I’ve been covering Sandpoint City Hall off and on since 2004, and it’s always felt like the most important part of my job as a reporter-editor. It’s impossible for me to recollect how many councilors have come and gone during that time, though I can count seven mayors. Reader readers from the old days might remember that one of our co-founders and former-Publisher John Reuter served on the City Council, including as president. I recall specifically un-endorsing him for the position, but he won anyway (and did a pretty good job on a number of issues after all). I write all this to underscore that in my years as a professional council watcher, my conviction has only grown that serving on that body is probably the most impactful thing a citizen can do both for the present and future of their community. That’s why I’m devoting this week’s “Junk Drawer” to encouraging any and all qualified electors to consider filing to run for three positions that are opening on the council this cycle.
The seats currently held by Councilors Joel Aispuro, Justin Dick and Rick Howarth are up for election, with Aispuro and Howarth already declaring they’ll run for reelection. As of press time, Torrez Joshua has also declared. The candidate filing window is closing on Friday, Aug. 29, but there’s still time to declare, which is easy: go to City Hall during regular business hours, declare in person to the city clerk, and present either the Petition for Candidacy (available online) or pay a $40 filing fee. That’s it.
However, since it’s the last day of the filing window, if you go the Petition of Candidacy route, you’ll need to visit the Bonner County Elections Office to have it reviewed and certified before the City Clerk’s Office will accept it — that means you’ll need to plan ahead so that you don’t miss the 5 p.m. deadline at City Hall.
Sandpoint City Council seats are “at large,” meaning there are no specific districts or seats representing those districts. Rather, those who win the most votes across all of Sandpoint’s voting precincts win the seats, which carry four-year terms.
If you miss the Friday, Aug. 29 deadline, there’s still a way to run as a write-in candidate. That process involves filing a Declaration of Intent with the City Clerk’s Office by Friday, Sept. 5.
The city of Sandpoint’s website has a whole page with all the details, including links to qualifications; the 2025 election calendar; relevant documents like the Petition of Candidacy and Declaration of Intent; as well as pertinent physical and email addresses, phone numbers and websites for city, county and state election resources.
Find all that and more at sandpointidaho.gov/cityclerk/page/city-elections.
Take it from me, after spending as much (and maybe more) time watching the functioning of city government for a living than anyone in town, serving on the council can be and often is a difficult and thankless job. But also take it from me that the decisions that are made from the dais on those Wednesday night meetings carry enormous weight with ramifications that last for decades and may affect generations of people who call this place home.
DEAR READERS,
I’m feeling late summer vibes this week, which pair nicely with the cover of the Reader this edition. The painting is called “Happy Hour” and was done on acrylic by local artist Sandy Wulf.
We’re always stoked to receive your cover artwork submissions, so keep them coming. We consider just about everything except full frontal nudity (darn). Since we pay for color on every page, we prefer our covers to be color instead of black-and-white (which pains me to say, as a former film photographer who only took black-and-white photos).
This is our last edition of August, and thus one of our final few editions of summer. Kids head back to school next week and the seasonal hordes of tourists recede like waves on a busy beach.
In closing, be sure to thank those wildland firefighters for protecting our forests (and homes) from the blazes at our door this year. You’re all topnotch humans.
Be well, everyone.
– Ben Olson, publisher
READER
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About the Cover:
This week’s cover is titled “Happy Hour” and was painted by local artist Sandy Wulf.
Sandpoint voters to consider $130M wastewater plant bond measure
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff
Sandpoint voters will see a measure on their Nov. 4 election ballot asking whether they approve of the city bonding for up to $130 million to address the ailing wastewater treatment plant adjacent to Lakeview Park on the Pend Oreille River.
Members of the Sandpoint City Council voted unanimously Aug. 20 to approve the ballot language and adopt the ordinance that will allow City Hall to go to the voters in November, with the measure due to be filed Friday, Aug. 29 with the Bonner County Clerk’s Office.
According to the question that will be asked on the ballot, the $130 million would be put toward financing the design, acquisition and construction of a wide range of improvements to the aged plant, as well as pay for related expenses.
The anticipated interest rate would be 4.27% per year, with the total amount to be repaid over the 40-year life of the bonds estimated at $257,285,000 — including $130,000,000 in principal and $127,285,000 of interest.
Public Works Director Holly Ellis told the council on Aug. 20 that the $130 million full-project bond contains 40% contingency.
“There’s 40% of unknowns. So the hope is that we go for grants and that we can also design and value engineer opportunities to get the price of this project down,” she said. “Those efforts have not started to date. We need to go to these grant agencies with a bond in hand so that they’ll consider our applications and we need to start the design and engineering effort in order to value engineer and find a lot more cost savings.”
Danielle Quaid, of bond counsel Hawley Troxell, reminded councilors that the bond measure is “just an empowerment to borrow the funds,” with no obligation to borrow the full amount. Rather, the city should be as aggressive as possible with seeking grants and low-interest loans to offset as much as possible of the project’s cost, therefore lessening the burden on ratepayers.
“Pretty much every stone is going to be turned over in an effort to make sure that we can do the best we can in finding that funding to keep this impact as low as possible to the constituents, because I think everyone in this room recognizes the overall cost of this is very impactful to everyone and it’s our duty to make sure that we are being advocates and doing our best diligence and finding the grants that we can,” said Kyle Meschko, Coeur d’Alenebased project manager with consultant Keller Associates, which is managing the wastewater treatment plant rebuild.
Councilors considered floating a “Phase 1” bond measure of $80.3 million as an alternative, which would have empowered the city to seek financing to that amount only to address the most critical aspects of the plant — many components of which date to the 1940s and were repurposed from the Farragut Naval Station when Sandpoint’s plan was constructed in the 1950s.
According to a survey conducted from late July to Aug. 14 and commissioned by the city from Boise-based communications firm Portman Square, 56.6% of respondents said they’d support the $80.3 million proposal — even knowing of a potential 60% rate increase— but only if the city committed to reducing the burden on ratepayers with
Council approves language for Nov. 4 ballot
other grants and loans. A further 22.7% were “not sure.”
The survey showed 36.88% answered the same way about the $130 million option — including up to 106% more in rates — with 29.5% stating they were “not sure.”
“We know that there will be voters for whom this is a non-starter regardless of what the city does to do cost sharing,” said Amy Holly, with Portman Square. “But we have a movable middle even with this $130 million full-freight bond. We’ve got 30% almost of voters who are unsure about their level of support and can be convinced through education and through conversation to support.”
Councilor Justin Dick said that based on the survey results, he had been in favor of the $80.3 million option.
“But I think one of the things that we need to talk about is, ‘Why are we here, right?’ We’re here because we’ve kicked the can over and over and over and over again. We could be indebted up to 40 years either way with the $80 million or the $130 million,” he said, adding that if voters approved the Phase 1 measure they’d later be asked to approve a Phase 2 bond that would only lengthen the period of indebtedness and increase costs.
“The education piece is
A preliminary site map of the rebuilt wastewater treatment plant.
preferred the $130 million option “with a strong emphasis on the education aspect ... explaining the negatives if we don’t get it and the positives if we do.”
going to be everything for this, and understanding that this phased approach, albeit palatable, could cost us well more money than the $130 [million] that we may spend with this bond initiative here,” Dick said.
Councilor Pam Duquette said that while she had concerns about the price tag, “If we do not do the whole thing and something goes wrong in that time, we’re already spending that [much] more money, too,” she said. “I just think the outcome of that is totally unacceptable and hopefully a lot of people would realize that.”
Among the more worrying portions of the Portman Square survey results was that only 11% of the 927 responses — 671 of which were completed and 256 partial — felt that the city would be responsible with the money raised for the project.
“I think we’re in a situation where we go for the full $130 [million] and we look greedy. We go for the $80 [million] and then we have to go back. We look like, ‘Oh, government’s not capable.’ So it’s a tough call either way,” said Councilor Joel Aispuro.
“Eleven percent trust from the citizens — hey, we’re in North Idaho. That’s pretty good for me, 11%, so I’ll take that,” he said, adding that he
Holly, with Portman Square, said that given the community’s apparent low level of confidence in City Hall’s ability to responsibly manage the project, “I think that if and when this bond passes, continued community engagement, continued transparency around what the city is doing, funding options it’s pursuing are critical to helping rebuild some of this perceived lack or this lack of trust in in how the city is going to operate this.”
A number of outreach and education efforts are planned in the months leading up to the election, with a website and social media presence planned for early September, followed by a postcard mailer and utility bill insert in mid-September.
In late September, as absentee ballots are being mailed, the city anticipates the first of two open houses coinciding with presentations to various community groups. The second open house is planned as early voting begins in mid-October.
Council President Deb Ruehle, who has for years championed the wastewater treatment plant upgrade, said that it should be made clear to voters that a massive failure — or failures — at the facility would not only be environmentally disastrous, but threaten home equity.
“I appreciate the water quality approach, and ultimately it is a water quality approach, but I think that if we direct a little more of our education toward the pocketbook from the stance of, ‘You may no longer have home value,’ I believe the message may ... give them a reality check of what we’re looking at,” she said.
Courtesy image
City adopts $49.9M FY’26 budget
New fee schedule accepted in tie vote broken by Mayor Grimm
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff
The Sandpoint City Council tackled its Fiscal Year 2026 budget, along with setting a new fee schedule, at its Aug. 20 meeting, though not without a little friction.
While the votes to adopt the $49,927,665 budget and certify the amount of foregone to be included were unanimous, Councilor Kyle Schreiber expressed some misgivings.
Referring to the failure of the proposed 1% local option sales tax and results from a recent survey on the wastewater bond measure headed to the ballot in November, he said citizens have expressed that they don’t trust the city to be responsible with the dollars raised from those sources.
“[T]he vast majority of this budget is reasonable spending on the essential services that our community wants, but I’m concerned that some of the capital projects in this budget are going to exacerbate that community wariness,” Schreiber said. “We have millions of dollars going to projects that aren’t in our plans. We have stormwater improvements that are happening prior to our stormwater planning process.”
Sandpoint Mayor Jeremy Grimm asked Schreiber to identify a specific item to address, though he declined to do so citing a number of budget adjustments he proposed at the council’s Aug. 6 meeting, none of which were accepted.
“I’m not going to go through that again,” Schreiber said.
“I believe that this budget is council’s biggest opportunity to regain the trust of our community and prove that we’re wise stewards of these public funds, and we need to focus that discretionary spending on projects that have a noticeable impact on our constituents’
daily lives,” he said. “I just don’t see this budget doing that.”
While Schreiber was the sole dissenting vote to advance the budget to its final readings, he ultimately voted in favor to adopt the ordinance.
The public hearing, deliberation and vote on accepting the new fee schedule was more divided, resulting in a tie vote broken by Grimm in favor of adoption.
Ben McGrann, who serves as the developer’s representative and project manager for the Averill Hospitality hotel redevelopment adjacent to City Beach, told the council that the development impact fees in the new schedule are too high and asked that the city either grandfather projects with existing conditional use permits under the previous fees or put in place a phased implementation process beginning in mid-2026.
“Hotel development is one of the most challenging forms of real estate to finance. Projects depend on delicate finance stacking. Debt equity, small shifts and costs make or break feasibility,” he said. “At the proposed $7,773 per room — a 105% increase — this project is simply unviable. The increase adds $1 million in upfront costs to the project that cannot be absorbed, increasing from current impact fees of just over $300,000 to almost $1.3 million. Again, the project cannot move forward.”
McGrann added that under the city’s occupancy tax — which was doubled to 14% last year — the completed hotel would funnel between $12 million and $17 million to the city before the tax expires in 2035. Meanwhile, he pointed to property taxes and job creation as other benefits to the local economy, as well as an estimated $80 million to $100 million a year in guest spending throughout the community.
“If this project stalls, the city doesn’t just lose impact fee, it loses years of recurring occupancy tax and economic benefit,” McGrann said, later adding, “We remain committed to adhering to the current fee schedule and to the agreed-upon parking in lieu fee of $400,000 that we have proposed to help support the improvements to parking at City Beach. The choice is not between infrastructure and growth; it’s about timing and fairness.”
