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Chronicle Staff There has been much controversy at city hall for the past six months. First there was the coal tar issue, and then a direct spinoff â€" council secrecy â€" has been debated, with opposing sides rarely reaching a middle ground. c The current threeâ€"year term of office for this council now heads into its fina!l year. The Chronicle will interview councillors in alphabetical order to ensure fairness. Today, Brian Turnbull is featured, and the next, and last councillor, to appear on these pages will be Lynne Woolstencroft. Brian Turnbull, 50, is serving his fourth term of office as a councillor on Waterloo council. He first served on council in 1972 in the time leading up to Regional government. Though he has run three times since, he has also declined to run three times. Turnbull runs his own planning conâ€" sulting business. From 1966 to 1970, he headed the city planning department. On council, Turnbull is often a "swing vote" â€" sometimes voting with the "old guard", and sometimes voting with the newer members of council. You‘ve been on council for some time, including when council bragged of its "team approach". What‘s changed for I‘ve always tried to deal with issues based on facts, not on how others are voting. e I don‘t think anything has changed for me, except perhaps in perception. _ I‘ve been on the losing end of my share of 8â€"1 votes. So that‘s nothing new to me. It happens that at the beginning of this term, I agreed with Jim (Erb), Bob (Henry), John (Shortreed), those guys, typically. Now, I think there‘s three people who are what you call a swing vote â€" Mary Jane (Mewhinney), Dorothy (Schnarr) and L. â€" _ Andrew (Telegdi) and Lynne (Woolstenâ€" croft) tend to vote together on key issues, where there‘s considerable debate. And typically, (Mayor) Marjorie Carroll, Jim, Bob and John tend to vote together on key issues. hllria;';v Jane, Dorothy and I don‘t tend to vote together, but we tend to take a more independent course. 8 I look at each issue, sort it out â€" what I think is the right thing to do â€" and if I have problems with the staff I try to make sure it‘s clear in my head where they are coming from, and vote accordâ€" ingly. _ _ _ I think you could say my approach is sort of hardâ€"headed and softâ€"hearted. Do you ‘find pressures from previous allies, a changed atmosphere on council? There is certainly a changed atmostâ€" phere. There‘s no question of that â€" which I‘m sorry about. f There‘s always pressures. I learned years ago to deal with that. Sometimes you‘ll vote with somebody, and they‘ll love you. And the next day you vote against them and they hate you. I‘m not going to get into that. I don‘t treat people that way, and I don‘t allow myself to be treated that way. I just deal with the issues I think people have learned to accept that. They can‘t count on my support, but they can‘t count on me to be opposed to them. ltrytémakemyvoteaslseeit.lguess I‘ve got my own philosophy. I‘ve made almost a conscious effort not to be involved in taking sides. I happen to think that‘s what the council needs. I don‘t think the city of Waterloo is very pleased right now with the city council. And that‘s only from the last year and a half or so. I‘m getting feedback of, "Isn‘t it too bad the way council is acting?" There‘s almost a sorrow . People used to be very proud of the way council dealt with the issues. There was never lack of debate, but the debate never got as personal as it seems to have gotten. _ __ I think we‘re all to blame. There‘s nine people on council, and the electorate is not happy with the way those nine people are working together, and we all have to shoulder the responsibility for that. I‘ve heard rumors of you having been "frozen out" from the social scene and the dAffections of people you‘ve worked with in the past on council. Brian Turnbull is considering a run at the Mayor‘‘s seat in the 1988 election. A veteran council member, Turnbull says his style on council is "hardâ€"headed and softâ€"hearted". That comes and goes. That‘s human nature. You tend to become a little frosty toward somebody you‘ve just had a tough debate with. And then two weeks later you happen to be on the same side of â€" other tough debate. So that comes and goes. Do you think your expertise in planâ€" ning gives you a valuable perspective as a councillor? Yes. There‘s the more normal one, which is that I take a particular interest in landâ€"use planning, which you‘d expect. The one that‘s more removed is that, having been on staff, I‘ve got a staff background. _ _ _ o _ Let me put it this way. When I was planning director, I often felt that if I had soj private experience working as a eo?fultant, and then gone back to being a planning director, 1 would have been a A green young guy like I was â€" well, you make mistakes like everybody else Be'}ter planning director. I would have krown when to be tough, and when to be lenient. Turnbull both _ hardâ€"headed and : softâ€"hearted â€" : does. I think in retrospect I was tough where I shouldn‘t have been, and lenient, perhaps, where I shouldn‘t have been. I would have turned that around if I had had private