Things just got a little sunnier for the city of Langley’s budget, which has been under scrutiny since the city’s dire financial situation came to light.

During a special meeting last week, Finance Director Wanda Grone revealed that the beginning balance for the general fund, as of Jan. 1, 2024, is $156,921, which is an improvement over previous calculations. Mayor Kennedy Horstman confirmed Monday that this is in fact the correct starting balance based on the completion of a 2022 audit of the city.

“Because we weren’t sure up until now what the actual 2024 beginning fund balance was, I based all of my budget/forecast calculations strictly on 2024 projected revenue (and not on the starting fund balance),” Horstman said in an email.

The good news, Horstman told the council last week, is that the city is on track to break even, if revenue projections hold. It is anticipated that Langley will take in more revenue than what is spent, although a shortfall in the first quarter of 2025 is still expected between revenues and expenses.

There are also other downsides.

“We don’t have funds for the city administrator or executive compensation and finance and IT system modernization are still not within reach,” the mayor said. “Even though we got a lot of good, the weather report is relatively similar to what I shared last time.”

An IT professional of 30 years, Horstman delved into the issues with Langley’s current finance and IT systems, which she said are operating in the 20th century. The systems are nearing the end of life and the end of support, meaning there will be no new security updates soon.

Updating these pre-Y2K systems will provide huge security and productivity benefits. Currently, the city utilizes a shared file server that is sitting in a closet, while the rest of the world, as Horstman said, is operating on the cloud.

Employees calendars are not able to be synced with each other, and simultaneous editing of documents is not possible with the current systems.

“The ability to have an enterprise or global search of all of our media for the purpose of public records requests would be a huge improvement,” Horstman said, adding that an individual currently has to manually search different devices, the file server and individual mailboxes to fulfill a request.

“It is mind-boggling,” she said. “It is hard to believe, but it’s actually true.”

She plans to provide more specific figures related to the cost of the new systems in a future mayor’s report.