City Planner Bill Dean cautioned that “it’s probably a safer, easier to track, easier to implement approach if you were just to pick a later date where the fees would take effect.”
Noting that impact fees are paid at the time a building permit is issued, Grimm questioned whether the city would even have the legal ability to grandfather a project before that issuance.
“I did meet with the representatives from the hotel this morning to talk about this issue,” Grimm said. “There are some other options available.”
Of those, he pointed to the use of urban renewal dollars to help offset the impact fees; amending the fees to delay their implementation; changing the date of impact fee payment to the time of occupancy, rather than building permit; and revisiting the phased approach, which the council rejected on a tie vote broken by Grimm.
Councilor Joel Aispuro proposed taking the development impact fee out of the schedule altogether and addressing that at a later date. Welker said state law dictates that impact fees can’t be implemented until 30 days after a public hearing is held to amend the ordinance, which is anticipated to take place at the council’s regular Tuesday, Sept. 3 meeting.
“So right now the actual implementation date is likely
to be closer to Oct. 3,” Welker said.
Councilor Rick Howarth remained unconvinced.
“I understand the necessity for the impact fee increases. I think we heard from the hotel representative — that is a project I think we all want to see come to fruition, so I cannot in good conscience approve the implementation of those fees without understanding there would be a negative impact,” he said. “And so I don’t know exactly to what date we would have to delay that to help them make sure that project comes through.”
Though Grimm repeated that councilors would “still have a second bite of the apple” when they meet to amend the ordinance in September, Councilor Justin Dick echoed Aispuro’s and Howarth’s concerns about the fees.
“They are incredibly steep, not just for the hotel, but the hotel has an amazing economic benefit for the entire community. So I, too, would probably be in favor of either tabling that or delaying that out, however that looks,” said Dick, who noted that he has no current business dealings with Averill.
Council President Deb Ruehle reminded her colleagues that the city had conducted an impact fee study to inform the new schedule, and added, “Don’t base your decision upon one business, one individual — that doesn’t necessarily look good to the public, either. We have to be equal and fair to all development that occurs out there.”
The Aug. 20 meeting also included a lengthy discussion of the downtown monthly and annual parking pass fees in-
cluded in the schedule, which set maximum amounts for downtown employees, downtown residents and marina slip occupants.
Councilor Pam Duquette was especially concerned about having those fees in the schedule despite not having the full parking implementation plan in place, though Welker responded that those fees can be reduced in the future. Meanwhile, Grimm said the full plan is coming in the next five to six months, when there will be further opportunities to adjust fees.
Downtown Business Association President Shery Meekings offered public comment Aug. 20, reporting that response among members has been “not positive” regarding the parking plan — and specifically the idea of implementing parking meters.
Grimm and Welker reiterated that the plan is still being crafted and, what’s more, the only parking fees being considered were related to downtown and marina parking passes.
Still, councilors were concerned that even including the maximum parking pass fees in the schedule would rattle downtown merchants.
“Sometimes we may have to make hard decisions. It’s not easy to sit up here,” Ruehle said. “The perception is always different than what the actual outcome is. We’re going to have many options to discuss what the fees are and set that up as they are out there.”
Aispuro, Duquette and Howarth voted “no” to adopting the new fee schedule, while Dick, Ruehle and Schreiber voted in favor, with Grimm breaking the tie.
Photo by Ben Olson
‘What in the world is going on at Panhandle Health’
By Soncirey Mitchell Reader Staff
Panhandle Health District Board of Health Chair Thomas Fletcher gave an update to the Bonner County board of commissioners Aug. 26, introducing incoming PHD Medical Director Gregory Pennock and making broad accusations that the district’s administration and legal counsel have “thwarted him.”
Members of the Board of Health are chosen by local county commissioners, then appointed by a majority vote of commissioners from across the health district. Its purpose is to govern and tailor PHD’s policies to suit the counties’ needs.
“The bad news is I cannot account for how your tax dollars are being spent,” Fletcher said. “And why is that? Well, I was appointed to the Panhandle Health Board in 2022 by a previous set of commissioners, and the mission from the outset was, ‘What are you guys [PHD] doing?’ I have attempted to answer that question for three years, unsuccessfully. I have been thwarted by legal, thwarted by administration, undermined, ambushed and been unable to uncover what in the world is going on at Panhandle Health.”
The BOCC has been in dialogue with Fletcher and PHD Director Erik Ketner throughout the budget season to better understand how money paid into the health district directly benefits Bonner County. Though PHD is headquartered in Kootenai County and only opens its Sandpoint clinic once a week, Bonner County will pay $472,317 into the district during Fiscal Year 2026.
BOCC Chair Asia Williams requested that Pennock and Fletcher give quarterly updates focused on Bonner County that demonstrate how they’re working to improve local services.
“Our county contributes a significant amount of money towards Panhandle Health with an overwhelming discussion that we don’t feel that we receive that level of services in our county,” she said.
Fletcher went on to say that he has attempted to audit PHD, asking to attend directors’ meetings and access clinical data, but Ketner and the administration have “undermined” his efforts.
“I have been told by legal [counsel], ‘Sit down and shut up.’ This is how serious it is, folks,” said Fletcher, later asking the commissioners to “tell
the law firm to stand aside and stop doing the bidding of the administration and start doing the bidding of the board.”
According to Pennock, his job as PHD medical director will involve a “deep dive” into the district’s clinical services — or, in Fletcher’s words, an “audit.”
“What are they doing? How efficient is it? How many people are they seeing? Are they fitting the needs of the community?” said Pennock, adding that “an important part of the equation” will be “trying to match the needs of the public” with what PHD can support.
Pennock is an Idaho-licensed medical doctor with board certifications in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease and echocardiography. He has worked for the University of Arizona, Kootenai Health and in private practice, and was chief of cardiology at Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello. He will take over for Kootenai County representative Duke Johnson, who held the position for about eight months.
“I find Dr. Fletcher’s comments puzzling as we’ve had extensive conversations about Panhandle Health District programs, in particular on clinical services,” Ketner told the Reader, citing meetings on April 17, May 10 and Aug. 21 when he gave in-depth presentations on clinical services and funding. Meeting recordings are available on the YouTube pages for PHD, Bonner County and Kootenai County, depending on the meeting location.
Ketner provided the Reader with an information packet given to all board members at the Aug. 21 meeting, which includes a monthly financial report with a year-to-date breakdown of revenue and expenses, as well as a series of division reports, which provide accounts of PHD’s clinical services, home visitations, environmental health updates and emergency preparedness programs, among others.
“It is our hope and expectation that board members take the time to read through their board packets and familiarize themselves with services we offer in order to make informed decisions,” Ketner said. “I welcome interest in Panhandle Health District programs and operations and look forward to resolving this matter with Dr. Fletcher and the Bonner County commissioners.”
Bits ’n’ Pieces
From east, west and beyond
Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, which the right-wing news source accused of interfering in the 2020 election, various media reported.
In 2023, Fox News handed over $787 million for similar charges. Un-redacted filings in Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox News include text messages showing Fox “personalities” knew the election was not stolen from then-president Donald Trump. Rather, as Jesse Watters allegedly wrote to Greg Gutfield, “Think of how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL.”
Trump told European leaders he supports a plan for Ukraine to cede Donbas to Russia to end the war, rather than a ceasefire agreement, The New York Times reported.
After sending troops to Los Angeles, then Washington D.C., Trump has also threatened to do so in other “blue” cities. Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said Trump’s threat to send the National Guard to Chicago “isn’t about safety — it’s a test of the limits of his power and a trial run for a police state we won’t let a dictator impose his will.”
According to The Intercept, Trump’s D.C. takeover could cost more than $1 million a day.
Responding to Trump’s militarization threats against various “blue” cities, legal analyst Joyce Vance stated: “Force and intimidation are not strategies we associate with American presidents. Those are not constitutional prerogatives the Founding Fathers assigned to the president. That is how dictators operate. That is how Trump operates. ... There is no reason to pretend that this isn’t happening.”
Congressional Democrats have introduced legislation to restore local control and terminate Trump’s federalization of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, The Hill reported. AmidD.C. protests, lawmakers warned that the recent city takeover “sets a dangerous precedent for authoritarian rule.”
FBI recruits will have less training and not be required to hold a college degree, The New York Times wrote. More complicated cases such as financial fraud and public corruption will be deprioritized
Republican lawmakers in Texas successfully gerrymandered five more Republican seats in the U.S. Congress, displacing elected Democrats. People of color make up 60% of the population in Texas, but the new voting
By Lorraine H. Marie Reader Contributor
districts put white voters at an electoral advantage for Trump. Trump called for more states to follow Texas’ lead, an end to voting machines and ending mail-in-voting. Doing both would let Republicans pick up 100 more seats, Trump claimed. Historian Heather C. Richardson observed: “The president ... is openly admitting that his party cannot win a free and fair election.”
In response to Texas’s gerrymandering, a two-third majority of California lawmakers passed two measures to send to voters about a temporary redistricting of electoral maps, to neutralize the rigged vote in Texas. Other states announced similar intentions. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom attracted attention for also objecting to Trump’s militarization efforts, calling it “just the start of an authoritarian takeover.”
According to CNN, New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is beating Trump at his own game, and plans to preemptively call up her state’s National Guard, rendering it unavailable for federalization by the president.
Democracy’s Docket warned that Trump’s control of the military and federal law enforcement in “blue” areas could easily morph into suppressing voting rights and undermining free and fair elections.
Jared Wise, now a senior adviser at the U.S. Department of Justice, urged Jan. 6, 2021 insurrectionists to “kill” police officers, according to body camera footage obtained by NPR.
Forbes reported that Democrats say 97% of the “released” Jeffrey Epstein files were already public. The memoir, Nobody’s Girl, from Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, will be published soon following the author’s death by suicide in April 2025.
Meanwhile, Epstein “associate” Ghislaine Maxwell has been speaking favorably of Trump. According to Politico, Maxwell may be “angling” for a pardon from her sex trafficking conviction, for which she is serving a 20-year prison term.
Blast from the (recent) past: While campaigning a year ago, Trump told a group of evangelical Christians that if they voted for him in the next November 2024 election, “in four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.” Political scientists call it “competitive authoritarianism” when elections are held solely to create the illusion of electoral legitimacy.
BoCo Ambulance District approves $5M budget
By Soncirey Mitchell Reader Staff
The Bonner County board of commissioners, serving as the Ambulance Service District Board, voted Aug. 20 to adopt the Bonner County Ambulance Service District’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget of $5,323,976.
The independent taxing district previously took out a tax anticipation note of $2 million to keep emergency services operational while officials sorted out financial issues with roots back to the district’s foundation. The county discovered in 2024 that the district had been incorrectly operating as a county department, rather than an independent entity, since its inception in 2005. Because of that, the BOCC, Clerk’s Office and BCASD Chief Jeff
Lindsey had to begin the process of extricating the district from the county, making it financially independent.
BCASD continues to implement cost-saving measures in an attempt to build back $2 million in reserve to fund everyday operations and account for emergency expenses. The district removed five full-time positions during the past year, amounting to “significant savings,” according to Lindsey. Personnel costs — including a 3% cost-of-living adjustment for employees — still make up the vast majority of BCASD’s $5,454,2092 expenses in FY’26.
The BCASD also withdrew from the Dover, Sandpoint Downtown, Sandpoint Northern, Priest River and Old Town Urban Renewal Agencies in May, recouping money
it would otherwise have paid into those organizations to help promote economic growth and improve infrastructure. The 2025 passage of House Bill 436 gave ambulance and fire districts the ability to optout of those payments, which were previously mandatory.
BCASD’s withdrawal lessened the FY’26 budget by approximately $130,000.
Any revenue anticipated but not allocated to a specific expense will go into BCASD’s contingency fund to cover unexpected expenses and build up BCASD’s target $2 million reserve.
“One of the things that we feel is super important, and that has been communicated from the commissioners to us ... is that we continue to build our reserves until we get somewhere around that
$2 million point, to where we don’t — if we ever get in a situation again, we don’t have to borrow from the county like we did last year,” said Lindsey. “Then we can get to the point where we’re no longer TAN-ing and, hopefully, we’re well on our way to being financially stable.”
