At long last, Langley will get IT upgrades

Published 1:30 am Friday, April 24, 2026

The city of Langley will be getting a long-overdue tech upgrade soon.

At a council meeting this week, Mayor Kennedy Horstman described the current woeful state of technology in City Hall and discussed planned improvements over the year, which includes replacement of a server that is so old Microsoft will no longer provide security upgrades beginning next year. Staff based at the Wastewater Treatment Plant currently don’t have access to the city server.

“That’s a big deal in terms of communication and access to documents,” the mayor said.

Replacing the server would cost $40,000 or the city could move to the cloud, she explained.

Horstman said the city doesn’t even have a shared digital calendar.

“I am not kidding, we have a paper calendar at the front desk. That is the city’s shared calendar,” she said, saying that she can’t have a calendar on her phone or see what other people are doing.

Councilmember Craig Cyr was stunned.

“What year is it right now?” he joked.

Other current problems include no mobile access to digital tools, no shared contacts, no chat function and “limited to non-existent governance, compliance and security automation.” Oddly, remove work requires two devices.

A new server and a move to “softphones” will solve the problems, the mayor said, while saving annual IT costs.

Importantly, the technology upgrade will connect staff and centralize access to information, which will improve transparency in Public Records Act compliance while improving efficiency.

“We are hoping to city can start working digitally in the ways our residents and visitors assume we already can,” the mayor said.