enterprise experience. _ Having been a staff person, I think it gives me the same sort of an approach with the existing staff. I‘m satisfied that 1 have a feeling of when to dig in my heels, and when to let it go, based on my experience as a staff person. You ask a lot of questions of staff in comparison to some of the other councilâ€" Council Profile I suppose so. It never occurred to me. I very much want their input. I don‘t feel obliged to take it. Do you think council draws on the expertise of the planning department adequately when making decisions that could have a major impact down the road? Yes. I think council as a whole, has felt in retrospect, in terms of subdivision planning they should be taking a more detailed look at it. One of the things I‘ve been pushing, for example, is that when we have a neighâ€" borhood park in a subdivision, that it be seen in that subdivision. I think the easiest way to do that is just to have increased frontage so you know it‘s there when you drive by. That it‘s not just a threeâ€"lot opening. You know it‘s a I think visibility is very important. You get in a rut where, if the developer is in favor, and if the staff is in favor, and if nobody from the public is objecting, you get in a rut of rubberâ€"stamping. The tendency is to only dig into the issue when somebody is disagreeing with somebody else. When they all united, and say it is fine, you tend to&:zy ‘well, I feel, and I‘ve had some comment along the line from other council memâ€" bers, that in retrospect, we shouldn‘t be doing that with subdivision design. We should be digging out things like â€" the thing that has come up most often â€" parks. The design of parks, the location, is it enough, wheri are they going to be developed. WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY JANUARY 6, 1988 â€" PAGE 5 lan Kirkby photo With your background, what do you think about the very rapid growth of the city of Waterloo? L think x city is keepi;x: up. The planning engineering ments are keeping up.nghey are trypi.nx; hard, they are working hard. They are managing to stay with it. It‘s not easy, but they are managing to stay with it. I think that one of the things we have to be careful of in a ra;fid-growth situaâ€" tion like this is "spirit‘" of the communâ€" ity. We have to do things that generate community spirit. Almost four years ago now I started the Sounds of Summer music festival. â€" Waterloo has a strong tradition of involvement with music. Waterloo used to be the location of a Band Tattoo which drew bands from all over Canada and the United States. I thought if they could do that 30 years ago, why can‘t we do that now? So we got this music festival going. That‘s the type of thing we have to do to make sure that as Waterloo grows we don‘t lose the The New Yar‘s Levee is another and thifinlike awards to people in the Up area that are improving their houses. Architectural awards, which we just started this year. All that type of thing we have to reâ€"emphasize because we are growing so fast. spirit. You have said that, while the city administration is coping with the rapid growth, it is "uncomfortable". What do you mean! They are trying very hard to keep up. I have mentioned in council a couple of times that I think that growth next year is going to be lower than it was in 1987, which was less than it was in 1986. In the meantime, the number of apâ€" provals in terms of planning have been increased. We‘ve gained on it. As the development has come along, using up the approvals, the approvals have been coming faster and faster, so we‘ve gained on them. So I‘m fully hoping that in 1988, the "approvals" people will have an easier year of it than in the last two years. In other words, I think we‘ve passed the I understand that you are not personalâ€" ly in favor of a ward system for electing officials in Waterloo. I‘m opposed to a ward system for two reasons. One, I don‘t think the people of Waterloo want it. And I don‘t think we should go into a ward system without a wellâ€"run referendum. If I‘m wrong, (and the feedback I‘ve been getting has not been indicative of the whole community), then 1 would go into it without any qualms. My other, more technical reason for opposing a ward system, is that there are a lot of acclamations. In Kitchener and Cambridge over the last few elections, an average of 25 per cent of wards were uncontested. So, you‘re depriving, on average 25 per cent of the population of having a vote. You have been approached by people encouraging you to run in 1988 for mayor. Under what circumstances would you run? Yeah, And I have sort of put it on hold for six months, which takes us to the gummer. That‘s the type of thing I have to sort out in the next six ‘months. Where do you see your political support coming from in elections so far? Cityâ€"wide. I don‘t see pockets. I haven‘t seen any of our counciliors as having pockets of support. . My gut feeling has always been that it was cityâ€"wide, and then some university class did a study of it, and they came to the same conclusion. "B'l;{'rnlly, it has no bearing on city council whatsoever. P.C.‘s since I came to town in the midâ€" What political affiliations do you have?