Progress for Langley: the record behind the promises

Progress for Langley is Mayor Eric Woodward's slate. It holds five of nine seats on Township council and is running nine candidates for mayor and council in the 17 October election. It has not published a written plan for the next term. Instead, it is running on its record, under the slogan "Growth paying for growth, not taxpayers."

This profile covers the slate's candidates for mayor and council. Its five school trustee candidates will be covered in a separate article on the school board race, with one exception, explained near the end.

At a glance

Each point is our reading of Progress for Langley's policies and platform.

Under each item, ✅ marks where we think it fits our values, and ⚠️ marks a concern. A point with no concern is not an endorsement.

• 💰 Growth should pay for growth. New development, not existing taxpayers, should cover the cost of the roads, parks and facilities growth requires.
  • ⚠️ In 2025, a court struck down the Township's amenity contribution policy, which this council had sharply raised. The public hasn't been told what that means for the projects relying on that money. Fees on new homes get passed on in home prices and rental costs. In 2024, the Township's development charges per apartment were roughly double Surrey's new rates.
• 🧾 Careful budgets. The slate says it paid off long-standing capital debt funded by property taxes, and found $13 million in operating savings.
  • ⚠️ The Township has also authorized about $602 million in debt, which CBC reported is the highest per-capita load of any major BC city. Repayment depends on development revenue continuing, just as long-term borrowing costs are rising.
• 🏗️ Catch up on infrastructure. The slate says it has made real progress on roads, parks and facilities that were neglected for years, including 208 Street, the 212 Street connector and 80 Avenue in Willoughby.
• 🏒 Build recreation now. The Arenas at the Langley Events Centre, Smith Athletic Park, 11 pickleball courts, and a new library under construction in Aldergrove.
  • ⚠️ Willoughby, one of the Township's fastest-growing areas, still has no confirmed timeline for its own community centre, pool or library. Council began planning for a Willoughby pool in 2022, but the Township cancelled its 2025 call for a builder. We found no current budget or timeline.
  • ⚠️ The slate's biggest recreation dollars have gone to facilities built mainly for organized sports, like arenas and sports fields. Those often take money, gear and time that many families don't have. A community centre with a pool, drop-in programs and a library serves far more people, including kids, seniors and lower-income families.
• 🌳 More parks. A 40-acre nature park in Fernridge, plus upgrades from Walnut Grove to Aldergrove.
  • ✅ Protecting 40 acres as a nature park is the kind of land stewardship we want to see.
• 🏘️ Housing. The slate has published no housing policy or platform for the next term. Its record shows a council that wants growth, but on its own terms and timeline. It approved new homes quickly, about 6,000 by late 2023 by the mayor's count, and put Township land to work for rental housing. It also resisted provincial rules for more homes near SkyTrain and on single-family lots, and kept fees on new homes among the highest in the region.
  • ✅ Putting public land to work for nearly 250 rental homes, through the Housing Trust and BC Builds, is exactly the kind of housing policy we want to see more of.
  • ⚠️ The Township's first tenant protection bylaw is a real step for renters in the buildings it covers. But it exempts the Township itself and its Housing Trust, which is building hundreds of rental homes. It also leaves out buildings with fewer than five units, and pays long-time tenants less than Langley City does.
  • ⚠️ The Housing Trust's borrowing is not publicly reported alongside the rest of Township debt.
• 🗺️ Planned growth. Phased development in Willoughby and Brookswood-Fernridge, new Willoughby plans, and the 200 Street 2040 and LEC 2040 reference plans.
  • ✅ The 200 Street 2040 plan aims for walkable, transit-oriented neighbourhoods along the corridor.
  • ⚠️ Near the Township's future Willowbrook SkyTrain station, the mayor pushed back against provincial density rules, and the Township missed the province's 2024 deadline to designate the area.
• 🚌 Transit. Detailed design and priority status for 200 Street bus rapid transit, and transit service to the Gloucester industrial area.
  • ✅ Rapid transit on 200 Street is the strongest transportation item on the slate's list.
  • ⚠️ Apart from traffic calming, the rest of its transportation list is road projects. None is described as a pedestrian walking or cycling project.
• 🚒 More public safety. 39 new firefighters, 11 new RCMP officers, 11 new bylaw officers and a new Brookswood-Fernridge fire hall.
• 👮 A Township-only RCMP detachment. The slate says splitting from the shared detachment is fairer to Township taxpayers.
  • ⚠️ The Township has given real reasons. But this and the animal shelter split ended shared services with Langley City without a full public accounting of the costs for residents of either municipality. We also could not confirm that the province has approved two detachments, which the slate lists as done.
• 💧 Water and drainage. A replacement reservoir in Walnut Grove, a new pump station, Salmon River dike upgrades and voluntary water metering.
  • ✅ Dike upgrades and water metering are sensible investments in climate resilience and conservation.

