The death of former Langley City councillor Dave Hall on Jan. 4 was a shock to many people, in particular his former council colleagues and the voters who propelled him back into office atop the polls in November, 2014.
He had resigned his seat on Nov. 23, after serving seven years as a councillor. His resignation was to fight cancer. Sadly, he didn’t win the fight. A byelection to fill his seat takes place in February.
He served almost two decades in office in Langley, first as a school trustee and then as a councillor. He served one term as chair of the Langley School Board. He first ran for council, and was elected, in 2008.
Hall and his family lived in Langley City for many years. He was a longtime teacher in the Surrey School District, before retiring just a few years ago.
He and I disagreed on a number of issues over the years, particularly when he was a member of the school board.
He wrote a number of detailed letters to the editor which took issue with the editorial stance of The Times, during my years as editor.
We agreed on many more issues after he was elected to Langley City council. Even while on the school board, he was a proponent of financial transparency and careful spending, and this watchfulness over taxpayers’ dollars continued with his council duties. One wonders if the school district would have gotten into its financial troubles (more than $10 million was improperly accounted for, prompting a lengthy repayment process set up and monitored by the B.C. auditor general), had he remained a trustee. When first elected to council, he pushed then-mayor Peter Fassbender and the council majority on a number of spending issues, and he was critical of a number of city promotional projects. He felt that council expenses were too high and he questioned the fund, which comes from casino profits, which council dips into from time to time to support pet projects that are not part of the regular budget process.
Most of his fellow councillors considered him a gadfly. He wasn’t particularly concerned about this, as he felt his duty was to ask questions and make suggestions. He also wanted council to be more vocal and more accountable at its public meetings, which often consisted of little more than the majority voting in favour of a motion with little or no discussion.
At budget time, he became positively prolific with his criticism. It cannot have been easy to listen to his often-lengthy presentations, particularly if you were another council member.
In my opinion, all elected officials should do what he did as a matter of course — question the way your jurisdiction spends its money.
That’s why we elect councillors, school trustees, MLAs, and MPs. If they aren’t willing to do that (and many aren’t), they end up cutting administrators and deputy ministers too much slack.
Taxpayers’ dollars are hard-earned, and governments at all levels need to respect that, and pay more than lip service to it.
It’s no coincidence that while many councillors have eased up on questioning detailed expenditures by city governments in the past 20 years, the costs of running cities has magnified far beyond the rate of inflation and population growth.
The move to four-year council terms, and political slates in many cities, has allowed this trend to become even more pronounced.
Voters in Langley City appreciated Hall’s willingness to look under the rocks and question even small expenditures, and he topped the polls in the November, 2014 election, which he promised would be his last. Sadly, that pledge was prophetic.
Hall seemed to get along better with Fassbender’s successor, Mayor Ted Schaffer, with whom he served while both were councillors. Schaffer is also much more willing to let council members discuss issues at the open council meetings, as it should be.
I was fortunate to get to know Hall better as both of us participated in the Cycling 4 Diversity ride in Langley each year, an excellent initiative spearheaded by my friend Ken Herar of Mission.
Hall was a passionate and committed cyclist and exercise buff.
He was looking forward to the opening of the new Timms Centre and hopefully council will remember his contributions in some significant way at the new centre.
No plans for a memorial service have been announced yet, but I’m sure many members of the public will want to attend to honour his memory and help support his family.
— Frank Bucholtz is a retired editor of the Langley Times his Frankly speaking blog can be found at frankbucholtz.blogspot.ca.