A current member of Kingsville council wants to make the jump to the mayor’s seat.
Councillor Thomas Neufeld has filed his nomination papers and is seeking the mayor’s seat in October’s municipal election.
“To be clear, this is not a race against the current mayor,” says Neufeld. “I have a lot of respect for him. This is a race for the job, and after 12 years of experience on council and then eight years of committee work prior to that, I sat in the audience for four years. I believe I have the experience, knowledge, and passion to lead our community through the next term.”
He says the timing is right to run for mayor.
“It did come down to a timing issue,” he says. “I thought, I didn’t want to wait another four years and just let this time go back. The timing was right.”
Neufeld says ‘respect for the taxpayers’ will be a focus of his campaign.
“We’re in tough times right now, and so I have a couple of initiatives that I would like to bring forward to ease the tax burden, looking at some of our citizen engagement over the last term,” says Neufeld. “I’ve noticed it’s just been less and less, so that’s something I would like to bring back is some citizen advisory committees.”
Current mayor Dennis Rogers has yet to announce his intention.
Roshan Nallaratnam is also running for the mayor’s seat in Kingsville.
Individuals have until August 21 at 2 p.m. to file their nomination papers.
The municipal election takes place on Monday, October 26.