BOCC Chair Asia Williams stated at the county’s Aug. 18
budget hearing that, though BCASD will end FY’25 with approximately $800,000, the district anticipates the need to take out another TAN in the future. The BOCC will vote on the issue at a yet-to-bedetermined date closer to the end of FY’25 in September.
Sunset, Lightning Creek fires increase containment
‘Go’ evacuation status lifted for Sunset fire, with some areas downgraded to ‘Set’ level
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff
Despite its swift and heavy growth after starting northeast of Athol on Aug. 13, the 3,230-acre Sunset fire was 52% contained as of Aug. 27, with full containment estimated on Sept. 20.
More than 600 personnel were on the fire, which spread northeast from its apparent ignition site to the western shore of Lake Pend Oreille, burning in steep timber northward toward Talache and triggering widespread evacuation orders.
The Bonner County Sheriff’s Office announced Aug. 25 that all areas under the “Go” evacuation status had been lifted, while some roads in Talache and access to Talache were downgraded to “Set” status, meaning residents in those locations should be prepared to leave at any point when threat levels increase.
Find the updated “Set” evacuation list, as well as
evacuation map and zones, from InciWeb at bit.ly/UpdatedEvacInfo.
According to the Aug. 27 incident report from the National Interagency Fire Center, a total of 28 structures have been lost in the Sunset fire, with an estimated cost-to-date of $13.5 million for suppression. That makes it tied with the Windy Rock fire in Montana as the costliest suppression effort in the Northern Rockies Area, which includes more than a dozen fires throughout the region.
Fire managers reported Aug. 27 that crews would remove pumps, hose lays and sprinklers where they’re no longer needed on the southern and western flanks. Meanwhile, Hotshot crews would continue mopping up areas where residual heat remains in the northern-most sections of the fire, which are nearest to structures.
Suppression efforts include an unmanned aircraft used to identify hot spots.
Firefighters are working to protect nearby structures as well as natural resources. Officials stated that the fire is primarily active in timber and timber understory, which includes industrial timber plantations and harvest units.
The weather forecast on Aug. 27 called for cooler temperatures, cloud cover and winds shifting to the south — potentially increasing with cooler, moist air moving into the area. Thunderstorms were predicted in the late afternoon and into Thursday.
The cause of the fire remains undetermined.
Burning on the eastern side of Bonner County about nine miles north of Clark Fork, the Lightning Creek fire was reported Aug. 26 at 2,525 acres and 25% contained. Nine personnel are on the fire, which started July 30 due to lightning and grew through heavy dead and down fuels left from the Cougar fire in 2018.
Activity was reported as “minimal with creeping and
smoldering in isolated areas,” while control lines along Lightning Creek Road remained secure. Officials predicted that the Lightning Creek fire would continue to creep and smolder in the north and south. Go to bonnerso. org/official-sunset-fire-updates for ongoing news releases and notices, including how to sign up for alerts from the Idaho Department of Lands and access the Inciweb page for the Sunset fire. Regular updates also come via the BCSO through the Nixle emergency alert system. Sign up for Bonner County Nixle alerts by texting 888777 and entering your zip code.
For more information and updates on the Sunset fire, go to inciweb.wildfire.gov/ incident-information/ididssunset-fire.
For more on the Lightning Creek fire, go to inciweb. wildfire.gov/idipf-lightningcreek-fire.
Bonner County Commissioners Brian Domke, left; Asia Williams, center; and Ron Korn, right. Photo by Soncirey Mitchell
A map of the Sunset fire showing the new ‘Set’ evacuation areas in yellow. Courtesy of IDL
Bouquets:
• I heard that Jim Orbaugh, owner of the recently closed Corner Bookstore, donated his remaining stock of books to the Friends of the Library. Orbaugh donated more than 120 boxes filled with books, which the Friends of the Library will sell at their monthly sale to help keep our library strong and healthy. The person who shared the information with me wrote, “It is ultimately an amazing gift to the community of Sandpoint.” I agree. Well done, Jim. Here’s wishing you a wonderful retirement. Thanks for all the great books over the years.
GUEST SUBMISSION:
• “Bravo to Bill Borders for your clever and creative commitment. Local and lighthearted comics are a wonderful weekly treat.”
— By Jodi Rawson
Barbs:
• I’m so confused. Why has the city of Sandpoint ripped up the streets between Church and Pine to work on the sewer a half dozen times this summer? I couldn’t believe it when I heard the saw cutting through the pavement yet again last week. I’ll admit that I don’t know much about the sewer business, but I am confused by why this same street has been cut open every couple of weeks as crews dig down to the sewer pipes, do whatever work they need to do, fill the hole and pave over it again. They close off the street (and usually a few streets up and down the block, as well) while they do the work, which can also be annoying. This repetitive work seems like an incredible waste of money, time and resources, not to mention a major pain in the ass for neighbors dealing with construction all summer long. My unasked for advice to the city of Sandpoint: Please figure it out and stop with the repetitive work.
‘Undeniable…’
Dear editor,
“Undeniably, AFP was the biggest ally we had in getting the One Big Beautiful Bill across the finish line,” crowed Idaho Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo Aug. 14 at a breakfast held by Americans For Prosperity, or AFP, in Boise.
AFP is an advocacy organization founded by billionaires Charles and the late-David Koch. The private event at a downtown hotel celebrated the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is now a law and was supported by AFP through a $20 million campaign effort. Crapo chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which, among its many areas of oversight, is charged with crafting tax policy. The Idaho senator played a key role in crafting the legislation.
Protesters outside the event called for town hall meetings instead.
Sen. Crapo was invited to town meetings in Nampa and Lewiston. He did not attend either one, apparently unwilling to admit that AFP is his “biggest ally,” much less take questions.
Call his office and ask him to have public meetings. Coeur d’Alene office: 208-664-5490; D.C. office: 202-224-6142.
Senator Crapo is not representing us.
It’s undeniable.
Nancy Gerth Sagle
Twelve of top 15 worst crime states are ‘red’…
Dear editor,
Interesting factoid: As I was googling around, I happened to land on a list of the top American cities with the worst crime rate. Twelve of the top 15 were in “red” states in the 2024 election — more than one in the same state (head scratching) — with Memphis being the single worst in the country. Chicago was No. 16, imagine that?
Lawrence Fury Sandpoint
Facing facts...
Dear editor, Some letters to the editor contain mostly facts. Some letters to the editor contain mostly opinion. The following facts are from Sylvia Humes’ recent piece [Perspectives, “God help America,” Aug. 14, 2025]: Fact 1: Many voters only look
for the “R” or “D” party label and do not research candidates’ positions.
Fact 2: Trump fired the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics shortly after the statistics showed a weakening economy.
Fact 3: Trump‘s lawyer met with a convicted child molester (Epstein’s criminal assistant) in prison for two days with no oversight. Trump‘s lawyer then released the transcript with the convicted child molester saying she never saw Trump sexually molest a child.
Fact 4: Trump‘s tariffs increase the cost of many goods and are paid for by American consumers.
Fact 5: Trump‘s big ugly bill increases our national debt by over $3 trillion and benefits the super rich and the big corporations.
Fact 6: Our American democracy is based on our Constitution, which includes three branches of government that are designed to provide
checks and balances so not a single branch gets too much power.
Fact 7: The future of our democracy requires citizens who are informed, open-minded and involved.
Steve Johnson Sagle
‘Domination over democracy’...
Dear editor,
A new revolutionary class is rising in the U.S. — not to build, but to grab power. They aren’t improving the system; they tear down rivals, flaunt strength and hope power alone gives meaning. Reform isn’t the goal — domination is, measured by force and exaggerated claims.
Unlike past elites who earned authority through expertise and institutions, this group rejects legitimacy. Oversight feels like attack, professionalism is discarded and loyalty now trumps skill.
Lowering standards at ICE and the FBI isn’t accidental — it signals obedience over competence. Fueled by resentment, they see themselves as the rightful elite and anyone enforcing rules they didn’t write as the enemy.
History offers a warning. The French Revolution collapsed into fear, purges and chaos because it destroyed authority (legitimate, recognized power that is grounded in rules, expertise or institutions) without building institutions. The American Revolution succeeded by creating lasting structures to channel freedom into stable governance.
As Hannah Arendt warned: When legitimacy dies, politics dies with it. What remains isn’t freedom, but raw domination by those who mistake power for purpose.
Kari Saccomanno Sandpoint
Golf tournament raises $15K for local cancer support
The Wednesday Morning Elks Women’s Golf League presented Community Cancer Services with a $15,300 donation Aug. 13, with funds raised from the 10th annual Get Teed Off With Cancer tournament on June 18.
Presenting the check were (front row, L-R):
Mary Beth Childers; Linda Gibbs; Carol Kovalchuk; Luanne Schmidt; Donna (Foord) Hartshorn; Kaylie Stevens, of CCS; and Susan Anderson. Second row (LR): Betty Snyder, Nancy Decato, Bobette Dowling, Susan Tucker, Nita Garvey and Linda Tadlock. Third row (L-R): Linda Cooke,
JoEllen Baker, Joanne Rohyans, Kelly Armstrong and Nina Pinsonneault. Back row (L-R): Janelle Campasino, Anita Rotert, Rochelle Baxley, Linda Larion, Karla Moore, Linda Stanek, Nancy Moody and Joy Snow.
— Courtesy photo
By Emily Erickson Reader Columnist
Emily Articulated
Ready, set, go
“Take only what you need.” This is a phrase that many in our community have had to confront in light of the fires growing around us for the past couple of weeks.
Namely, since its start on Aug. 13, the Sunset Fire has spread across more than 3,200 acres, overtaking forest and shoreline, and threatening communities like Athol, Careywood and Bayview. Residents across Bonner County have had to prepare — some with slight notice — to leave their homes behind.
Guiding this preparation is a simple communication system developed by the International Association of Fire Chiefs, with “Ready, Set and Go,” used to delineate the stages of wildfire preparedness. The system lays out a clear, action-oriented plan: “Ready” means long-term home and property preparation, “Set” means staying informed and packed for evacuation, and “Go” means leaving early when danger becomes imminent.
From my house, separated from the fire by the vastness of the lake, I’ve been afforded contemplation of this readiness from a hypothetical place. It’s a luxury I know could disappear in a flash of lightning or from a different fire on a different day, and one that so many around me haven’t had. But a luxury, that for now, still holds.
“They’re just things,” people say, in an attempt to rationalize the proximity to or experience with evacuation, leaving
behind all the things they can’t bring with them. But I know that often, that isn’t exactly the case.
As a child, my family experienced a fire that destroyed far more than the things it burned. We lost our dog, for whom my dad suffered third-degree burns trying to save. We lost nearly a year’s worth of my dad’s carpentry — and with it, the biggest job opportunity of his career. And we lost the security of thinking it couldn’t happen to us.
The experience left rubble my dad could never clear, the fire becoming a turning point in his ever-deepening depression and the substance abuse he used to numb it. He carried away all that he could, but it was the weight of what he couldn’t carry that stayed with him the rest of his life.
I remember sifting through the debris that smelled like campfire, wondering what grand discernment the fire seemed to have in all that it charred and all that it left intact. My bike’s handlebars captured it perfectly: one side scorched black, the other still bright pink, with tinsel tassels unscathed.
Mary Oliver, in her poem
“Storage,” writes about discarding the contents of her storage unit, declaring: “Things! Burn them! Burn them! Make a beautiful fire! Make more room in your heart for love, for the trees! For birds who own nothing — the reason they can fly.” And although some of the sentiment rings true to me, specifically as it is applied to excess, I think the poem has an important and unsaid implication: The freest birds fly because they know they have the safety and comfort of a nest to return to when it is time to land.
Yes, our homes hold so many replaceable things — just things — but they also comprise the artifacts of our lives. They hold photo albums and family dishes and old art projects and favorite books. They contain couches with imprints from countless nights spent curled up together, just so, and kitchen floors with scratch marks from pets long gone. Houses can be places of memory or snapshots of our current lives, but also of lives we lived that we’ll never live again. And with those, all the meaning and significance we attach to them.
