The Valdez City Council met on September 16, 2025, at 7:00 PM in Council Chambers. Mayor Fleming was absent and excused; Councilmember Ali participated online. The meeting included public presentations on suicide prevention and a community race, consent agenda approvals, adoption of one ordinance and two resolutions, and reports from city staff and council members.
All consent items were approved unanimously (6-0, one absent).
No members of the public spoke.
I don't think we need an interview. All right. Like to call this meeting in the Valley City Council to order. You could all rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic for which it's one nation under God indivisible. All right, Madam City Clerk, if we could get a roll call, please. All members are present this evening, um, except for count um Mayor Fleming, who's absent and excused, and Council member uh Ali is joining us. Ali is joining us online. All right, thank you. All right, next up we have approval of minutes. We have number one approval of minutes for special meeting August twentieth, twenty twenty-five, and then we have approval of minutes for regular council meeting of September second, twenty twenty-five. Are there any corrections to the minutes as presented? All right, hearing none, the minutes will be approved as presented. All right. Next up we have public appearances. I think we have three public appearances, and uh the first one is public appearance from the private Providence Valdies Counseling Center. So please come up to the mic and state your name and red is on for the mic. There you go. My name is Edmord Mangener. And I am the manager of the Providence Valorities Counseling Center. Um but what we are working on as um the Valteus Counseling Center Providence Valentine Center is not just having this as a program, but we want to make sure that it is a lifestyle that our whole community um can actually participate in. We we did a little bit of a research survey on Saturday at the health um symposium. And we asked a few people about thirty people who were um consented on to answer our questions. And the 30 people that we interviewed really is just 0.008, 57% of the population. You can extrapolate it the way you want, but I think it's quite a bit. This year alone, we have about two people who have died by suicide. And I think that's two too many. Um our community having far less than that number of suicides in a year because it's preventable, and that's where the whole community comes in. The second question that we asked was has anyone you know had suicide behavior? And again, it looks like only one person had no one that they knew that they were uh connected with, but 29 people had some way in some way or shape or form a connection with somebody who had suicide behavior. Either they were acquaintances or they were family members or they were close friends or and so on and so forth. And then the other question that we asked have you ever been a helper to someone who um with suicide with with suicide thoughts, and 83% at least had helped somebody with um thoughts of suicide, and 16% had never done so. This is where we we come in as the counseling center. We want to be able to help everybody. Our goal is to be able to, if we could get the funds and if we could get all the time that we need under heaven, we could be able to train the whole community on how to intervene when somebody has thoughts of suicide, or even just how to approach somebody who looks like they are not their true self and help them in a way that will prevent suicide if suicide was part of their thinking patterns. Um have you ever had thoughts of suicide? So these were the people that were asked if they have ever had thought of suicide themselves, and I have about 56, 57 percent of those who were asked have had thoughts of suicide themselves. Only 43 percent did not have any thoughts of suicide. So, suicide is not something that we can put off and say it's somebody else's problem, it's our problem as a community. And then the next question if you had prior suicide behavior, and um so this one is a little bit scarier. Um, no, about 63 percent and uh 23, 33, and another percentage there, I think about two or three percent have said yes, but no wish to die, yes, though uncertain about death, and yes, with a clear wish to suicide. So people are always thinking about suicide. Sometimes we think asking people puts thoughts into them, puts ideas into them, asking people actually helps them to talk about it, and all we need as a community is to be able to talk about suicide and talk about it in healthy ways so that uh we can prevent it from happening. And then the last question that we asked was who would you tell if you had um any thoughts of suicide? This is a very good one because a lot of people have somebody to talk to when they have thoughts of suicide. What bothers me is that other 10% there that says no one that's a lot. If you if you were to say 10% of the population, let's say it's 3500 in parties, that's 350 people who have no one to talk to when they have thoughts of suicide, and that's a lot of people, and those are the people who will die by suicide if we do nothing as a community. So, this is not a problem just for the hospital or the counseling center. This is the problem for the community, and we need to hold together and work together, learn how we can actually be able to prevent suicide.