Other concerns

• 🏛️ The mayor has publicly questioned whether Langley City should exist at all, and dismissed its politicians as unable to "last 10 minutes in the township." Combined with the Township ending two shared services with the City, this is an unwelcome and needlessly aggressive stance. Dissolving a city isn't something a neighbour's mayor should push from outside. It would need a real proposal and the consent of the people who live there, and so far there is neither.
• 🏫 The slate is running a school trustee candidate who once urged parents to pull their children out of public schools. More on this near the end.

The slate in this election

Woodward founded the slate in 2022 as Contract with Langley. That year he won the mayor's race with about 42 per cent of the vote, and five of his six council candidates were elected. It was the first time a slate had controlled Township council since the late 1990s.

The slate's numbers have shifted since. Misty van Popta left council after winning a seat as a BC Conservative MLA. Barb Martens broke with the mayor and is now running with the rival slate, Langley Strong. Michael Pratt, elected as an independent, joined in 2025. The slate did not run a candidate in the 2025 byelection, which Blair Whitmarsh won while campaigning partly on Township debt.

This fall, Langley Strong is running Jay Lundgren for mayor, along with a council slate that includes sitting councillors Martens, Kim Richter and Whitmarsh. Twenty candidates are competing for eight council seats.

A lawsuit over online posts

In 2025, Woodward and councillors Rob Rindt and Tim Baillie filed a defamation lawsuit over an anonymous website and a Facebook group critical of the mayor, CBC News reported. Those named include Rich Coleman, whom Woodward defeated in 2022, and Councillor Kim Richter.

CBC reported the suit centres on posts about two fire equipment contracts worth about $11 million, which Woodward's lawyer argues implied corrupt dealings. Woodward told CBC the claims were serious and posted anonymously.

None of the allegations on either side has been tested in court. Coleman told CBC he could not comment, and Richter did not respond to CBC.

Who is running

Debt and taxes

This is the biggest issue in the Township campaign, and the most confusing. Here is what voters need to know.

How much?

The Township told CBC in April that it has authorized about $602 million in debt. CBC reported that is the highest debt per resident of any major BC city.

"Authorized" means council has approved the borrowing, but not all of it has been borrowed yet.

Mike Parker, a frequent critic of the mayor who is now an independent council candidate, puts the total near $861 million by including other obligations.

Why borrow?

The mayor's case is that the Township was years behind on roads and facilities, and that building now is cheaper than building later. He told CBC it is "a different kind of pay-as-you-go approach." The plan is to repay most of the debt from fees on new development, not property taxes. The Township says development brought in $95 million in 2024 and $101 million in 2025.

How much room is left?

BC limits how much of a municipality's revenue can go to debt payments.

A slide in this year's budget suggested only about $166 million of room remained. The Township later told CBC that slide was wrong, and that it can borrow about $350 million more.

What is changing

Long-term borrowing costs have climbed this fall, driven by high oil prices, US tariffs and stubborn inflation.

Debt the Township has already borrowed is locked in at older rates, for now. But anything still to be borrowed will cost more.

