By CHAT News Today

Meet the Candidate: Phil Turnbull

Oct 10, 2017 | 7:00 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Phil Turnbull says there is one promise that continues to motivate him in his current run for city council.

“I’m committed to ensuring that we can provide the best services possible, at the lowest possible cost,” he said.

The city’s economic situation is the main priority for Turnbull if he is elected.

“The first thing is to ask those questions,” he said. “Where are we financially? Are we still on plan? What can we do to re-examine the city by department, to see if we can find ways to give our citizens the same good service, but at a low cost. That’s the first thing I’m going to be doing.”

Turnbull also noted the new council will have to weigh in on the transit issue. Council voted in September to go back to the old transit system after multiple complaints about the changes.

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“I took the transit challenge, and for those people who use it, it was horrific,” he said. “The system is just broke.

“As a city, we need to provide public transit. It’s an essential service. We have to make sure the transit system is reliable, dependable, and meets the needs of all of the people who use it.”

Turnbull adds accountability at City Hall remains a priority.

“We need people committed to doing the work, the research to make sound decisions,” he said. “I think the public wants their elected people to give rational reasons why they support something, and rational reasons why they don’t support something. I think it needs to be done in open, so people have that.”

Turnbull, who has 30 years of business experience and was the general manager of a company that owned and operated three Canadian Tire stores in the region at one point, was previously elected to council in 2010, and served his full three-year term. He ran for mayor in 2013, finishing in second place with almost 25 per cent of the vote. He says predictions he made while running for mayor helped spark an interest in running for city government once again.

“In 2013, I said if we didn’t get a strategic plan for the utilities, and we didn’t get our costs in the city under control, we would have no dividend,” he said. “Two years later, we have no dividend.”

He also takes issue with councillors saying they didn’t see it coming.

“If they were reading the financial reports, and they were watching how the money was going out, they would’ve seen it coming,” he said.

Election day is October 16th.