For the third time in the span of two months, the city of Langley has canceled a meeting because it did not provide a necessary amount of public notice.

A special meeting of the city council that was scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Monday, April 24 was called off by Mayor Scott Chaplin on Friday. The council was set to discuss two ordinances relating to council member and mayoral pay. However, ordinances must be posted five days in advance of a meeting, which does not include weekends, Chaplin explained. Since the meeting’s agenda with the ordinances was posted Wednesday, that only allowed for a total of four days.

Believing it could affect the filing fee candidates must pay to run for mayor, the council had hoped to discuss decreasing the mayor’s pay, from $55,000 to a minimum salary of $12,000 annually. It costs 1% of an elected official’s salary to file for the position, and filing week is coming up on May 15-19.

Yet according to Chaplin, this was never possible in the first place. After reading state code and consulting with the Island County Elections Office, he found out that their efforts would have been in vain, since the filing fee is based on the paychecks of those in office on the first day of the filing period, not on what the compensation is scheduled to be at the beginning of the new term.

“That said, a candidate who feels the fee is too burdensome can avoid paying it by collecting signatures instead,” he wrote in an email. “For Langley, that would mean gathering 550 signatures for the mayor’s position.”

Even though the urgency of determining the filing fee is no longer an issue, Chaplin recommended that the council still vote on the ordinances soon, at the upcoming May 1 and May 15 regular city council meetings. The ordinance related to council pay would increase the monthly stipend from $50 to $125.

“I realize that this is not the first time we have had to cancel a meeting. Ultimately it was my fault again,” Chaplin said in his email. “We are in the process of implementing a new procedure to make sure that ordinances, meeting notices, etc. are posted in a timely manner.”

Earlier this month, Langley’s April 3 council meeting was postponed to April 10 because the meeting’s agenda did not get posted on the city website. An executive session that was scheduled for March 13 also had to be postponed to the end of a regular council meeting on March 20. Although executive sessions are not open to the public, a notice of the meeting still needs to be provided to the public and the newspaper.

The next meeting of the Langley City Council is, as of now, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Monday, May 1.