By our rough estimate, each extra percentage point adds about $700,000 a year in payments for every $100 million borrowed. Higher rates can also slow home building, which means less development revenue to pay the debt down.

None of this means the Township is in financial trouble. Its debt is within legal limits, and rates could ease. But the next council will have less margin. If development slows, the gap gets filled by property taxes, reserves or delays.

The big projects

The largest is the five-arena expansion at the Langley Events Centre, budgeted at $149 million in 2023. A 1,500-seat performing arts centre and a Willoughby community centre with a pool are also planned. We could not find a current, confirmed budget for either. We asked Woodward. He did not reply.

Property taxes

Council approved a tax increase of just under 4 per cent for 2026. The draft proposed 3.98 per cent, about $108 a year on a typical home, according to the Greater Langley Chamber of Commerce.

Making growth pay

Community amenity contributions, or CACs, are payments developers make when land is rezoned. They help pay for things like rec centres and libraries.

Early in its term, the slate's council raised base rates by 142 to 170 per cent, according to the real estate firm Avison Young.

In June 2025, the BC Supreme Court struck down the Township's CAC policy. It found the Township was effectively requiring payments that BC law only allows to be voluntary.

The Township dropped its appeal in May 2026 and is moving to amenity cost charges, a newer tool the province created in 2023 with clear legal rules.

In 2023, the Township expected to pay for most of the arena expansion with CAC money, the Advance Times reported. We could not find a public accounting of how the ruling affects that plan, or whether the new charge will raise as much.

Housing and SkyTrain

Where the slate has done well

In 2025, construction began on nearly 250 middle-income rental homes on two Township-owned sites, in Willoughby and Aldergrove. The Township provided the land free, working with BC Housing and its new Housing Trust.

In 2023, the mayor said council had approved about 6,000 new homes since taking office.

Council also launched the 200 Street 2040 plan, which aims for walkable, transit-oriented neighbourhoods along that corridor.

Where we have concerns

The Housing Trust's finances are hard for the public to see. When Township staff reported the Township's authorized debt in November 2025, the figure did not include any borrowing through the Trust.

The Trust is a separate society, and we found no public figure for how much it has borrowed or how much of that the Township guarantees.

Mike Parker, an independent council candidate and frequent critic of the mayor, argues that this borrowing counts against the Township's debt limit, and that this year's budget began including it. We could not independently confirm his analysis.

Rental homes on public land are worth building. Residents should still be able to see what they cost.

Additionally, in 2024, the province said the Township had missed its deadline to allow more homes around the future Willowbrook SkyTrain station. Woodward argued that kind of density may suit Vancouver, "but that's not the situation here." He said the Township needed to catch up on infrastructure first. We could not confirm whether the Township has since designated the area..

Costs matter too. A City of Surrey report shows the Township charged about $53,000 per new low-rise apartment in development cost charges in 2024. Surrey's new rate is about $28,000.

Woodward promised in 2022 to build 300 units of housing for people experiencing homelessness on Township land. We could not find a public count of how many have been built. We asked. There was no reply.

Getting around

The slate's transportation record is mostly roads, including 208 Street, the 212 Street connector and 80 Avenue in Willoughby. Many of these roads were unfinished, and Woodward campaigned in 2022 on fixing them. Some rebuilt roads now include safer space for bikes.

Riders on a HUB Cycling Langley tour in November 2025 used new multi-use paths and separated bike lanes along parts of 208 Street. HUB has also pointed to recent improvements on parts of 80 Avenue.

Its strongest transit item is the design of bus rapid transit on 200 Street.

None of the projects on the slate's list is described as a walking or cycling project. The list does include neighbourhood traffic calming, which can make streets safer for people on foot.

Between new projects, the network is full of gaps.

On the HUB tour, riders found a path on 76 Avenue that ends in a drop onto gravel beside a ditch. The Township's own map shows the Willoughby Trail running to the Carvolth transit exchange. In reality, riders must detour around an unbridged ravine and onto a narrow, crumbling shoulder on 86 Avenue.

