Steinbach city councillor John Fehr announced Monday he will run for mayor in the October civic election. Fehr says he has served on city council for eight years and has extensive leadership experience in business, community and church work and looks forward to bringing that expertise to the role of mayor. He says the city must stay on course with maintaining great infrastructure and smart money management. But Fehr says it's also time to move ahead with new recreational and cultural facilities.

"We have talked for the last seven-and-a-half years that renewing some of our recreational and cultural facilities was a priority. That has not happened and I believe that we need to move that agenda as far forward as we can because the longer we wait the more it will cost. The fact that we've already waited eight years is costing us a lot. When we look around at our neighbouring municipalities, we hear a lot about multiplexes in those smaller communities. I think that the thing that we need to realize that we don't need to do everything at one time, but we need to get moving. The longer we wait, it's just going to cost the city a lot more money and then it wouldn't be very good for the city in the long run."

Fehr is clear though that spending must be done responsibly.

"Financially, the city has done very, very well. We've kept our infrastructure in good shape and that has to continue. I think that we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we are handcuffed financially at any point, so I think it's very important that we keep a handle on our finances."

Fehr says the idea of him running for mayor has been percolating for some time.

"This has been on the burner for, probably, the last year. I needed to know that I had considerable support before I entered this. I feel that I do have that. I think the fact that I've served on council for the last seven-and-a-half years, I've learned a lot and there are a lot of things that I had hoped we would be able to accomplish. Some of those still need to happen. I think that maybe this will give me an opportunity to get some of those things done."

Fehr says Chris Goertzen has done a tremendous job as mayor and is sorry to see him stepping down.