So, for all those who have faced or are facing “Ready” or “Set”: I’m so sorry you’re grappling with the what-ifs. For all those who have lived through, “Go”: my heart breaks for what you prepared to lose. And to those who have already lost: I hope you feel the full strength of community around you as you pick up the pieces and rebuild; because, while some things are “just things,” so many are also irreplaceable relics of a life. Finally, a well-deserved “thank you” to the hundreds
of people fighting this fire — the crews on the ground, the patrols from boats and the teams in the sky — working tirelessly to secure fire lines and protect our communities. Local and national groups alike have come together, making impossible calculations with extraordinary care so that fewer people have to face such devastating loss. Our gratitude is resounding.
[Editor’s note: According to an Aug. 25 alert from the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office, all “Go” evacuation levels have been lifted for the Sunset fire, though some roads in and around access to Talache have been downgraded to “Set” status.]
Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.
Retroactive
By BO
Emily Erickson.
Science: Mad about
deli
By Brenden Bobby Reader Columnist
It’s pretty easy to take the convenience of the deli for granted. Sliced lunch meat seems like such a straightforward concept: thinly sliced meat from specialty cuts of an animal salted for your preference.
The truth might shock you.
A lot of work goes into creating cold cuts for the deli, including a little bit of deception and clever marketing. Manufacturers’ claims that cold cuts for your sandwich are a specialty cut are meant to maximize the amount of the animal used, thus increasing profits and reducing waste. Most deli meats are actually an amalgam of meats that are bound together to create something akin to spam.
This is apparent when looking at whole chicken or turkey breast from the deli. You may notice that while they slice the meat there is noticeably no cavity for the animal’s innards — as though they bred some sort of mega-chicken and only selected the best part of the breast.
In actuality, this is several chicken or turkey breasts put together. The white meat is cut from the bird and laid out onto a conveyor where it is carried through a number of operations. The first is to inject the meat with brine using an array of syringes attached to a pressing machine. The meat is then sent through a tenderizing machine that works about as you’d expect: using a series of metal gears and weights to beat it and break up the muscle fibers. It then travels through a tumbler that further breaks down the
cold cuts
meat and releases proteins that will be used later in the process to bind it all together like glue.
The next step is for the meat to fill plastic cooking and forming bags to create that classic loaf you see at the deli. The bags are sealed and vacuum sealed, then the meat is smoked in a giant smoker. Once smoked, the loaf is removed from the form and sent through a heating tube that browns the outside of the loaf. Those crispy edges you’re used to on your deli meat aren’t the skin, it’s just crispy meat. Sometimes this layer is actually bacon.
After that step, the meat is then packaged and ready to be shipped. Under proper refrigeration, the meat should last as many as 30 days before it expires.
Many of these processes are shared between different cuts of deli meat. Essentially, all deli meat is a combination of cuts where sinew and skin have been removed. Meat like salami uses larger chunks bound together by emulsified meat, leading to unique profiles when making perpendicular slices to the meat.
Bologna is perhaps the most recognizable deli meat in America — ironic, as it was named after the Italian city of the same name but pronounced completely differently. Bologna is often a mix of meats, with 50/50 beef and fat, 80/20 pork and fat and mechanically separated chicken. “Mechanically separated chicken” is an industry term for chicken that has effectively gone through a blender and become something close to soft cat food or pâté. This chicken paste is the most prominent ingredient in bo-
logna, but it isn’t the primary source of flavor. Bologna’s signature flavor comes from the dry ingredients added during the mixing process, which includes salt, sugar, corn starch and mustard.
The bologna paste is squeezed into a 36-pound thermoplastic tube and smoked for hours until the meat is cooked through. Once cooked, the log of extruded meat is sent through a slicer that cuts it into 16-ounce segments ready for packaging.
The red “skin” on your bologna isn’t skin at all, but the thermoplastic casing that formed the meat. You really shouldn’t eat this casing, as you’re intended to remove it before it goes on your sandwich.
You could always just get a different cut of meat that isn’t formed with this casing, which might be a little better for your palate and the planet at once. I am a fan of honey roasted turkey or buffalo chicken, personally.
The process of creating deli meat is closely linked to the creation of sausage. The earliest known sausages date back to 3100 BCE in Mesopotamia. It’s unknown how meats were ground down and compacted together at this time, though it was likely finely chopped by hand or ground using stone grinders like a mortar and pestle or grain roller. The meat was likely cured and then stuffed inside animal intestines that were used as a casing, which kept moisture away from the salted meat to preserve it from spoilage.
This is a process that has been improved upon and scaled to an industrial level in this age. Johnsonville Sausage, one of the major sausage
producers in the world, has an annual revenue of roughly $1.1 billion. While there are no publicly recorded metrics of the amount of meat that goes into producing their products, one can use a little math to try and figure out a rough average.
The average Johnsonville Sausage product costs around $5. With a revenue of $1.1
billion, it’s reasonable to expect that the company must produce between 175 million and 220 million 20-ounce products. That means they must produce anywhere from about 275 million to 218.75 million pounds of meat-based products per year.
What a load of bologna. Stay curious, 7B.
Random Corner
• The board game “Clue” was introduced in the U.S. in 1949, but it was invented in the early 1940s during the World War II air raids in the United Kingdom. British musician, fire warden and munitions factory worker Anthony Pratt was holed up in his Birmingham house for safety and, during the long nights, began thinking of murder mystery games played at private music gigs. Pratt and his wife Elva developed a board game they could play while waiting out the air raids.
Pratt filed for a patent in 1944, but due to war shortages, it wasn’t actually released until 1948.
• In the beginning, Pratt’s game was actually called “Cluedo,” a combination of clue and Ludo, the name of a 19th century board game and latin for “I play.” When Parker Brothers picked up the rights to the game in the U.S., they shortened it to “Clue” since Americans had no knowledge of the Ludo game.
• The original murder weapons in “Clue” were different from today’s game. Pratt’s earliest ideas
were sketched by Elva and included an ax, a cudgel, a small bomb, rope, a dagger, a revolver, a hypodermic needle, poison and a fireplace poker. The rope, gun and dagger survived into the modern game, along with new additions the candlestick, a wrench and a lead pipe.
• Pratt’s original character names were Dr. Black, Mr. Brown, Mr. Gold, the Reverend Mister Green, Miss Grey, Professor Plum, Miss Scarlett, Nurse White, Mrs. Silver and Colonel Yellow, who later became Colonel Mustard.
• “Clue” got a makeover in 2008, doing away with the elegant aesthetic of the original game. Hasbro’s changes include changing the murder location to a celebrity party with rooms such as a spa and theater. Colonel Mustard went from a military man to a football hero. Professor Plum became a dot-com billionaire and a trophy, ax and baseball bat were added as new weapons. Finally, Mrs. White was killed off in 2016 and replaced with Dr. Orchard.
PERSPECTIVES
By Sandy Compton Reader Columnist
A shower of sand fell from my pack as I emptied it today. The stuff is whiteish, with gray and tan highlights. In my mind, there’s a big mystery about the color. Why is it almost white when near all the stone surrounding it is some permutation of black?
The lower Salmon River slices down through that stone, basalt thrown out of the earth in hundreds of eruptions over many thousands of years. The caldera now under Yellowstone pumped out great blankets of magma to create the Plateau, the Big Bend of the Columbia and the Snake River plain while sliding on east. The strata are of similar composition, but different rates of cooling produced layers of varying granular construction. The river exposes their differences, all the while grinding it into that sand. The stuff is ever-present. It gets into almost everything, including a sandwich, if you’re not careful.
Collected on the shores of the Salmon, the sand is silky soft and somewhat of a challenge to walk in. On steep slopes, bare feet might work best — you can dig your toes in — but in the heat of summer, the sand can get uncomfortably warm. It’s best to keep the sandals on until shade reaches the beach. I know, because I recently spent five days in sandals.
There’s no need to wear shoes and socks if your feet are wet and warm most of the time.
Last year I bid on a rafting trip during an online auction benefiting Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness, thinking surely someone would outbid me. Nobody did. “Ouch!” said my credit card, and “Welcome!” said Hunt and Mira, proprietors of Three Rivers Rafting. It was money well spent. Hunt and Mira; Three Rivers guides Jane, Reid, Nathan; and Kovu the Corgi, showed our group a beautiful stretch of river and a right good time. We had five days on the river; four nights on the sand.
Hunt picked us up in Lewiston, and took us to the put in downstream of White Bird at Hammer Creek. Between Hammer Creek and the Snake, the Salmon forms a hook — a 50-mile-
long arc moving from a northern to a southern course, wending through Nez Perce country and the beginning of the Nez Perce War.
The trip was a serendipitous continuation of my years-long study of Nez Perce culture and the war that sent many of them into exile in Oklahoma. After the first fight at White Bird Canyon in June 1877, the Nimiipuu escaped General Howard’s forces by circling north to a river crossing at Billy Creek, which is halfway around the hook. The study process is slow, gathering and assembling bits and pieces, uncovering and translating layers of history and “mythtory” laid down by participants, spectators, speculators and researchers over the nearly 150 years since the war began. River guide Jane pointed out that beyond those lie another 12,000 years-plus of Nez Perce history — since time immemorial
We were caught between times, Pacific and Mountain, rowing down the boundary between the two. But the position of the sun becomes more important than numbers on a watch or a phone when you’re on river time. And cell phones don’t work on the river, except rarely. I left mine behind. Left behind also was the “real” world filled with worries, weirdos and whacked-out politicians to a point that it’s become surreal. Instead, we focused on flocks of chukars, bighorn rams drinking at the river, bald eagles and ospreys above it, the songs of canyon wrens and coyotes, tracks in the sand and towering layers of rock.
We were going with the flow, which often became rambunctious. We traversed a couple of dozen rapids, Classes II through IV. There was some serious “whoopin’ and hollerin’” going on and we often hoped the next drop would get us good and wet. It was hot.
It was also cool. My fellow travelers — Gus, Molly, Nikki and Craig — were of the best kind: fun and often funny, open to the experience as it came, eager to learn and share. Our hosts were happy to have us, excellent at what they do, great cooks, good rowers and consummate leave-notrace campers.
I hope nobody outbids me next time.
On five days in sandals
Three Rivers Rafting is based in Lowell, Idaho, on the Selway River. Their website is threeriversrafting.com.
Sandy Compton’s new book, Alex’s Restaurant, is available at Sandpoint Books, the Sanders County Ledger, and online at amazon.com or bluecreekpress. com/books.
Blue Canyon on the lower Salmon River. Photo by Sandy Compton
We all have a role in safeguarding North Idaho’s water
By Jennifer Ekstrom Reader Contributor
I’m once again marveling about how fortunate we are to live among the breathtaking lakes and rivers of North Idaho. These waterways provide so much: swimming and boating opportunities, drinking water, fish and wildlife habitat, irrigation water and gorgeous scenery. They add so much value to our quality of life that others are understandably attracted to them as well. With a swelling population, we all must do our part to ensure these waterways remain unspoiled.
The population in North Idaho has increased significantly in recent years. The 2020 Census recorded 47,110 residents in Bonner County, with the estimate for 2024 being 53,955. Nearly 7,000 additional people are calling this special place home over just four years. Boundary County has seen a similar growth percentage, with about 2,000 new residents in that same time span.
While more people can mean economic vitality, new friends and creative stimulation for our commu-
nities, population increases can also add to the stress on our waterways by taxing already outdated wastewater treatment systems, increasing pollution in stormwater runoff and more. Aging sewage treatment plants, overburdened private septic systems and runoff from lawns contribute nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus into our lakes, which fuel toxic algae outbreaks and feed invasive aquatic weeds. Improving our wastewater treatment systems is of paramount importance.
Recognizing the need to avoid ongoing Clean Water Act violations, the city of Sandpoint has placed a $130 million bond measure on the Nov. 4 ballot. If approved, the bond will fund long-overdue upgrades to the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
While the price tag may seem high, investing now will ultimately save residents money by getting ahead of rising costs, avoiding fines and preventing potentially costly legal action. Importantly, approval does not require the city to use the full amount, and officials have pledged to pursue every opportunity for cost savings.