Paths often get built only where development has happened, leaving breaks at vacant lots. More than 400 baffle gates still block trails and sidewalks across the Township.

"It's really frustrating how much better it could be," said Gaith Sarhan, who led the ride.

He said the Township has focused on large road projects over small fixes to the cycling network. The Township's cycling plan was last updated in 2015. A new transportation plan is in the works.

In July, staff recommended spending up to $8.1 million over six years to close gaps in Willoughby's path network. Council deferred the decision until after the election.

Councillor Michael Pratt suggested the delay, so that staff could first work with HUB Cycling on updated gap maps and community consultation.

A separated path along 40 Avenue in Brookswood, estimated at $8.3 million, is set to come back in next year's budget.

Policing and animal control

The RCMP

In 2023, Township council voted to end the shared RCMP detachment with Langley City. Woodward's reason was fairness. He said the Township paid for about three-quarters of the officers.

"We are investing in public safety and the City of Langley is not," he said.

City officials said the City paid its share under the cost-sharing contract. At the time, the City paid for about a quarter of the officers while holding about 16 per cent of the combined population, the Advance Times reported.

In May 2025, the Township formally ended the cost-sharing agreement.

The City said a full split still needed provincial approval. The slate lists the split as done. We could not confirm the province has approved it.

Animal Control

The Langley Animal Protection Society ran the Township-owned Patti Dale shelter for both Langleys for more than 20 years.

In 2025, the Township brought animal control in-house and gave the society one month to leave, citing more than a year of failed contract talks.

Under a new contract with the society, the City now houses its stray dogs in foster homes and a private boarding facility, at a higher cost.

Amalgamation

In 2025, Woodward told CBC he does not think the Langleys are well served by two municipalities. He argued the City is poorly run and said its politicians "wouldn't last 10 minutes in the township."

The slate registered to run in the City, but is not running any candidates there this year.

Our own review of the evidence suggests that independent municipalities sharing services generally serve residents better than mergers. A merger would also combine the two municipalities' debts.

In our view, this goes well beyond raising a big question.

A mayor publicly doubting whether a neighbouring city should exist, while his council ends shared services with it, is an unwelcome and needlessly aggressive way to treat a neighbour.

City residents have not asked for this. If the idea is serious, it deserves a written plan, real numbers and the consent of the people who live there. So far, there has been none of that.

A trustee candidate who urged families to leave public schools

This profile focuses on mayor and council. But one of the slate's school trustee candidates says something about the organization as a whole.

Norma Jean Maxwell is one of five trustee candidates running with Progress for Langley. Her bio appears on the slate's website, which is authorized by Woodward.

In 2021, Maxwell helped build an online portal for families leaving the public school system, according to our earlier reporting. In a 2022 interview, she called that system corrupt. She told parents their first step should be to stop leaving their children in it.

In the same interview, she said gender identity, sexuality and pronouns were topics "that teachers have no business teaching our children." She also compared teachers who kept children masked when it was not required to Nazis.

Her nomination papers list a home address in Surrey. Her campaign bio says she has lived in the Township for more than 20 years. B.C. law does not require trustees to live in the district they serve, and she is eligible to run.

Her campaign bio does not mention her past work helping families leave public schools.

A slate decides who goes on its ballot. We believe that when a slate endorses a candidate, it tells voters that person meets its standards. That is why we include Maxwell here, and why we apply the same test to every slate, including Langley Strong.

For our earlier story, we asked Woodward whether the slate knew about these statements when it chose Maxwell, and whether it stands behind her. He has not yet responded. Maxwell did not respond to detailed questions about her past statements. The slate's four other trustee candidates did not say whether they support her candidacy.

You can read our full report on Maxwell here:

Trustee candidate urged families to leave public schools

Norma Jean Maxwell helped build a portal for families leaving public schools and urged parents to pull their kids out. Now the Progress for Langley candidate wants a seat on Langley’s school board. She also opposed LGBTQ+ lessons and compared some masking teachers to Nazis.

