Steinbach Mayor Chris Goertzen says 2017 has been a vintage year for the city. He points out there was a building boom with 230 housing starts up to the end of November, the largest number since 2012. Goertzen adds there was also verification of the city's growth in another way.

"We've seen our census numbers grow substantially and so it continues to be a vibrant city and it's really exciting to be a part of that here in southeastern Manitoba."

Mayor Chris Goertzen

The census showed Steinbach's population grew by 17 percent between 2011 and 2016 to just under 16,000. Goertzen says another big development this past year was getting final approval to annex 2,800 acres of land from the RM of Hanover.

"We worked very closely with our partners in Hanover to look at the boundary changes for the City of Steinbach. We did come up with formal agreements a couple of years back and then we had to work with our provincial government to make sure that this happened. So Steinbach again will grow January 1, 2018, to include more people and more land mass."

And, as part of the preparations for ongoing growth, Goertzen says the city succeeded in getting its largest grant ever.

"We saw the largest grant from our federal government in our history of Steinbach for a secondary water treatment facility. We've obviously worked very diligently with other levels of government to make sure that we have those partnerships in place because these large projects can't happen without partnerships. So to have that large $5 million grant coming from the federal government was really significant and I want to commend councillors for their hard work on that."

The Mayor acknowledges it wasn't all peaches and cream as city council also made some hard decisions such as the one to cancel plans for a Performing Arts Centre.

"Working through challenges is part of our job. We have ideas of where we want to head and we know we have limitations when it comes to dollars and when it comes to finding those partnerships with other levels of government. Council chose to move beyond working just for the Performing Arts Centre this year and, this next year, we're going to look for other types of partnerships so we can continue to work at improving recreation and culture in our city."