A rainbow crosswalk proposed in Monterey has drawn a surprising amount of criticism.

David Schmalz here, somewhat surprised at the impassioned response a proposed rainbow crosswalk in downtown Monterey has provoked, and there’s likely more coming, as Monterey City Council will consider it again tomorrow afternoon, June 3, at a 4pm meeting. 

Monterey Management Analyst Mark Ackermann, who prepared the report for the proposed crosswalk, says that in the 24 hours before the special Friday, May 23 meeting where the crosswalk was first considered, the public submitted more than 100 written comments (about 55 for, 45 against). More typically, that number is four or five. 

Those opposed to the crosswalk—and they considerably outnumbered those speaking in support—had a few main points. 

One was the cost, and that the city was already over a barrel financially, and that a crosswalk wasn’t a good use of the public’s money. 

The other concern was that the LGBTQ community represents a special interest group and the city shouldn’t meddle in things that are political, and that the crosswalk, rather than being inclusive, will leave other groups feeling left out if they don’t get one too. 

Today I talked to Monterey City Manager Hans Uslar to ask about the genesis of the project, and if he was surprised like me. Uslar says that Mayor Tyller Williamson (who is openly gay) has asked about the possibility of a rainbow crosswalk over the years for the city’s Pride celebration, and Uslar was also curious about his own idea for a decorative crosswalk to put by the library that would look like stacks of books. 

This was a year or two ago, he says, and the report back from Public Works was that decorative crosswalks weren’t allowable by federal regulations. This past April, Uslar says he asked again, and the answer was that the regulations had since changed. 

Uslar says he scheduled the topic for a special Friday meeting—after a presentation and Q&A about the city’s draft local road safety plan—for no other reason than because the city’s agendas have been so packed lately. 

As for the response at the May 23 meeting—putting aside all those who spoke in support of the crosswalk—Uslar says it caught city staff off guard. “There’s always negative feedback to anything we're doing,” he says, “but the amount of negative feedback we've seen here is something I had not expected from our community.”

I also spoke with PK Diffenbaugh, superintendent of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, who spoke eloquently in support of the crosswalk, highlighting how important something like it can be for a young person struggling to find a sense of belonging, and also noted the alarmingly high suicide rate for LGBTQ+ youth. 

Diffenbaugh says the “eye-opener” for him was when MPUSD put in a rainbow crosswalk at its Marina High campus about three years ago at the request of a student group, and he’s seen firsthand the impact it’s had on the students in making them feel like they belong. 

He says he went to go speak in support of it May 23 after he saw it on the agenda, and that “it was no-brainer to me.” 

I plan to tune in or be there tomorrow to see how it all unfolds—it deadlocked 2-2 on the first pass with Councilmember Kim Barber absent. 

The whole episode reminds me of a story I wrote in 2016 about how in the 1950s, Carmel Police did sting operations at Carmel Beach targeting gay men soliciting other men for sex. It was based on a four-part series in the Monterey Peninsula Herald in 1956 by journalist Fred Sorri titled, “A Peninsula Problem.”

The “problem,” Sorri writes in his introduction, is “a crime so offensive that details in news stories are ordinarily veiled in generalities.”

That was nearly 70 years ago. In terms of the progress the community has made since then, tomorrow will help tell where we are right now.