2025 year in preview

By Reader Staff

Even if you’ve never read any of the works of 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, you’ve probably heard someone repeat his famous line: “A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.” 

Social media loves to share Schopenhauer memes, but it’s a solid assumption that he wouldn’t have returned that affection (“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone”). It’s also a fair bet that he’d be entering 2025 without a single hopeful thing to say about it. Not that we’re going “full Schopenhauer,” but there’s a reason he sprang to mind when sitting down to compile this annual “Year in Preview.”

Making predictions is by nature a dicey endeavor, but we do it every year despite the risk involved. The first prediction, in the vein of Schopenhauer, is that we’ll be happier if we don’t expect to be too happy over the next 12 months. With that, we present our best guesses about what may (or may not) be.

Zach’s Predictions

The word of the year at City Hall will be ‘water’

City Hall covered a lot of ground in 2024: city administrator position removed, new fire department created, Comp Plan approved, new staffing, citizens’ committees reinvigorated and the James E. Russell Sports Center opened.

Looking forward, we’re quite confident that the effort to replace the dilapidated wastewater treatment plant will be the single largest endeavor undertaken by City Hall during the year. We’re going to see lots of efforts at raising funds for the $100 million (or more) multi-year project. We predict that a bond will indeed be proposed in May, but it will be a heavy lift to sell based on the next rate hike, which we’ve been told will be “pretty high … nationally.”

Another major push will be to revisit funding for street and sidewalk infrastructure. After the failure of the 1% local option sales tax in the November 2024 election — which would have been dedicated to channeling dollars to that repair and reconstruction work — it’s a reasonable prognostication that it will return in some modified form. But convincing voters of adding another tax while also seeking bonding authority for the wastewater plant will complicate both efforts. 

Meanwhile, we have a more than reasonable suspicion that downtown street revitalization will resume, with design getting underway for Phase III, which would see a total rebuild of First Avenue from Bridge Street to Superior. Don’t worry, though, we won’t see any major construction for another year or so.

We anticipate some clarity on the “Amazon-not-Amazon” facility apparently planned for the corner of Great Northern Road and Woodland Drive, and a lot more discussion about how future growth could (or should) occur in similar areas that run right up to the city limits.

Finally, expect to hear a ton more about whether or not Sandpoint water services should continue to be extended to development outside city limits. If we were to guess (which we guess is what we’re doing here), this will end up being the Big Issue for at least part of the year.   

Rule of the roads

There used to be a joke around newsrooms in Boise that Idaho was the only state named after a power company (a dig on Idaho Power, for those unfamiliar with southern Idaho utilities). Anyway, it might also be quipped that Idaho is the only state named after a transportation department.

Joking aside, the Idaho Transportation Department is such a powerful agency that the Legislature feels the need to exert its authority by doing things like not letting ITD fix its flooded offices in Boise, despite loads of black mold and asbestos.

That’s another story. Suffice it to say, no division of state government has more ability to change the contours of Idaho communities and the daily lives of their inhabitants than ITD. 

We expect to be covering a number of ITD-related stories in 2025, including the U.S. 95 Dufort to Lakeshore reconstruction project that has the potential to remake the patterns of development south of the Long Bridge almost to Westmond for decades to come.

This is not to say that we predict any dirt will be turned — just that those plans are going to get more solidified during the year.

Same goes for the analysis of when and how to replace the Long Bridge. We were a little surprised toward the end of 2024 when ITD announced it was accelerating its timeline for replacing the U.S. 95 car bridge and adjacent pedestrian bridge with a study meant to leverage funding for the massive project. We didn’t think we’d be talking about that for a few decades; well, apparently we’re talking about it now. Expect to talk more about it in 2025.

BOCC, BCRCC, et al.

It’s no stretch to predict that the proceedings of both the Bonner County board of commissioners and Bonner County Republican Central Committee will continue to be the best soap opera on TV, considering they ended 2024 on a cliffhanger. 

Though the commissioners declined to take a vote on it Dec. 31, we predict that the BOCC will end up siding with Sheriff Daryl Wheeler on his temporary “resignation” — a move intended to qualify him to collect benefits from the Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho despite being sworn in on Monday, Jan. 13 for a fifth term in office. (See Page 4 for more on that story.)

We predict that this will peeve BCRCC Chair Scott Herndon, who has been arguing all along that Wheeler’s resignation needed to be approved by a vote of the BOCC and, lacking that, makes the sheriff ineligible to receive those PERSI benefits.