Earlier this year, Sandpoint secured $38 million in state funding, but that money is contingent on the community raising the remaining funds. Without voter approval, the city risks losing that funding and will still be required to make the upgrades. Passing the bond will ensure Sandpoint builds the effective treatment system needed to protect the Pend Oreille River, safeguard downstream users and preserve water quality for decades to come.
The Kootenai Ponderay Sewer District passed a similar measure last year, and are well on their way toward purchasing and installing their new treatment plant. This is expected to greatly improve the water quality in Boyer Slough, which has been inundated with excessive pollution for years.
While infrastructure improvements are essential, everyday actions also matter. Here are practical actions that everyone can take:
Protect shoreline vegetation: Bonner County requires a minimum 40-foot building setback, with native vegetation recommended to slow runoff and trap nutrients.
Limit fertilizer use: Phosphorus-containing fertilizers are especially harmful, as they fuel toxic algae and invasive weed growth.
Prevent pollutants from entering storm drains: Keep leaves, debris, oils and chemicals away from storm drains, which empty directly into our lake and river.
Manage septic systems properly: Inspections are recommended every three to five years.
Observe No Wake Zones: Waves from boats can stir up sediment, releasing trapped pollution into the water.
Divert stormwater where possible: Allow rain to soak into the ground rather than running into the lake.
People should also be aware that the Idaho State Department of Agriculture applied the chemical herbicide Florpyrauxifen-benzyl (Procellacor) to Lake Pend Oreille from Aug. 24-Aug. 27, in order to kill invasive weeds. Applications focused on Garfield Bay, Bottle Bay, Ellisport Bay and the Long Bridge. While official drinking water and swimming restrictions are not required by law, many people prefer to avoid these areas to minimize exposure to chemicals. You can see the areas targeted for chemical application mapped at: invasivespecies.idaho.gov/ treatment-plans. Excess pollution feeds these weeds, so minimizing pollution can help keep weed infestations down in the future.
Healthy lakes are not guaranteed — they require investment, care and vigilance, especially as our community grows. This November, Sandpoint voters have a chance to make a meaningful difference by supporting the bond measure for wastewater treatment upgrades. By voting “yes,” and maintaining responsible land and shoreline practices, we can keep Lake Pend Oreille swimmable, fishable, and drinkable now and for the future.
Ekstrom is North Idaho director of the Idaho Conservation League.
Jennifer
Water stewards Elizabeth Conig and Tom Gillespie collect samples to test water quality in Kootenai Bay. Courtesy photo.
Preparing for fall
By Soncirey Mitchell Reader Staff
The leaves are changing, days are shortening and nights are cooling down; autumn is right around the corner. Sandpoint’s first frost usually blankets the ground around Sept. 20, but, in the past, it’s come as early as the first week of the month. As soon as blooms begin to fade and leaves yellow, it’s time to start preparing the garden for the colder months. Though it’s a hassle after toiling all summer, any work done now will make things easier in spring — and keep plants healthy and abundant.
Tidying up
As the leaves on shrubs and trees begin to fall away, it can be tempting to break out the shears and trim back some unruly branches. Now is not the time to watch that YouTube tutorial on shaping topiaries. One of the benefits of pruning is that, when done properly, it encourages growth below the cut. New growth in late August and September will die when hard frost comes, as it hasn’t had time to “harden off” or acclimate to the changing weather.
Because there are no hard and fast rules in life, there is a common exception: the raspberry. Everbearing or primocane-fruiting raspberries, which produce fruit in summer and fall, should be cut almost to the ground every fall to ensure a bountiful harvest. Floricane-fruiting raspberries, which only produce one batch of berries, arequire a little more care.. Take note of which canes fruited this year — those are the “floricanes” — and cut them back close to the ground, leaving the young canes to flower next season. For either type of raspberry, wait until all the fruit is gone and the leaves have yellowed and dried to remove anything.
Pruning tip: To prevent the spread of disease, disinfect shears or scissors with rubbing alcohol in between plants. When cutting away a diseased portion of an otherwise healthy plant, disinfect be-
fore pruning any other part of the plant.
At this time, perennial flowers like daylilies, mums and coneflowers will also start to fade and wither. As the individual flowers die, cut off each head to encourage more flowers through a process called “deadheading.” Eventually, when the leaves start to fade as well, it’s time to cut down the plant either to the beginning of its healthy growth or to a few inches above the soil. If left alone, the dead stems can act as conduits for disease and damage to travel into the roots.
Some gardeners will recommend cutting away as much of the garden as possible and removing dead annuals in the fall. This is beneficial because it clears away any debris that could be harboring pests and disease. Unfortunately, it also takes away winter hiding places for beneficial insects like native bees, which can nest in hollowed-out stems or burrow under roots. To strike a balance between the opposing viewpoints, I remove all plants that were diseased or decimated by pests. Anything that remains healthy throughout the growing season becomes winter housing for insects.
Making the bed
Winter is a great time to improve garden soil — and I don’t mean adding fertilizer. Like pruning, fertilizer will encourage growth at the wrong time. Instead, reach for compost, manure and mulch, all of which will protect plants from the cold, build up the soil and break down over the cold months.
Of the three, manure is perhaps the trickiest (and stinkiest) to work with. Common animals like cows and horses that defecate in piles do not fully digest the grass and hay they consume, leaving viable seeds behind in the manure. These will sprout into weeds if placed directly in the garden. Manure from animals like deer and rabbits, which produce pellets, does not have this problem. Either way, manure can be high in urea — a nitrogen-rich element in urine — that, in large quantities, will give plants a chemical burn.
To avoid common issues, it’s best to
let manure sit and decompose for four months or more before placing it in the garden. If you haven’t been living with a rotting pile of poo since May, just throw down some homemade or storebought compost and call it a day.
Staying up past bedtime
Cold-hardy plants like peas and leafy greens will continue to produce until killed by frost, and even summer vegetables can stay awake past their bedtimes with the proper care. If tearing out this year’s crops seems too painful, prolong the growing season by keeping plants warm. Cover up the soil with gardening cloth (or old towels) to keep in the heat, then protect the leaves from frost with a miniature greenhouse. Most gardening stores sell small plastic greenhouses that can
cover rows or garden beds, but you can also simply put some stakes in the ground and throw a tarp over everything. Both methods will trap moisture, so be sure to air out the plants daily to keep them from developing powdery mildew or other types of rot.
Though the time to say goodnight to the garden is fast approaching, remember to give a thought to next year’s blooms. Fall is the time to plant garlic cloves, spring bulbs, trees and shrubs so they’re ready to sprout when the snow melts. Bear in mind when buying bulbs — or any plant, really — that garden stores sell stock that cannot survive North Idaho’s winters. Always check that plants are hardy to at least 5 degrees, and if not, either don’t buy them or plan to dig them up and store them inside when it gets cold.
Get your rafts ready for the 6th annual Sand Creek Regatta
By Reader Staff
The sixth annual Sand Creek Regatta is slated for Saturday, Sept. 6, which gives rafters just over a week to build their boats.
The competition is a celebration of community, as locals build homemade rafts from scraps and, if they float, attempt to paddle from the Bridge Street Bridge to the Cedar Street Bridge and back. Winners earn glory, but there are also trophies awarded for “most creative” design, “most epic fail” and others.
Boaters are instructed to gather at 10 a.m. on the east end of the Bridge Street Bridge (or the old Lakeside Inn location). Launch time is 11 a.m. Spectators are always welcome. Gather along both sides of Sand Creek or atop one of the bridges for the best vantage points. It’s free to enter a boat.
For those interested in entering a boat, the rules are simple: boats must
be crafted from scraps and random supplies. All must be powered by humans — that means no sails or motors. Also, no repurposing already floating vessels (no fair taking a canoe and adding things to it. The craft must be built from scratch). Finally, there must be at least one adult 18 years or older on board each boat.
A new addition this year is the inaugural “Tourist Sacrifice” event, when locals beat drums and march a volunteer tourist to the water’s edge, ask for any last words, then pitch them in the drink. It’s a way to honor our tourists for the dollars they bring to the area, but also toss them in the lake (c’mon, you know you’ve always wanted to do it). The sacrifice will take place just before the race.
Visit facebook.com/sandcreekregatta for more info. We hope to see you all on the shores of Sand Creek.
101 Women accepting applications for fall grant cycle
By Reader Staff
The 101 Women Sandpoint organization has opened its fall grant cycle for applications, inviting area nonprofits to apply for $11,000 to support their mission providing arts, education, recreation and environmental services in Bonner County.
A local philanthropic organization, 101 Women Sandpoint announced the recipient of its 2025 spring grant cycle May, which went to Sandpoint Area Seniors, Inc.
101 Women is a membership group made up of 101 women living in Bonner County. Each member donates $200 per year, and that donation is
then leveraged to create two awards. The grants are presented to two nonprofits at the group’s membership meetings in the spring and in the fall.
The top three finalists are selected after a vetting process, which includes grant application reviews and site visits, and are provided in a presentation at the meeting, which includes a summary of the group’s purpose and need for funding. 101 Women membership then casts votes to choose the winning organization.
For more information and to apply by the Tuesday, Sept. 30 deadline, go to 101womensandpoint.com/grant-application.
Photo by Sarah Mitchell
dumb of the week
By Ben Olson Reader Staff
A lot of dumb has come from the United States’ descent into an authoritarian dystopia. Here’s what kind of “matter” hit the fan last week:
1. It was a wild couple of weeks in Texas, where Republicans approved a new, aggressively gerrymandered congressional map on Aug. 23, which could gain the state up to five additional Republican seats in Congress. The power grab, pushed and promoted by President Donald Trump, is one of the most blatantly corrupt attempts to gerrymander voting districts in recent history.
As a result, the move ignited a contentious tit-for-tat redistricting effort in other states — most notably California, where voters approved a ballot measure redrawing the state’s map to create five new Democratic seats to offset Texas.
Now, the White House is pressuring other GOP states like Indiana and Missouri to take on their own redistricting gambits. Democratic governors in New York and Illinois have vowed to fight back, too.
My question is: If Republican policies are so popular, why do they need to redraw maps to ensure victory? Why not run on these “popular” policies?
2. In the soft, downy haze of yesteryear, Republicans used to rail against Democrats about issues like “states’ rights” and “federal overreach.” One opinion writer for The Hill penned an article in October 2024 titled, “Kamala’s newest lie: Trump will send the army after you,” about how ridiculous it was that Harris claimed that Trump would deploy the military against his own citizens. The story came after Trump insinuated to a Fox News host that he would consider using the military against his political opponents, or “the enemy within,” as he put it.
Boy, I wonder how the crow is tasting for that opinion writer, because now Trump has deployed almost 2,000 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. and plans to deploy up to 1,700 more soldiers across 19 states to help ICE with immigration enforcement. Idaho is among the 19 states, most of which are controlled by Republicans.
Videos of the Guard policing D.C. have been posted all over social media, giving the capital an occupied vibe that hasn’t sat well with a lot of Americans. Trump has claimed the deployment is both to assist ICE’s efforts to round up and deport as many “illegals” as possible, but also to “quickly clear up the crime” in D.C. and other cities, such as
Chicago and Baltimore.
Now with more fascism than ever!
It’s worth noting that despite Trump claiming crime was “out of control” in Washington, D.C., the statistics paint the opposite picture.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser noted that violent crime is actually at a 30-year low in the city. As far as other cities in Trump’s crosshairs, Chicago has seen a 40% decline in shooting victims this year compared to the same time period last year, as well as a 30% decline in murder. Baltimore reported dramatic decreases in violent crime, with homicides down 31.6% and nonfatal shootings down 27% compared to the year before.
Though Republican politicians love to rail to their base about “crime-ridden blue states,” crime seems to be spiking in red states. Though there was a brief spike in homicides and violent crime across both red and blue states in 2020 after the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, violent crime has been on a steady decline for the past 30 years — except in red states, where it hasn’t seen a reduction. In fact, red states (defined as those where Trump won in 2020) have seen a higher combined homicide rate every year going back to the beginning of the century.
But I guess facts don’t fit into Trump’s narrative.
3. Former first lady Michelle Obama famously advised Democrats, “When they go low, we go high.” Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has another thing to say about that.
