A black and white decision from Kamloops city council on installing a rainbow crosswalk downtown.

Such a crosswalk will be installed at 2nd Avenue and Seymour Street, after a councillors voted unanimously to allow it. It will cost $6,000, with the Kamloops Pride Society contributing $1,500 of the cost.

Councillor Dieter Dudy expressed concerns that could arise from the decision.

“The concern I have is once we do this, we may be opening the door to a number of other special interest groups within the community coming with their hand up saying, ‘you did this for them, why can you not do it for us?” Dudy says.

“And the concern goes even further that if we do deny somebody along the road afterwards, we may be opening ourselves up to legal challenges… Just bearing in mind that there was the flag and banner issue, and something happened in the Lower Mainland with regard to that, causing us to stop flying flags and banners based on the fact there may be legal challenges ahead of us.”

Kamloops Pride president Sam Numsen says the addition of a rainbow crosswalk will serve to welcome folks nicely to downtown, especially people attending the Farmer’s Market in that location.

City staff expect the crosswalk won’t need any maintenance for five to 10 years.

There are currently four rainbow crosswalks already in the city, one in Lansdown Village, one at TRU and two at the Kamloops Airport, however this will be the first rainbow crosswalk on a public street in the city, something more than three dozen B.C. municipalities have already decided to do.