Editor,

A brief article in the Roundup section of The Record on Dec. 31 talked about the surveys I conducted for the City of Langley, but did not describe that there was a process that included two surveys and two public meetings to talk about bringing more people to town to build the businesses in the community.

A Langley Merchants Survey was conducted from April 10 to May 15 that was a self-selected survey (people chose to do the survey) that produced nearly 600 responses from 23 participating businesses.

Building on the concepts that came out of the Merchants Survey, a meeting was hosted by the city on Nov. 4 for local businesses to discuss ideas to make Langley a great place to shop; 25 people participated in the discussions.

Based on the range of ideas discussed at the Nov. 4 meeting, approximately 175 Langley business owners and managers were asked to prioritize the ideas by selecting five from a list of 13 (distributed using Survey Monkey). There were 50 respondents to this survey.

From my perspective as the facilitator for this process, I believe the most important elements that came out of the several tasks was the excitement generated by the discussions and having the business owners and managers come together and talk about collaborative ways to build business in city.

Anyone who would like to read notes from the survey results and discussions described above, please send your request to carolyntamler@whidbey.net.

CAROLYN TAMLER

Freeland