In a move that has set the internet ablaze, Newsom’s press office account has begun to relentlessly mock Trump’s shitposting style by writing tongue-in-cheek narcissistic, insult-laden posts in all capital letters and littered with needless parentheticals and strange quotation marks (nailing Trump’s childish style). Newsom even ends his posts with Trump’s sterile quip, “THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”
Here’s a quick example of a Newsom tweet, posted after Trump’s press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin:
“TRUMP JUST FLED THE PODIUM WITH PUTIN — NO QUESTIONS, NOTHING! TOTAL LOW ENERGY. THE MAN LOOKED LIKE HE’D JUST EATEN 3 BUCKETS OF KFC WITH VLAD. IS HE AFRAID THE PRESS WILL ASK ABOUT ME??? (AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR) AND THE FACT I ‘STOLE THE CAMERAS’ THIS WEEK WITH ‘THE MAPS’? MANY PEOPLE ARE SAYING HE BEGGED PUTIN TO HOLD HIS HANDS
(TINY) ON THE WAY OUT. ...”
Newsom also reposts AI-generated memes of his face carved on Mount Rushmore, putting down Republican opponents and claiming there were worldwide calls for him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize — all in direct answer to Trump doing the same (and more).
Though the rest of us have had to endure Trump’s diarrhoeal style the past decade or more, it seems his most ardent supporters lost their minds after only a week or two of Newsom’s posts.
Fox News’ Dana Perino certainly missed the joke, speaking of Newsom’s antics: “He’s got a big job as governor of California, but if he wants an even bigger job, he has to be a little more serious.”
I know, right? It’s almost like an elected leader shouldn’t tweet like a self-obsessed 14-year-old with a vengeance complex.
Satire is lost on the foolish.
4. Closer to home, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador recently sent a couple of newsletters that deserve a mention in this compendium of dumb.
First, on Aug. 12, Labrador’s office issued a press release with the title, “Attorney General Labrador Defeats Satan, Again.” My first response, after spit-taking in laughter, was to say, “Oh, good.” It must’ve been a noble battle.
Secondly, Labrador’s newsletter from Aug. 22 stated that the attorney general visited several cities in North Idaho to meet with local leaders.
While referencing Bonner County, Labrador said he met with “Rep. Cornel Rasor, whose Army Surplus store was tragically destroyed by an arsonist last year in a politically motivated attack.”
Over the course of dozens of articles, journalists in the region — including at the Reader — have been careful to avoid even insinuating any political motive to this incident. Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall and Judge Susie Jenson have both stated that the fire did not appear to be political; rather, according to Jensen, convicted arsonist Jennifer Meyer claimed in a statement that she felt the Army Surplus building was “an eyesore,” and she “cleaned up the neighborhood with diesel and a match.”
“Like most people, I jumped to the conclusion that it was a political motive. But that’s not the case,” Marshall said. Rasor himself has said that he doesn’t know Meyer and has avoided making any speculative statements regarding what led Meyer to burn down the building.
When asked where Labrador got the information that the fire was “politically motivated,” his press office declined to respond, of course. I should expect more
from the attorney general of Idaho.
5. The Trump administration halted construction at an almost-finished wind farm because Trump, like the deranged fictional character Don Quixote, hates windmills.
The $4 billion project off the coast of Rhode Island was slated to start sending power to homes and businesses this year. Now, it’s dead.
Since Trump took office, he has canceled almost $19 billion worth of wind and solar generation projects around the country (maybe because he produces enough hot air every day to power every home in America?)
6. In a move that is as unconstitutional as it gets, Trump signed an executive order Aug. 25 that would make burning a U.S. flag subject to criminal prosecution, even though Texas v. Johnson established that burning a flag is protected speech under the First Amendment (nobody tell Trump how U.S. flags are supposed to be properly disposed of).
Trump vowed that anyone who participated in this protected speech would receive a mandatory year in jail.
So where are all of these conservatives standing up for the Constitution?
*Crickets*
That’s what I thought.
An Army combat veteran from North Carolina set an American flag ablaze outside the White House shortly after Trump signed executive order, saying: “I fought for every single one of your rights, to express yourself in however you feel that you may want to express yourself. ... I’m burning this flag as a protest to that illegal, fascist president that sits in that house.”
That’s true patriotism, folks.
7. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi “Puppy Killer” Noem announced her department would paint the wall along the southern border black to make the structure too hot to climb.
The only problem? They painted the U.S. side black. That begs the question: Are they trying to keep immigrants out or us in?
8. Finally, despite MAGA Republicans going ape that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t wear a suit and tie in the Oval Office while meeting with Trump and Vance earlier this year, Trump conducted a meeting with FIFA World Cup officials where he appeared without a tie and wearing a tacky ballcap that read, “Trump was right about everything.”
Right... except for those 30,000-plus lies he’s told while in office.
FEATURE
The world according to Doug Beloved
By Ben Olson Reader Staff
There’s just something special about Eichardt’s Pub.
The unpretentious local eatery and watering hole is Sandpoint’s closest embodiment to the European tradition of a public house — an establishment that serves drinks, food and often is the social center of a community.
Anyone who has spent more than a minute inside the pub has undoubtedly met Doug Clark, the soft-spoken bartender who has been a mainstay at the tap handles for 25 years.
It was bittersweet when Doug announced he was going on sabbatical for an undetermined amount of time. After some arm-twisting by the Reader, Doug agreed to an article sending him off in style after a few of his many admirers demanded we do so.
Doug was born on the west coast of Florida and spent his first 18 years there before taking off for college.
“Florida has beautiful places, but every time I went home, there was a new strip mall,” Doug told the Reader. “All the orange trees were gone. It was just growing too much. And, I was in love with the West.”
Doug’s family took him on a vacation when he was 14 to see the Grand Tetons, and the jagged mountains and pristine countryside left a mark on him.
“I said, ‘I’m going to live there someday,’” he said.
After obtaining a degree at Mercer University and meeting his future wife Meredith, Doug did just that: moved out West and settled in Moran, Wyo., to work in a kitchen for the Grand Teton Lodge Company.
“If you ever feel stuck, go get a job in a national park,” he said. “You’ll meet all spectrums of people, your housing and food is covered. You don’t make a ton of money, but what you do make, you sit on it because there’s nowhere to spend it.”
Doug flirted with different locations in the region, moving from Wyoming to Utah and New Mexico before heading to work at a wilderness lodge in Tennessee with Meredith.
While there, a customer came through and mentioned they were going to school in Missoula, Mont. Doug had all sorts of questions about Missoula, but the customer told him, “Missoula’s great, but if you get out that way, you
longtime Eichardt’s bartender Doug Clark hits the road
should check out Sandpoint.”
Some time later, Doug and Meredith landed in Missoula with two dogs, two cats and very little money.
“It was November and we couldn’t find a job or a place to live,” he said.
They eventually found a small hotel near the Jocko River and slowly began running out of money before spotting a classified ad for a $300 trailer for rent in Moiese, Mont.
“The rent was negotiable with labor, so we rented from this great old woman named Heide Greirson,” Doug said. “She was a badass. She was an Alaskan native, had worn out three husbands, contracted polio in the late ‘40s, and was paralyzed in one arm and the opposite leg. When we met her in her early 80s, she was still managing a 400-acre section of her land with cattle.”
Doug and Meredith lived there and worked terrible jobs for the next couple of months. One day, Doug was looking at a map and saw Sandpoint on there, remembering what that guy told him way back in Tennessee.
“We got some days off and, in December, came to town and stayed at the Monarch Inn by the Bonner Mall,” he said. “I asked them where to go to eat and ended up at Eichardt’s.”
That was in 1997 and Eichardt’s was entering its fourth year as a public house in Sandpoint, already gathering a cadre of loyal customers lured in by the smell of garlic fries and held captive by the close sense of community.
“In the course of playing pool upstairs, we met some locals and bullshitted with them,” Doug said. “They said, ‘When you move here, we have a bus on our property with a wood stove. In the course of a couple hours, we got three invitations for places to stay. At this point, we hadn’t even talked about moving here.”
The next day, they drove up to Schweitzer, applied for jobs and were both hired. After a short trip back to put in their notice in Montana, they returned to Sandpoint and have been here ever since.
They found a place to rent up Pack River Road just past Buck and Edna’s and experienced their first North Idaho winter, when two or three feet fell suddenly.
“Some guy plowed us out,” he said. “We didn’t have any money, but I told him I’d have a paycheck to cash soon
and he just said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ That has been our whole Sandpoint experience: people offering you a place to live, plowing you out, or Carla at Buck and Edna’s hearing we needed some wood and telling us to help ourselves. For the first 20 years of living here, that’s predominantly what I saw. Sandpoint had better community than any place I’ve ever been.”
Eichardt’s immediately became their home bar. Owner Jeff Nizzoli never actually hired Doug because he was out of the country for a wedding when then-bartender Tami Burlingame told Doug they didn’t have anybody to bartend that Sunday night. She asked if he’d cover the shift.
“I said sure,” he shrugged. “At that point, around 2001, I’d been part of the pub in one fashion or another. Then I did the Sunday night and Tami said, ‘What about Thursday, and what about Fridays, we don’t have anyone on Fridays.’ By the time Jeff came back, I had three shifts.”
For Doug, Eichardt’s was more than just a place to work; it was the center of a local community coming to terms with a town that was beginning to grow beyond the size of its britches.
“To me, the pub represents what we talk about when we talk about community,” he said. “It’s open to everybody. It really lives up to the idea of a public house. ... It’s quaint, warm, homey. It embodies a lot of the best characteristics of Sandpoint.”
Doug said he’s always had a lot of respect for how Nizzoli runs the place, giving the kitchen staff free reign to
decide the menu, giving back to local causes and treating everyone the same no matter how much they have in their bank account.
“I remember years ago, Jeff subscribed to a couple of industry magazines and one had this ‘Never do these 10 things’ article for restaurants,” Doug said. “Jeff just smiled and said, ‘Yep, done them all and still doing nine of them.’”
After years of serving locals and tourists alike — and surviving working in a restaurant during the pandemic — Doug announced he and his 18-year-old son Oden will be hopping on a flight across the ocean to travel internationally into the undetermined future. He isn’t sure if he’ll come back to working behind the bar, but he has no plans to leave Sandpoint.
Still, the news left his regulars a bit long in the face at the thought of losing their favorite bartender.
“Eichardt’s is run by a village of idiots and I’m just one of them,” he said. “The rest of you idiots can hold it together, I’ll be back.”
Doug said he and Oden have no set itinerary other than an initial flight to Iceland and a three-month European train pass. From there, they are going to travel into the continent, maybe through the Balkans, and live life one day at a time without any plans to hold them back.
“I feel like I’ve met a lot of my responsibilities and this is a good time to vacation from them,” Doug said. “I’m not done working, but I’m going to thoroughly enjoy the next six months or so of not working.”
Meredith is staying behind at first, but will join Doug and Oden at some point for a short stint.
“This is an opportunity for both of us to figure out what it’s like to be ourselves again,” he said. “Not a parent, or a spouse, not an educator. But ourselves.”
When Doug reaches the point where the money begins to run dry, he says he’ll return to town and figure out the next steps. And he loves that.
Doug’s last day behind the bar at Eichardt’s will be Friday, Aug. 29. If you’ve appreciated his company over the years, drop by to wish him farewell and maybe even drop a few bucks in his tip jar to pay for a pint during his travels.
He’s earned it.
In classic Doug fashion, this is the only photo we were allowed to publish of him. Courtesy of Mark Terry
Discover local art on the 2025 Artists’ Studio Tour
By Reader Staff
Enjoy summer in North Idaho and discover new local art during the annual Artists’ Studio Tour, presented by the Pend Oreille Arts Council. The annual self-guided driving tour takes place Friday, Aug. 29-Sunday, Aug. 31, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day and is free of charge.
The tour features 20 artists at 16 studio stops, where visitors can explore the working spaces of painters, sculptors, photographers, jewelers and more. Some studios host multiple artists, offering even more opportunities to experience creativity firsthand.
