The Valdez City Council held its regular meeting on September 15, 2026, at 7:00 PM in the Council Chambers. Mayor Pro Tem Lester Green presided in the absence of Mayor Fleming (excused) and Councilmember Foster attended electronically. The meeting included the inaugural Citizens' Academy graduation, public appearances, a consent agenda, a resolution on harbor rates and fees, project updates, and an executive session.
We need to take more flags of America. Underground deliberately justice for all. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem Green. All council members are present this evening, except for Mayor Fleming, who is absent and excused. And Councilmember Foster is joining us via teens electronically this evening. Thank you. All right. We're going to move into our Citizens Academy graduation. This is something that I'm very happy to talk about. And we're going to share with you this evening and congratulate all of our new graduates. Now, this is the inaugural class we have here this evening. And I uh applaud each and every one of you for joining this Sherry, Elise, and others for the number of weeks to uh learn more about our city, our community, the people, the processes, and uh very encouraged to see about what a large turnout it was for our first session. And uh I am sure that we're gonna see many more of these sessions, and I hope that you share your experience, your learnings and uh words of wisdom with other members in the community. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sherry. Oh, hi everybody, congratulations. It's nice to see you all tonight. Um, the Citizens Academy was uh brainchild of Danny Snyder, who is the municipal clerk for the city of Fairbanks. And um, I heard Danny talk about her academy for a number of years and how she started it, how it started off slow, and then she built it, now she has a waiting list. And um, I thought that is something I'd really like to start in our community. So I talked to City Manager Duvall, and we discussed it our department head meeting. Department heads were on board, mate was on board, and we said, okay, let's do it. So our first academy of course was this summer, which not sure if that was the best time to do it, but it was hard for some people. Um people were going on vacation or they had other things come up, but most of you persevered and you made most of our sessions, and so I thank you for that. Um we are gonna run another academy in uh I think February. So we'll try that and see how that goes and see if um more people can be able to attend that. But it was fun. This was really fun. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed watching the department heads uh present to you guys and talk about what they do. Um, some of the um people that don't uh they don't come forward and talk about their jobs, like the guys at the baylor. Um you know, and so we put them on the spot, and they actually got up and talked about what they did, and so they were a little bit out of their comfort zone, but they did a good job. And then when we did the facilities tour, um they were great. They loved, you could tell that they loved talking about what they did and what they do and showing us um their facilities. So that was a great experience for them, them as well. So I think this was a learning for um our our city employees and our um people that are graduates um that participated in the Citizens Academy. So with that, I'm really excited about starting our next one. And any of you that were not able to make all of the sessions, you're welcome to come and and you know, sit in on departments that you might have missed during that time. But you guys are great. Um, and we had you know, 17 people sign up for the very first academy session. Um, so I was just overwhelmed with that. So I'm I'm really excited and really thankful and thankful for you guys. And I learned a lot from you as well, talking to you after the sessions and what you were concerned about and what you know the questions that you ask. Um, it was very helpful for us too as city administration to learn about um what questions that you might have and what interested you. And finally, I'd like to say that you are our next mayors. You are our next city council members. You are our next boards and commission members. Karen's giving me the evil eye. But hopefully that you are excited about your community from attending the academy, and this will you know give you the confidence now that if you want to run be a board of commission member, if you want to be a city council member or run for mayor, um you uh you have the um you have the the knowledge to do that. So with that, should we hand out some certificates? We're gonna hand out some certificates, and as we do this, there's something you'd like to share with the council members and other members here.