a particular issue or project and mostly runs its own show. We like to say that the Forum is more like a farmer's market than a supermarket. A farmer's market has certain basic ground rules, but individual vendors are each independent, self-managing entities. In a supermarket, each department is under the central management of the store (or chain), which dictate how things are done by everyone. In a similar way, the Forum has certain simple guidelines for working groups but otherwise they are self-managing and independent. They are not committees under the control of some central body.

Working groups are free to take positions on controversial issues facing the community, but in doing so they speak only for themselves, not for the Forum, since the Forum always maintains a neutral position. In fact it would be possible for there to be two different working groups that took opposing positions on the same issue. This is fine since the purpose of the Forum as a whole is to improve communications and involvement in the community, not to promote a particular point of view on a particular issue.

To find out more about how to start a working group go here. To find out about current working groups use the links at the top left of this page.

Each working group designates one of its members to be part of the Liaison group, which exists to enable the working groups to coordinate the timing, resources, and process of their various projects with each other. This coordination is completely voluntary -- the Liaison group has no authority over the working groups.

The Hearth group (for 'tenders of the Hearth') maintains the e-mail list and other administrative functions for the Forum as a whole, stays in touch with the various working groups to insure they are working smoothly, and pays attention to ways that the Forum could be improved. In doing these things it acts as an overall facilitator for the Forum as a whole.

These elements are linked together through:

• meetings and other activities of the working groups
• a monthly meeting for the Liaison and Hearth groups
• ongoing communications via this website (with its online conferencing system) and through face-to-face conversations, e-mail, phone, etc.

To find out in more detail about the Forum, look at our Guidelines and History.

But to really find out about the Forum, get on the e-mail list, come to a monthly meeting, and get involved. It's a lot of fun!