Mayor of Morden, Ken Wiebe, said that 2016 was a successful year for the City of Morden.

The city completed all of the capital projects it planned and made head-way toward recording each and every one of its assets. That includes each tree, sidewalk, curb, walking path, etc. Wiebe was also proud of the progress Morden's green initiatives has achieved, though there were issues at first.

"We had a little bit of a bumpy start with our three-stream waste pick-up," said Wiebe.

"As council, we'll have to accept some of the blame for that. We didn't put out enough information prior to our initiating that project, but all-in-all it has been well accepted by the community, and it's working very well."

In the past 12 months, 800 metric tonnes of organics have been diverted from the landfill to compost. The City's goal was to reduce its landfill by 50 per cent in five years, it nearly achieved that in 2016 alone; the landfill is currently 45 per cent reduced.

"We believe this is a very major accomplishment for the city of Morden," Wiebe said. "We're very proud of the fact that we've been able to do this."

The new welcome sign, set up in August, was also a highlight for the mayor.

"It turned out even better than we could have anticipated," he said.

This too had a rough start as the original sign near the mosasaur replica displaying the sponsor of the sign, came under strong criticism almost as quickly as it was installed. The issue was sorted out through a contest and vote to select a new slogan for the city which will be displayed with the sign in spring of 2017.

Wiebe also boasted of the City's immigration policy. In 2016, 70 new international families made Morden their home.

"We're very proud of that," said Wiebe. "We are indeed a very international community."

The families who moved to Morden came through Morden's own immigration initiative or through methods with the provincial government.

Looking ahead to 2017, a couple major projects the mayor explained were the beginning of the long-awaited reconstruction of 1st St. north of Wardrop St., and the continued logging of city assets to prepare for a completely digital record system.