The Langley UnionRainer Fehrenbacher

What we asked

None of the nine candidates replied by the deadline. All nine were asked about:

• specific steps to lower property taxes
• whether they support amalgamation, and would require a binding vote in both Langleys
• a limit on new borrowing, and planning for higher interest rates
• one change to make walking, cycling and transit easier near the Willowbrook station
• how the slate decides its votes

Each candidate also received questions about their own record or background. Woodward was asked about the RCMP split, the animal shelter, the court ruling and the arenas, the 300 promised housing units, a debt stress test, and budgets for the performing arts centre and Willoughby pool.

A companion profile of Langley Strong will follow in the coming days. Our coverage of the school trustee race will be published separately.

References

The slate and the election

• Progress for Langley: home page, team and accomplishments
• Township of Langley: 2026 candidates
• City of Langley: 2026 candidates
• Elections BC: Contract With Langley, endorsed candidates (2022)
• Aldergrove Star: Langley Township election night results (2022)
• Langley Advance Times: 20 candidates vie for Langley Township council (11 Sept 2026)
• Aldergrove Star: New candidate Park joins Progress For Langley slate (3 June 2026)
• CBC News: Langley township mayor sues political rivals (Sept 2025)

Debt and taxes

• Mike Parker: Willoughby Will Never Get its Pool (Dec 2025).
• CBC News via Yahoo: Why Langley Township's $600M debt is city hall's biggest debate (23 Apr 2026)
• Langley Tomorrow (Mike Parker, independent Township council candidate): Township of Langley debt calculator (May 2026)
• Mike Parker's TikTok explaining the $860 million figure (May 2026)
• Langley Tomorrow: Did the Township of Langley borrow $177M without authorization? (27 Feb 2026)
• Bank of Canada: Selected bond yields
• Investing.com: Canadian bond yields rise as global rate pressures weigh on debt markets (28 Sept 2026)
• Greater Langley Chamber of Commerce: Township draft 2026 budget released
• Langley Advance Times: Funding for LEC expansion rises to $149 million (2023)

Amenity contributions and development charges

• Avison Young: Township of Langley CACs increase by more than double (Dec 2022)
• Fasken: BC Supreme Court sets aside Langley's CAC policy
• City of Surrey: Corporate Report R098, 2026 Development Cost Charge Bylaw

Housing and SkyTrain

• BC Government: Construction starts on nearly 250 rental homes in Township of Langley (2025)
• Global News: Township of Langley falling behind on infrastructure, says mayor (Nov 2023)
• Global News: B.C. hits Township of Langley with density deadline (Aug 2024)
• Aldergrove Star: Eric Woodward candidate profile (2022)

Getting Around

• Langley Advance Times: Advocates point out gaps in Langley's bike network (3 Dec 2025)
• Langley Advance Times: Langley Township looks to close gaps in pathway network (28 July 2026)
• Langley Advance Times: New bike, pedestrian paths planned for Brookswood (2 May 2026)
• Langley Advance Times: Cycling group sounds out Langley candidates (20 Sept 2026)

Policing and animal control

• Global News: Langley Township doesn't want to share the RCMP anymore (May 2023)
• Langley Advance Times: Year in review, two RCMP detachments for Langley (2023)
• City of Langley: City responds to termination of shared policing agreement (May 2025)
• City of Langley: Langley City's 2026 Financial Plan puts residents and businesses first with investments in safety, recreation, and essentials
• Global News: LAPS told to vacate home of 23 years (Sept 2025)
• City of Langley: LAPS enhances animal control for Langley City (Jan 2026)

Amalgamation

• CBC News: War of the Langleys (Sept 2025)
• The Langley Union: Should the Langleys amalgamate? (June 2026)

Trustee candidate

• The Langley Union: Progress for Langley trustee candidate urged families to leave public schools. Now she wants a board seat. (Oct 2026)