City Council: Darin Fisher

Incumbent Darin Fisher is seeking a fourth term on the city council. Fisher, 46, and his wife, Carla, own Backslope Brewing on Highway 2, a business they started in 2016 and has flourished ever since. They have two young children.

He said Columbia Falls can help businesses by fostering a welcoming environment and the city has done that over the years.

“The (city’s) job is to be transparent so businesses have no surprises,” he said.

He said he supports the resort tax, even though it is a hassle for businesses like his to administer. Still, it pays for valuable city services like additional firefighters and police officers, he noted as well as adding revenue for city streets, parks and other amenities.

Without it, city residents alone would be paying for those services, he noted.

On housing he said the city and the entire valley need more of it.

He favors higher density housing because it generally results in more attainable housing. He noted that he could afford to buy a home years ago, but now that same home today would be unaffordable. Homes on half-acre lots are running $600,000 to $1 million.

“The goal is something a working class family can reach out and get,” he said.

Right now, his own employees can’t afford homes in Columbia Falls. The city needs to do something or “there won’t be more working class people in town and that concerns me.”

That’s why he supported a subdivision proposed by Location Ventures east of the Flathead River earlier this spring. Fisher was one of two councilmembers to support the project, which didn’t gain approval.

He said he’s not opposed to west side development and he understands that council can’t stop developers from proposing subdivisions with high-end housing, either, but the east side of the river was within a quarter-mile of city services and another high density development — the Highline Apartments. He said he supports higher density development and planned unit developments as a way to create more affordable housing and the city could, through zoning, restrict short-term rentals.

He said he also supports going up in height if need be in downtown.

“I’m fine going up three stories in downtown,” he said.

The city has done a lot with its parks in his tenure — pickelball courts at Columbus park, a community garden at Rivers Edge Park, and a skatepark at Fenholt is in the works. He said he supported all those projects.

On the pit to park off the tRuck Route he said he was all for creative solutions, whether a dog park or even housing if it was economically possible to remove the wood waste that was left there for years.

On the Columbia Falls Aluminum Plant cleanup, he would have liked to see it dug up and hauled away.

“I would have liked to see the entire mess dug up and hauled away, but it looks like that won’t be happening, and that is out of our hands.  That said, I am interested to see the full design and engineering for the containment walls, not my first option, but it seems feasible,” he said. “Development is certainly possible up there, there is a lot of land to work with.  But I would want to see how the whole Superfund cleanup works out before I encouraged any development on that land.  There are a lot of unknowns.

Development on CFAC would be similar to the other areas that could be developed on the edges of town.  I am not saying that we should go east, or west, or north, the direction of development is not my decision, it is up to landowners and whether they want to sell, develop, or preserve their land.”