“The Artists’ Studio Tour is a great way to connect with artists and their work,” stated Claire Christy, arts coordinator for POAC. “When a viewer can see where the artist works, it gives insight that you can’t achieve in a gallery setting. It allows the viewer to step into the atmosphere where creativity blooms.”
Participants can set their own
schedule and take in the natural beauty of Lake Pend Oreille and the surrounding mountains as they travel between studios. Along the way, the towns of Kootenai, Ponderay, Sagle, Sandpoint and Westmond will provide convenient stops for dining, shopping and exploring.
Maps are available at the POAC Gallery (313 N. Second Ave., in Sandpoint), from participating artists or online at artinsandpoint.org/ artist-studio-tour. Visitors are encouraged to pick up a brochure and start their journey at any stop.
This year’s featured artists include: Jenni Barry, Molly Gentry, Lynn Gardner, Devon Chapman, Alison Barrows-Young, Barry Burgess, Ed Robinson, Lucy West, Connie Scherr, Larry Clark, Don Fisher, Susan Gallo, Lori Salisbury, Daris Judd, Jessie Watt, Eileen Mar-
Leadership Sandpoint now accepting applications for 2026 class project
By Reader Staff
Leadership Sandpoint, a program of the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce, is now accepting applications from local nonprofits for its 2026 Spring Class Project. Applications must be submitted by Nov. 1.
Each year, Leadership Sandpoint participants select, plan and implement a community project in partnership with a local nonprofit. Projects may include physical improvements, such as building structures or beautification efforts, as well as fundraising initiatives. All projects must be completed by May 16, 2026.
“Keeping our community vibrant and healthy requires strong, insightful leaders who can work effectively with a variety of groups,” stated Leadership Sandpoint Chair Alisha Kowalski. “This project provides participants with hands-on leadership experience while making a lasting impact in Sandpoint.”
Eligible nonprofits must propose a project that can be scaled for completion — or partially completed — within the program’s timeframe. Up to five
organizations will be invited to present their proposals in a 20-minute presentation on Nov. 19.
Interested nonprofits can apply directly through the online form: bit. ly/4fR7H7c.
For more information, contact the Pend Oreille Arts Council at 208-263-6139 or visit artinsandpoint.org.
cotte, Mary Gayle Young, Linda Gue, Ronald Gue and Kim Powers.
Artwork by Barry Burgess
Send event listings to calendar@sandpointreader.com
THURSDAY, august 28
Live Music w/ Frytz Mor
7pm @ Tervan Tavern
Live Music w/ Benny Baker
6-8pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall
Live Music w/ the Cafe Gas Boys
6pm @ Connie’s Lounge
Live Music w/ Miah Kohal Band
6:30-9:30pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall
Live Music w/ Bright Moments Jazz
6pm @ Arlo’s Ristorante
Live Music w/ Möbius Riff
6-8pm @ Idaho Pour Authority
Live Music w/ Chris Paradis
6-8pm @ Baxters on Cedar
Live Music w/ TJ Hoops
6-9pm @ Barrel 33
Karaoke (Fri/Sat/Sun nights)
8pm @ Tervan Tavern
Live Music w/ One Dog Down
6-9pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall
Live Music w/ Picked Up Pieces
6-8pm @ Idaho Pour Authority
Live Music w/ Big Phatty & The Inhalers
5:30-8:30pm @ Smokesmith BBQ
Live Music w/ Chris Paradis
6-8pm @ Baxters on Cedar
Live Music w/ Brian Jacobs
5-8pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery
Music w/ DJ Sterling
9pm @ Roxy’s Lounge
Live Music w/ Ian Newbill
5-8pm @ Pearls (in Hope)
Country and classic rock
Live Music w/ Oak Street Connection
8-10pm @ Roxy’s Lounge
FriDAY, august 29
Live Music w/ Electro Kelts
5pm @ Connie’s Lounge
Live Music w/ Border Stones
5-8pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery
Soft rock, pop and easy listening
Live Music w/ Brenden McCoy
6-8:30pm @ Matchwood Brewing Co.
Rock music that crosses genres
BCA 8-Ball Tournament
August 28 - Sept. 4, 2025
Bubble Palooza 10-11:30pm @ Lakeview Park
A free, fun celebration for families with little ones. Bubbles, music, dancing, art, snacks
$5 Movie: Arrival 6pm @ Connie’s Lounge
Live Music w/ Jay Snow & The Tone Keepers
5:30-8:30pm @ Smokesmith BBQ
Historic Walking Tours
11am @ Elevate Realty, 212 N. First Ave.
A guided tour of historic Sandpoint. Buy $15 tickets: bonnercountyhistory.org
An open house and pottery sale at Sandpoint Ceramics, inside the Cedar Street Bridge. Appetizers, beer and wine until it runs out!
Tai Chi at City Beach
9:30am @ Sandpoint City Beach
Beer Yoga (Aug. 30-31)
10-11am @ Selkirk Lodge/Crow’s Bench
Join yoga teacher Elizabeth Ruff for a playful, all-ages yoga sequence at Schweitzer. $25. 208-255-3074 to RSVP
Live Music w/ Pamela Jean 6pm @ Connie’s Lounge
Live Music w/ Hillfolk Noir
Farm Show w/ Queen Bonobo and Laurie Shook
5pm @ Mountain Cloud Farm (Clark Fork)
Snacks and drinks for sale. Listeners are encouraged to bring a picnic, blankets and swim suits for their sauna and cold plunge. $10-$20 suggested donation. Mountain Cloud Farm is at 72 Widgren Way in Clark Fork
Kanikapila Sundays 3pm @ Sunshine on Cedar All ages. FREE!
Support Teachers and Students • 7:15am @ Area schools
Join us to line sidewalks across from schools with “Everyone is Welcome Here” signs to support teachers and students on the first day of school. Details: tinyurl.com/Sept2school
wednesDAY, september 3
Sandpoint Farmers’ Market
3-5:30pm @ Farmin Park
Fresh foods and produce and more
Argentine tango class and practica • 6pm @ Barrel 33
$15/person, FREE for first-timers, no experience or partner required. Learn the basic steps of the Argentine tango with instructor Muffy Live piano w/ Peter Lucht 5-7pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery Fresh foods and produce and more
New FX-Hulu series Alien: Earth is already a must-watch after four episodes
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff
The Panida Theater just screened director Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror masterpiece Alien as part of its $5 movie series; and, while there is an entire dark constellation of other films in the franchise to experience (in case that wasn’t enough of a fix), instead check out Alien: Earth, the brand-new series that began streaming its first season Aug. 12 on Hulu.
As of Aug. 26, the FX show has progressed to four episodes — with the fifth coming Tuesday, Sept. 2 at 5 p.m. — and for this lifelong devotee of the near-ish future dystopian universe conjured by Scott in ’79, it’s well worth investing some time to explore.
First of all, show runner Noah Hawley (Fargo and Legion) deserves some major props for his fidelity to the source material. Set in the year 2120 — two years before the events of Alien — the series opens with clear callbacks to the original aesthetics and mood.
Rather than the Nostromo — the deep-space freighter that served as the “haunted house in space” in the ’79 film — the audience for Alien: Earth is dropped into the Maginot.
All the details from Alien are there: the blinking amber lights of the AI ship interface “Mother,” the design features of the passageways, the clunky CRT computer screens, even the dining area
made famous in the original as the scene of the iconic “chest-bursting” incident.
In Alien: Earth, however, we learn that unlike the Nostromo, the Maginot is a scientific research vessel on its way home after a 65-year mission to collect and transport living specimens from other worlds.
Contained within the menagerie on board are “facehuggers” — the second-stage larval form of the Xenomorph at the center of the Alien storyline. The crew wakes up from extended cryo-sleep in preparation for returning home, though the ship’s navigation systems go haywire and the Maginot is barreling toward Earth on a crash course. Making matters worse, in all the mayhem, a Xenomorph is set loose and does what it does: kills (almost) everyone
on board.
Meanwhile, viewers are caught up to speed on the politics and economics of 22nd-century terra firma. Basically, all the stuff we’re worried about on 21st-century terra firma has come to pass, with five corporations carving up human civilization into techno-dictatorships and leveraging their inconceivable wealth not only to colonize space but devote most of their energies to achieving immortality.
The corporate overlords have arrived at a trio of essential “fixes” for human life, none of which are really “human”: cyborgs, AI “synths” and “hybrids,” which are well-nigh indestructible bodies into which human consciousness is downloaded.
At the outset of the show, the hybrid program is in the
midst of its first success, with an 11-year-old girl suffering from a terminal illness poised to have her essential essence transferred into a young adult body.
Played by a beguiling Sydney Chandler, she will be named “Wendy,” in a reference to Peter Pan. That’s clever on a few levels, one of them being that the Prodigy Corporation that’s undertaking the hybrid program is owned by the world’s youngest trillionaire, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). He is, literally, Peter Pan.
Once Wendy is successfully “created,” other kids follow — all terminally ill children of about the same age, who are plugged into uber-healthy 20-somethingyear-old bodies, with all the complications that implies.
They become the “lost boys,” with Wendy as their leader, and lead she must as the Maginot crashes into Prodigy City in New Siam and Boy Kavalier makes a move to appropriate the deadly cargo, even though it’s owned by his Weyland-Yutani rivals.
Along the way there are gunfights, sword play and jump scares aplenty; blood, guts and gore all over the place; sly parodies of greed and hubris; grit, grime and intrigue; family drama and genuine emotion. And all the above is just a taste of the introductory episodes.
New episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.
Panida takes an extraterrestrial, theoretical journey with Arrival
By Soncirey Mitchell Reader Staff
The newest installment of the Panida Theater’s $5 movie series will feature the Oscar-winning extraterrestrial drama Arrival. The PG-13 film begins at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 28 at the Panida (300 N. First Ave.).
After 12 spaceships land around the world, a linguistics professor (Amy Adams)
and her team are employed to investigate and make contact with the extraterrestrials. These aliens are, well, alien, and communicate through a complex visual and auditory system that researchers struggle to understand. As tensions rise and the threat of a global war draws nearer, the linguists must decode the aliens’ message or risk total destruction. What makes Arrival different from most other alien
movies is the story’s reliance not on action and explosions but on philosophy and linguistic theory. Based on the 1998 novella Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, the 2019 film explores the idea of linguistic determinism — a component of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that argues language dictates how people perceive and interact with reality. Arrival asks the question: “What happens to a human when they learn a
language unlike anything on Earth?” Grapple with massive theoretical concepts and new ideas about humanity’s place in the universe for only $5. Tickets are available at panida.org.
Alien: Earth returns to the aesthetic of the original Alien film. Courtesy photo
Amy Adams stars in Arrival, playing at the Panida Theater on Aug. 28. Courtesy photo
OBITUARY
William ‘Bill’ Radcliffe (1948-2025)
On Aug. 1, 2025, William “Bill” Radcliffe passed comfortably in hospice care in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Bill was a resident of Sandpoint, Sagle and Dover, Idaho for the past 55 years. A pillar of the community, Bill was the owner of the construction company Sand Creek Renovations, specializing in kitchen and bathroom renovations. Bill was active in the youth sports community, as a long-term soccer player and coach his passion for the sport helped shape hundreds of lives over the years.
Many remember Bill as always having a story or a joke and being forever positive in his approach to life. Bill truly lived life to the fullest, from his family to his travels, to his love of all the finer things in life, Bill lived a dozen lives of fun and adventure in his 77 years with us.
Originally from Detroit, Mich., Bill graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in art history, and from where he subsequently hopped on his 10-speed bike to ride across the country to become a ski bum in Sun Valley, Idaho, where he met and married his wife of 50 years, Laurie (Hapke) Radcliffe.
In 1971, Bill and Laurie discovered the gem of the PNW: Sandpoint, Idaho, and their wanderlust was sated. Bill and Laurie have two sons, Geoffrey and Kelly, who will miss their always amazing father.
Bill was an avid nature lover and a photographer who once turned a bathroom into a darkroom for his sons in high school so they could develop their own pictures at home. A consummate explorer, Bill would always have an adventure planned with his family or his soccer teams. Bill was a scuba diver, a French speaker, a wine connoisseur, a
foodie and generally a great guy.
