Keremeos will be looking to establish a dedicated fund in its yearly budget dedicated to reconciliation.
The Reconciliation Initiatives Reserve would be one of the first such dedicated funds in the Okanagan and Similkameen.
Council will weigh whether to move forward with establishing the reserve at its Feb. 20 council meeting.
The reserve would be used for projects like the Every Child Matters Crosswalk that runs between the village’s municipal offices and Memorial Park.
The fund is part of the village council’s commitment to making reconciliation with the Indigenous community more than a one-off gesture.
“We want to set up something that shows that we are moving towards incorporating this as part of how we do what we do,” said Mayor Jason Wiebe ahead of the Feb. 20 meeting. “We were asked if the crosswalk would be a one-time special project, and I said that no, our goal was incorporating this into the corporate strategy of the village.”
The reserve, if approved, would get an initial transfer of $20,000 from the village’s operating budget revenue and $5,000 from the contingency reserve.
One of the features of the reserve will be that funding for it will be open for donations from the community as well as from the village directly.
“There’s no reason we couldn’t do specific projects in a calendar year, but with the change in council we’d like to see this become part of our identity so it’s more than just a line item on a budget,” said Wiebe.
As a dedicated reserve, all of the funds would be limited to being spent specifically on initiatives and projects that build and strengthen the village’s relationship with its Indigenous neighbours.
READ MORE: PHOTOS: Every Child Matters crosswalk unveiled in Keremeos
The council meeting had not occurred by the time of the Review’s publication and no decision had been made on whether to give the first three readings to establishing the reserve.
The bylaw to establish the reserve will have to come back at another meeting to be adopted.
