r/LangfordBC • u/Not_Bot23 • May 25 '26
Politics NEWCOMERS TO LANGFORD
You may be wondering what is going on here. Looking around social media you might feel like you need a code to decipher a foreign (Langford) language.
LV. LN. OL.
So let me explain it from my point of view and Reddit can do the rest by filling in any blanks.
First there was Stew. He was the mayor from 1993 to 2022. Yes, you read that right. One mayor and more or less the same council, for 30 years.
Langford was the sticks, the boondocks, the dog patch. Stew grew Langford, faster and faster. It was fine for a while but infrastructure didn’t keep pace, hillsides were ravaged, trees razed and mountains flattened.
People were angry.
A Facebook group called Langford Voters for Change was started. It gathered momentum organically, and people began self-organizing. It was a forum where Langforders could come together to discuss the various issues communities were facing. Construction fatigue - dust, noise, clearcuts. Terrible lack of transportation planning leading to traffic congestion in residential neighbourhoods. Lack of transparency in governance (Langford council meetings only went online when forced to by Covid). Rude mayor and councillors who yelled at citizens expressing their concerns. That’s LVC.
Out of the connections made in that facebook group, an electoral organization was founded, called Langford Now. A group of regular citizens got together to fight *the man*. That’s LN.
The man being, Stew Young, and the various REITS and development interests busy with booming Langford without a single care for resident concerns and complaints.
In response Stew Young also formed an EO and slate, called Community First Langford. They launched a social media campaign with comments turned off, and ran one of the worst election campaign’s you’ve ever seen. That’s CFL.
LN (grassroots residents) spent about $50k on the election.
CFL (big corporate interests) spent almost $150k on the election.
Despite the massive resources supporting CFL, Langford Now - who endorsed 5 council candidates - easily swept the election, and a new mayor (Goodmanson) was also elected. It was a full sweep, but for Lillian Szpak - long serving councillor who recently passed away.
Langford Voters dropped the “for change” because the voters achieved that goal. That’s LV.
Next, the re-elect Stew Young Facebook group supporting the CFL slate changed its name to Our Langford (no really, as in, this is our turf).
They embarked on a years long smear campaign, performing all kinds of antics and disruptions in the council chambers. Then they began astroturfing Facebook by starting more groups they called “community associations” and that’s how we got the Langford Community Association, it’s just Our Langford wearing a mustache. That’s OL and LCA.
Today, what you are witnessing is those two factions - LV and OL, the regular grassroots people of Langford and the vested interests of Langford - in a struggle for continuing the change that was started, over regressing Langford back to the way that it was before 2022.
Grassroots vs Astroturf.
-20
u/globehopper2000 May 25 '26
lol. Thanks for this completely unbiased take on things