At the Monday, March 11, 2024, Committee of the Whole Meeting, Drumheller Mayor Heather Colberg expressed to the public that council has no intention to immediately ban the decorative Pride crosswalk located by town hall.
On Friday, March 8, 2024, a post was made on social media page, where a concerned resident posted that the Town of Drumheller would be banning the Pride crosswalk at the next Committee of the Whole Meeting. This brought about discussion within the community. Many people were against it and called out the Town for being discriminative towards the LGBTQ community, taking to Twitter/X and Reddit to express their frustrations.
When the issue was discussed at the meeting, Mayor Colberg made a statement regarding the Request for Decision on the Flagpole, Banner and Decorative Crosswalk Policy.
“We get a lot of requests about flags, crosswalks, banners, proclamations and a whole lot of things. We’re trying to figure out: how do we create a policy that’s right for the community going forward? That’s how the policy came up in the first place,” explains Mayor Colberg. “As far as the process we go through, we ask Administration to review a Bylaw Policy to get us information, because they are the experts. In most cases, they look through a technical lens. Their job is to protect the municipality. Once they do their part and get that document to us, we don’t see the document until Fridays at 4 p.m. We didn’t even have a chance to discuss it.”
“I just want to be clear that whatever anyone read into that document, it has to come to this table. It has to go through the process,” continued Mayor Colberg. “It goes through the Administrative process and goes onto the agenda. Council gets it at four o’clock, we spend the weekend reviewing them and then we come here and we discuss them. After we discuss and give our input, Admin takes that document and revises it from our feedback. It goes back out to this council, where we go back over it one more time to see if there’s any changes required, and then I call for a vote.”
“It looks like we are being accused of making a decision but we can’t make a decision here. This is the Committee of the Whole Meeting. Our only ability here is to discuss the policy,” states Mayor Colberg.
The cost of maintaining the crosswalk was a concern for council, since the paint doesn’t last, but most council members were on board with keeping the crossing.
There were other suggestions mentioned for projects within the community that show how the Town welcomes inclusiveness, such as painted murals, Pride flags and even the possibility of a park or place for people to gather to be welcoming and accepting of each other.
