After 20 years on Columbia City Council, District III, Anne Sinclair has stepped down to redirect her time.

Sinclair works with Resource Associates, where she's also been for almost 20 years. Resource is in the business of counseling, consulting, and training. Sinclair is one of five professionals in their building at 1898 Calhoun Street, next to Gregg Street. The other four are Betty Mandell and her daughter Isa Mandell, and Anne Walker and her daughter Melissa Evans.

Sinclair was born in Columbia at Providence Hospital when her parents lived in the Cornell Arms apartment building. Her father was in the insurance business, as was her mother until Sinclair and her four younger siblings started coming along.

Sinclair's father moved the family to Glenn Falls, N.Y., and then to Charleston, W. Va., and Pittsburgh, Penn., before returning to Columbia. There was even a later short stint in Mullins, S.C., again in insurance, but the family was back in Columbia in time for Sinclair to enter the sixth grade at St. Andrews Elementary, now Rhame Elementary.

Sinclair went to Wardlaw Junior High School on Elmwood Avenue. She graduated from Columbia High School on Washington Street, where she was the editor of

the school paper, the Columbia

Hi- Life. She also held positions in student government.

Sinclair has two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Her older brother lives in Lexington and works in banking. Her younger brother is on the geography faculty at Northwest Louisiana University. Sinclair's older sister lives in Atlanta, where she runs Petal Pushers, an indoor plants business. And her younger sister lives in Rosewood and works for Columbia- based VC3.

Sinclair finished Winthrop University in Rock Hill in three years with a major in history and a minor in political science.

During the school year, Sinclair was in the student senate. In the summers, she worked at the United Methodist Camp in Cleveland, S.C., north of Greenville and next to Table Rock.

After graduating from Winthrop, Sinclair entered Clemson University, where she graduated with a master's degree in recreation and parks administration. She also took an internship at the W. S. Hall Psychiatric Institute on Bull Street, where she ended up staying eight years.

Near the end of her internship, she participated in a raft trip down the Cha- tooga River, where she met her future husband Julian Ruffin. Ruffin, a Baptist minister, has a PhD in counseling from USC.

Sinclair and Ruffin have three boys. Andrew, 23, is in the master's program in structural engineering at Clemson University. Adam, 21, is a senior in philosophy at USC, and he also teaches guitar. Alex, 19, is a sophomore at USC Up-state in Spartanburg.

When Sinclair first ran for Columbia City Council in 1988, she defeated incumbent Paul Bennett for District III. At the time, she was the executive director of the Mental Health Association.

About a year later in 1989, Sinclair joined Resource Associates. She works to help non- profits, family businesses, and small partnerships, among other organizations and structures. Resource Associates can pool its five talents for large institutional contracts like those they've had with Ft. Jackson and the S.C. Dept. of Corrections.

Among Sinclair's success stories on city council, several stand out: streetscaping, particularly in Five Points; the turnaround progress out Two Notch Road and along Rosewood Drive; the new Columbia Museum of Art and EdVenture, both city- built projects; and the historical designation in neighborhoods.

And Sinclair was against a few things, too. She voted with former council member Jim Papadea against the bus transfer deal SCANA offered and the majority of city council took. This is the transit deal with no continuing income stream for transit. For a long time Sinclair was the only vote against the city- funded, city- developed, city- owned convention center headquarters hotel deal, the one that saw its costs rise above twice what the local market could possibly carry.

All the while she was on Columbia City Council, Sinclair was sure of staying out of conflict by staying off boards of directors of non- profits. In other words, she didn't want to serve where city support was sought.

Free of city council, Sinclair now serves on the board of the 701 Center for Contemporary Art.