McCollum, Incashola face off for St. Ignatius mayor seat
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In St. Ignatius, Mayor Steve McCollum faces a challenge from councilman Daren Incashola. Both men bring a wealth of experience to the job, and each is deeply vested in the town where they were born and raised.
Incumbent Mayor
Steve McCollum
Background: Born, raised and educated in St. Ignatius; married for 40 years to Debi McCollum, and has two adult sons and three grandchildren
Work experience: Maintenance supervisor for St. Ignatius School District for 23 years, overseeing six employees; previously worked as a contractor and helped build the St. Ignatius Middle School
Political experience: Served as mayor for four years, and spent 12 years as a city councilman
“I love working for the people,” says McCollum, who also appreciates his four-member council. “We have great group of people. It’s a lot of fun trying to improve the town, finding out issues and seeing if we can resolve them.”
During his tenure, the community has continued to improve streets, signage and crosswalks. “Our biggest goal is to improve streets as much as we can every year,” he says.
The council chose to expend most of its two-year street budget this year to widen and repair a hazardous stretch by the school so cars and buses could safely pass, which means next year’s funds “will be more limited.”
In the past year, they also used some of the American Rescue Plan Act funding to purchase the building at the corner of First and Blaine so that the local food pantry would have a permanent, rent-free home.
The city is currently applying for more than $2 million of ARPA funds to upgrade aging sewer pipes, which pose “a real safety issue.”
Although the community is seeing “a lot of new faces in town,” McCollum believes St. Ignatius has been able to keep pace with growth, thanks to two “real good police officers,” recent upgrades to the sewer lagoon and the drilling of new wells.
With retirement from the school district a few years off, McCollum anticipates having more time to put into his mayoral duties. “It’s hard when you’re working full time,” he says. Post retirement, he’ll be able to “spend more time with the clerk and see how things really, really run.”
While the mayor and council do receive small stipends, McCollum says his amounts to “about 10 cents an hour. I’m definitely in it for the people. As a landowner and taxpayer, I want to make sure our hard-earned taxes go in the right direction and won’t be wasted.”
Councilman
Daren Incashola
Background: Born and raised in St. Ignatius, Incashola attended the Universal Technical Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, prior to serving as an infantryman in the U.S. Army. He also completed the truck-driving course at Salish Kootenai College. He’s the father of a seventh grader and freshman who attend St. Ignatius schools
Work & Volunteer Experience: Served as a detention officer, dispatcher and reserve deputy with the Lake County Sheriff’s office, where he supervised the county’s 911 call center, managing up to 16 employees and two budgets. Incashola now works for the county’s IT department. He also served as a volunteer fireman in St. Ignatius and an EMT Basic with Mission Valley Ambulance
Political Experience: Halfway through his second term as a city councilman
“I have good experience to be able to support the job and I want to see more action as far as getting prepared for the future of the town,” Incashola says of his motivation for running for office.
St. Ignatius, he notes, has a small budget and needs to be creative in finding ways to address pressing issues, such as upgrading and repairing sewer mainlines, fixing roads, and adequately staffing and funding law enforcement.
“I want people to get together, to use their ideas and lean on each other to figure out how we’re going to keep everything going.”
His experiences as a police officer and volunteer fireman and EMT “were all great opportunities to serve my community” and helped instill “that bug” for community service.
As a county employee, he’s taken courses in leadership, budget and finance and employee discipline and retention, all training that “is really going to work well for me here,” he says.
Incashola points to his success at writing grants for the local police department to fund equipment and personnel and for the county to upgrade and replace its 911 equipment. He also found funding to convert the town’s tennis courts to basketball courts instead of tearing them out.
He suggests that there’s room for improvement in the town’s relationship with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “In my experience, they’ve always been a great partner to have,” he says. “They have a lot more resources than we do – to be able to draw on those people and pick their brains is definitely a huge asset.”
Bottom line, Incashola says, “I love it here. I want to try to find solutions that work for us and be part of that. I want to keep this a safe, nice community for our kids.”
