City council candidate Tyler Furry

Tyler Furry is running for city council because there’s a “lot of crazy things going on in our nation and world,” and while he can’t necessarily do much about those, he can exact “some positive change at the local level.”

For example, he has worries about the Environmental Protection Agency declaring the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. plant a Superfund site and he’s worried about federal overreach. He points to other Superfund sites across the U.S.

“I don’t think you could call them successes,” he said.

Furry, 29, grew up in Fishtail and Red Lodge and has been moving northwest ever since, he said. He’s lived in Columbia Falls for a couple of years now with his wife, Megan and young son, Talus. He has dual bachelor’s degrees in communications and media arts from the University of Montana and has been a designer and user interface developer for the Zane Ray Group, a website and marketing firm in Whitefish for the past three years.

CFAC aside, he said he’d love to see Columbia Falls’ downtown area revitalized and he said he also supports industry as well. But by the same token, he wants to keep Columbia Falls an affordable place to live. He noted that when there was a big snowstorm last winter, everyone in the neighborhood pitched in to dig each other out. There’s a strong sense of community here.

“I’d love to maintain that,” he said.

He said he supports creating a quiet zone through the city for freight train traffic.

“We’d all sleep a little better,” he said.

But he didn’t know enough about SmartLam’s plans for expansion in the city to have an opinion on it.

When he’s not working he enjoys skiing, hiking, mountain biking and hanging out with his family. He also raises chickens in his backyard and encourages other folks to do so as well.

He considers himself fiscally conservative and wants to hold the line on city taxes and other fees.