It’s virtually impossible to think of anyone who’s got something bad to say about Bill and his family is forever proud.
As of yet there is no memorial planned, but please follow his sons Kelly and Geoffrey Radcliffe on Facebook for any upcoming announcements of a celebration of life.
We love you dad.
Submitted by the Radcliffe family.
Top: Bill and Laurie Radcliffe. Above: The Radcliffe family. Courtesy photos
MUSIC
Hillfolk Noir to play Idaho Pour Authority
By Ben Olson Reader Staff
Idaho Pour Authority will host touring band Hillfolk Noir for a special show on Sunday, Aug. 31 from 6-8 p.m.
Over the past 15 years, the Boise-based trio has built a following with their acoustic guitar, double bass and “anything you can find at a hardware store” sound. The Americana offshoot known as “junkerdash” is as entertaining to watch as it is to listen to.
The foundation of Hillfolk Noir’s sound stems from the ragged spiral-bound notebooks of frontman Travis
Ward, whose earnest narratives and ballads are as at home in the back alleys as they are on the open range. Ward’s songs tell stories about the lives of lovers, law-breakers and the lion-hearted all in the same breath — heroes and outcasts alike.
Their sound is like a trouble-making cousin to bluegrass, with enough strings to qualify in the genre, but enough electrified soulful, folksy witchcraft to catapult it into a new genre yet to be discovered in full.
“If John Steinbeck owned a speakeasy, Hillfolk Noir would be the house band,” said John Doe of cowpunk band The
Knitters.
The show is free, but you’re always welcome to throw a buck or two in the tip jar, since the band is currently
touring the West. Visit hillfolknoir.com for more information.
32nd annual Fall Fest returns to Schweitzer
By Reader Staff
Since 1993, Schweitzer has ushered in the change of season every year with Fall Fest, a celebration of live music, regional craft drinks, village activities and more.
The four-day festival kicks off Friday, Aug. 29 and goes through the weekend to Monday, Sept. 1.
Regional brewers from the Pacific Northwest will feature more than 80 beers, ciders and seltzers on tap for sale (don’t forget your souvenir glassware). There will also be a wine tent, vendor tents galore and food trucks with unique offerings for the whole family to enjoy.
As this is the final weekend of summer operations, the chairlift will take visitors to the summit for hikes, huckleberry picking, mountain biking and sightseeing.
Paid parking is available in the Lakeview Lot and free parking is available in the Gateway Lot. Even better, park at the Red Barn and take the SPOT Bus up the hill for free — check schweitzer.com for shuttle schedules.
Due to a section of North Boyer Ave. being closed for culvert repair, attendees are asked to access the mountain via West Bronx Road.
Live music abounds all weekend long, and it’s free to listen.
Jay Snow and the Tone Keepers, Smokesmith BBQ, Aug. 29
For a heaping helping of blues and BBQ, head over to Smokesmith to hear the talented stylings of Jay Snow and the Tone Keepers, a five-person group out of Libby, Mont. The band’s approach to music highlights their skills on their respective instruments, dialing up the funk and toning down the lyrics so audiences can appreciate the abundant guitar licks and harmonica. That
Bands on Friday, Aug. 29 include AP Collective at 3:30 p.m. and Kyle Hunter at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 30 features Dammit Lauren! at noon, Brittany’s House at 2:30 p.m. and Timber Rattlers at 5 p.m. Music on Sunday, Aug. 31 includes Sydney Dale at noon, Brenden McCoy at
2:30 p.m, and Ashley Flynn & the Riveters at 5 p.m. Finally, Monday’s lineup includes The Bed Heads at noon and Jason Perry at 2:30 p.m.
Chairlift and activities will be open from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. all four days. See you on the mountain.
A snapshot of notable live music coming up in Sandpoint
Queen Bonobo and Laurie Shook, Mountain Cloud Farm, Aug. 31
isn’t to say that these singers play second fiddle to the rest of the band. Vocalists Snow and Keirsi Leigh have spent years honing their craft and hold their own on stage no matter what.
— Soncirey Mitchell
5:30-8:30 p.m., FREE. Smokesmith BBQ, 102 S. Boyer Ave., 208-920-0517, smokesmithidaho. com. Listen at jaysnowandthetonekeepers.com.
It’s hard to imagine a more idyllic way to enjoy a late summer Sunday than at Mountain Cloud Farm listening to the sounds of Queen Bonobo and Laurie Shook. Both have been well known in the area music scene for years, with the former specializing in genre-bending, layered jazz and folk and the latter an expert in indie folk with a sometimes quirky (but
This week’s RLW by Ben Olson
READ
I’ve been unpacking moving boxes lately and, as a result, have found some old gems I’d forgotten about. One book I’ve always loved is Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. The book details the almost two-year struggle for survival by the 28-member crew of the exploration ship Endurance as it was crushed by ice floes, leaving them stranded on pack ice off of Antarctica. This book alone might just renew your hope for the human race. Find it at the library.
LISTEN
always beautiful) twist. Snacks and drinks will be on sale, with listeners encouraged to bring a picnic, blankets, and swim suits for a sauna and cold plunge.
— Zach Hagadone
5 p.m., $10-$20 suggested donation. Mountain Cloud Farm, 72 Widgren Way, Clark Fork, 208266-0303, mountaincloudfarm. com. Listen at queenbonobo.bandcamp.com and shooktwins.com.
I’m always a sucker for music that includes historical voice samples. One unique band that created an intriguing album is Public Service Broadcasting. For their 2015 release The Race For Space, PSB took archival narratives from the 1950s and ’60s space race and peppered them into a dynamic, electronic and orchestral arrangement that meshes beautifully. Their song “Go!” is quite addictive. Listen to it on all the streamers.
WATCH
I’m unashamed to admit I fully enjoy it when a scientist takes down fools using logic, math and critical thinking. One of my favorites is a channel on YouTube called SciManDan, who regularly destroys the arguments made by people who believe the Earth is flat. With his droll British accent and dry jokes that you sometimes get a minute later, SciManDan tackles other conspiracy theories, too, but his true talent lies with ridiculing the Flat Earthers’ poor grasp on facts and science.
Courtesy photo
Courtesy photo
From Northern Idaho News, August 23, 1910
FIRES RAGING OVER VAST COUNTRY
The forest fire situation is by far the worst ever experienced in Bonner County or in fact in the Panhandle of Idaho. Deaths running into the 100 mark have been recorded from the various burning sections, the greater portion of them in the Coeur d’Alene country of Wallace. Scores of injuries and narrow escapes have been reported. At Cabinet, two lives were lost Saturday afternoon when a blaze surrounded seven fire fighters in a small clearing, two of them mostly becoming insane and trying to make the run through to the outer world, being burned and cremated while making the attempt.
Fires closer to home were in the vicinity of Sagle, that town having almost been completely wiped off the face of the earth. This occurred Friday morning. All Sunday, Sagle was threatened and a crew of men from this city fell with the ranchers in keeping fires from igniting the dry piles. Yesterday morning, however, after what seemed to be the bulk of the fire had passed over, a blaze broke out, taking the piles of posts and poles and several buildings which were in its way.
For three days the wind has kept up, blowing about forty miles an hour and carrying the flames over the timbered sections with terrific speed. The fire belt extends over the greater part of the Panhandle of the state.
BACK OF THE BOOK
The season of shame
By Soncirey Mitchell Reader Staff
Anyone who’s met me knows that I’m not a summer person. The heat is one thing, but with summer also comes unattainable expectations. Everyone needs a bikini body, a new grill or a power boat to prove that they’re worthy of love and acceptance. We shame ourselves for having thighs that touch or dog hair on the car’s seats, as if everyone else lives in a Barbieland-esque utopia. The summer sun shines a light on everything we’re self-conscious about.
I’ve never treated myself as poorly as I did the summer before college. I withdrew from family and friends, keeping all my anxieties inside as I prepared to move out of state and begin my new life as an adult. Freshly 18, I’d never felt more childish in my life.
I had decided, subconsciously, that I was leaving my past behind. My mom, my dogs, my favorite walking trails — I couldn’t bring anything meaningful with me, so that meant I had to train myself to go without. After months of shutting out joy in an effort to “grow up,” it was finally time to leave, and I just broke down.
“I want to bring Floppy. Is that OK?” I sobbed into my mom’s shoulder.
My little stuffed dog, Floppy, had gone with me everywhere — from the crib to the classroom — for most of my childhood. He was a security blanket, protecting and consoling me every night as I battled my anxieties and fears. That meant he was also a symbol
STR8TS Solution
of childhood weakness — a comfort that I thought I had to deny myself to succeed in the “real world.”
Admitting I wanted to take Floppy to college was like undoing that summer’s worth of work. I thought it confirmed what I was trying to hide: I was just a scared kid, too immature to stand alongside my peers.
I kept Floppy close, hidden away in my backpack, on the 21-hour drive to Orange County. It felt like smuggling contraband. When I finally made it to my dorm and unpacked, I waited until my roommates’ backs were turned and quickly shoved Floppy under the sheets on my twin bed, covering the lump of his little stuffed body with pillows. There he remained throughout orientation — my secret shame, carefully hidden even with the lights out.
One morning, after a week in the cramped room, I heard a sound like a box of Altoids hitting the floor. I turned around to see my roommate hurriedly picking up a ragged Winnie-the-Pooh toy with a rattle in its stomach. She gave me a self-deprecating smile as tucked it back under her blanket.
Slowly, like she thought we’d punish her, my other roommate took out a stuffed polar bear she’d secreted away under her pillow. Finally, after they’d both shown their hands, I took out Floppy.
Standing in our pajamas, acne covering our faces, we all began to laugh at the parts of ourselves we’d tried to bury. We didn’t have to explain what we’d done or how we’d felt; we understood one another in an instant. As we compared the patches and scratches
Sudoku Solution
on our toys, I saw them — and myself — as we truly were: three girls, terrified of change and charging into it nonetheless. The emotion that welled up in me felt like home.
After that night, our stuffed animals sat proudly on our beds for anyone to see.
Shame is so ingrained in our society that oftentimes, we don’t question why it exists or if it should. It takes our shared experiences and uses them to isolate us, and we somehow convince ourselves that we’re the only ones ever to have a teddy bear or cellulite or a bald spot. One of the most freeing experiences we can have is realizing that most shame is arbitrary and, moreover, shared by everyone. When we accept this, we can begin to live openly as ourselves and give others the freedom to do the same.
If I ever opened a trampoline store, I don’t think I’d call it Trampo-Land, because you might think it was a store for tramps, which is not the impression we are trying to convey with our store. On the other hand, we would not prohibit tramps from browsing, or testing the trampolines, unless a tramp’s gyrations seemed to be getting out of control.
Solution on page 22
Laughing Matter
By Bill Borders
CROSSWORD
ACROSS
1. Dull pain
5. Doesn’t go
10. Computer symbol
14. Snakes
15. Snouts
16. Zero
17. Orchestra member
19. Enclosed conduit
20. Play a role
21. Stupendous
22. Songs
23. Bombarded
25. Long stories
27. “I agree”
28. Dissipates
31. Certain coniferous trees
34. Naked people
35. Fifth sign of the zodiac
36. Lyric poems
37. Golden king (mythology)
38. Anthracite
[noun]
Solution on page 22
Solution on page 22
Lady’s escort 59. Bay window 60. Pleased 61. Countercurrent 62. Fruit on a bush 63. Colloids Word Week of the
Corrections: In the Aug. 21 “Read, Listen, Watch” column, we mistakenly referred to Emily Watson as “Emma Watson.” Sorry, Emily. remora /REM-er-uh/
1. an obstacle, hindrance, or obstruction
“The bureaucracy’s love of paperwork is an eternal remora to efficiency.”
39. Kitten’s cry
40. Nursery rhyme
farm animal
41. Planet
42. Hodgepodge
44. Which person?
45. Perspiration
46. Pertaining to earthquakes
50. Absolute
52. Nickel or steel
54. American Dental Association
55. Horse color
DOWN
1. Old Jewish scholars
2. Manager 3. Undue speed 4. S 5. Breathes noisily while sleeping 6. In shape
