On Oct. 10, at the Village of Burns Lake meeting council, they discussed about a letter written by Wanda Wiebe showing her concerns about the installation of rainbow bench.
The letter was received on Sept. 26 and it stated,
“you as the Village Council of Burns Lake have put a LGBTQ bench using the citizens of Burns Lake’s tax dollars which I am one of them. What is the percentage of those who have made that decision compared to all of Burns Lake citizens and yet you have expressed your own opinion with our tax dollars. This bench is a permanent fixture and my signs that I use in protesting are not. If you can put a permanent fixture expressing your opinion and again I’ll state: with my tax dollars then I can put my signs down which are not permanent, and is also my legal right.”
Chief Administration Officer Sheryl Worthing recommended to write a letter back to Ms. Wiebe that the village taxpayer dollars did not pay for that.
“It was a donation supported by the RBC Foundation and went through that process with the Foundry. The Foundry worked with staff to find a suitable location that council approved.”
Councillor Kevin White said, she does have right and we’re not taking away her right to protest or demonstrate.
“We just said that you can’t set up camp. Basically couldn’t monopolize a certain spot, day in day out or every weekend.”
“Now that the tourists have started to die off; the issues that we did have with her won’t be as prominent.”
“I just think it’s important we are not saying that she can’t demonstrate, she just can’t setup camp.”
Councillor Charlie Rensby said we have to remember that a lot of these processes are complaint based.
“They only come to us when they’ve generated a certain amount of complaints and therefore an issue must be filed. So, if everyone started complaining about sandwich boards then we would do something about the sandwich boards.”
Council has decided to write a letter to address her queries.