The Coeur d'Alene City Council met on September 17, 2025, with Council President Dan English presiding in place of the mayor. The meeting included a proclamation for Suicide Prevention Month, public comments, discussion and approval of several resolutions regarding land easements, a water meter test bench contract, labor agreements, and a budget amendment.
I'll call the meeting to order. My name is Dan English. I'm the uh council president and get to sit in for Woody tonight. So would you call the roll, please? Wood. Here. Gook in. Yes. Evans. Here. And our and our invocation tonight is from David Bond from Compel Church, and I'll ask you to rise. Um if there was ever a time that we can use some good words and just kind of take a moment to consider the state of the world and everything. This is it. So I more than ever appreciate your being here tonight. Thanks. Absolutely. My pleasure. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we bow our heads before you tonight in humility and reverence. We acknowledge alone that you alone are sovereign over our lives, our city, and our nation. Lord, and we come carrying a heavy burden for our country as we grieve the tragic death of a prominent young man who is a husband, a father, a son, a visionary, and a man of God. Lord, we ask that you would comfort his family, his friends, and all those who mourn his loss. May your presence be near to those who whose hearts are broken, and may you bring peace where there is confusion and hope where there is despair. Help us to see one another not as enemies, but as neighbors, and not as rivals, but as fellow human beings created in your image and to leave this place better than we found it. And Lord, now as we turn our hearts to the business of this evening, I lift up this council before you. And then we have a presentation for suicide prevention month. And I will be reading this, and there's I would encourage people to, you know, go on to our website or the organization to get mentioned here because it's more lengthy than what I'm going to read now and all the organizations that are part of it. But I will say from my personal experience from different capacity with family members and as a helping professional. I've unfortunately been, you know, been in the situation where we've had somebody who, well, somebody who accomplished suicide and other folks who have who have tried, and you know, what I would hope you would take away from all of this is that, you know, on one hand, it's an incredibly uh heartbreaking thing that can happen to a family in a community and the people left behind or the people dealing with it, you know, that have attempted. On the other hand, I found that it actually doesn't take too much to divert that. If you get somebody who learn that really intense time, if you can just help them for a short period of time. Actually, sometimes that can be the time, the couple hours that averts a crisis, and so there is help out there, and we just need to be aware. So I'm glad to be a part of uh just creating that awareness and uh and giving people some hope, because that's really what it comes down to. A lot of times people who make that decision feel like there's no hope. And we all have an obligation to be out there and give them a sense that there is some hope. So I will read I'm gonna summarize some of the proclamation and then have a few folks who come up and uh say a few words about it. So whereas suicide remains the 11th leading cause of death in the United States, the second leading cause among individuals aged 10 to 34, specifically ages 10 to 14, 25 to 34, those are some tough numbers. The third leading cause uh for ages 15 to 24, and the fourth leading cause among ages 35 to 42. Whereas in 2023, more than 49,000 people in the United States died by suicide, one life lost every 11 minutes. Whereas suicide rates rose 37% between 2000 and 2018, declined slightly between 2018 and 20, but returned to the peak levels in 2023, whereas in 2023, an estimated 12.8 million adults seriously considered suicide. 3.7 million made a plan, and one and a half million people attempted suicide. Um again, it it goes on and has some other points and uh number of agencies that are involved, so I encourage you to take a look at the full resolution. Now, therefore, it be resolved that we one recognize suicide as a preventable public health issue and declare suicide prevention a priority. Two, acknowledge that no single prevention program or approach fits all populations or communities. Three, address disparities in access to mental care for underrepresented groups, four, support culturally informed evidence-based mental health care and expand research funding. Five, encourage alignment with the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention and the the 2023 Idaho Suicide Prevention Plan. Six, promote awareness that suicide has no single cause, and often occurs when stressors exceed coping abilities amid mental health struggles, and seven, expand and strengthen access to quality mental health, substance use, and suicide prevention services. Now, therefore, I, Dan English, on behalf of Woody McEver's mayor of the City of Court Lane, to hereby proclaim the month of September 2025 as National Suicide Prevention Month in Kordlain, Idaho, and encourage all citizens to work together to raise awareness, reduce stigma, support those in crisis, and again bring hope to our community. So now I'm going to present the proclamation to Jeanette Lassiter and Alicia Keller, who I believe have a few things to say, but I'll give you the good evening, Mayor McEfers, City Council staff, and community members. Thank you for allowing us to be here this evening, and we are honored and grateful to accept this proclamation for Suicide Prevention Month.