The interesting bedfellows this ordeal has made indicates what we might expect in terms of the political divisions we’ll see influencing county doings through the year. Commissioner Ron Korn’s support for Herndon’s interpretation illustrates that he’s going to be a BCRCC loyalist (he is a precinct committeeman, after all), though BOCC Chair Asia Williams’ vigorous pushback on Korn during the debate makes us suspect that those two aren’t going to always get along so well.

It was also interesting at the Dec. 31 BOCC meeting that Herndon came in for some criticism from the regulars in the peanut gallery — most of whom are reliable fans of Wheeler, who has also notably butted heads with Herndon in the past. One commenter poked fun at Herndon as a self-styled “private eye for the county and now practicing lawyer,” while another sarcastically complimented Herndon on “finally finding a reason to do something involved with Bonner County politics or Bonner County government. … Welcome, Scott, to Bonner County.”

Meanwhile, in an unrelated kerfuffle surrounding whether or not outgoing-Commissioner Steve Bradshaw is actually a resident of Bonner County, incoming-Commissioner Brian Domke’s refusal of a BCRCC nomination to replace him shows that he’s not necessarily going to toe the party line.

All of that makes us suspect that we’ll see a BOCC with fewer fireworks over personality but more inter-GOP realpolitik — driven in part by a lessening of the influence of the BCRCC, which a lot of local Republicans (whether “In Name Only” or not) have over the past year come to regard as mostly meddlesome.

Ben’s Not-So-Happy Predictions

The class war will ignite

It wasn’t on my Bingo card that a full-blown class war would erupt before an ideological civil war in America, but I believe we’re closing in on the inevitable. The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in front of a hotel in Manhattan led to an unexpected outcome: A large portion of the country felt sympathy for the alleged killer. Luigi Mangione became somewhat of a folk anti-hero after writing “Deny,” “Defend” and “Depose” on bullet casings, in an apparent reference to a book of the same name that exposed hidden strategies of the insurance industry that deny care, defend profit margins and depose those who challenge their authority. 

Despite several pundits attempting to frame the killing in the usual left vs. right terminology that has divided our country for decades, large swaths of the American people have instead begun to wonder why there is such disparity between the haves and have-nots.

One viral demonstration using grains of rice indicating net worth helps visualize the class struggles in America. The clip showed the average American’s net worth of $200,000 represented by a single grain of uncooked rice. Then it shows a net worth of $1 million — what many of us consider “rich” — as five grains of rice and $100 million (the average net worth of a health care CEO) as about a tablespoon of rice. A still-larger pile of rice represents the $277 million Elon Musk invested in the 2024 presidential election. 

Then the camera cuts to a huge pile of rice, each grain representing $200,000, to signify the net worth of Vivek Ramiswamy and 800 other people in the U.S. who have more than $1 billion. Next, the pile of rice grows to about the size of a beach ball, representing Donald Trump’s net worth at $6.3 billion (this is the same guy who asks his low-income supporters to pay attorneys’ fees and donate to his campaign). Finally, the video cuts to an enormous pile of rice that is as big around as a kiddie pool and looks to be about two feet deep. This represents Elon Musk’s net worth at around $400 billion.

The class war will be a cold one (I hope), meaning there won’t be open bloodshed, but it will be a struggle that might show the wealth-lords of the world that people can only be subjugated and prodded so far before they snap.

The Republican Party will split into even more factions

It’s tough to keep up with the changing rhetoric of the incoming Trump administration. After years of denigrating immigrants in his campaigns, Trump claims he now fully backs the H-1B visa program promoted by Musk, who claimed he’d “go to war” to defend the program for foreign tech workers. The stance has caused several of Trump’s most ardent — and disgusting — supporters like Steve Bannon to cry foul and critique Trump for bowing to “Big Tech oligarchs.”

The rift and many others like it are precursors to the further split of the Republican Party in America, which will likely happen in earnest during the next year. Republican factions will include the Trumpists, who support their demigod no matter what he says or does; the technocrats, who will use Trump as a tool to promote their own interests; the so-called “faith and flag” Republicans who are largely religious and nationalistic; the so-called “traditional” Republicans who support conservative fiscal policies but shy away from ideological lines in the sand; the conspiracy theorists, a growing faction of Republicans who promote unfounded theories over fact and reason; and, finally, the “Never-Trumpers” or “RINOs” who are adamantly opposed to Trump and the “America First” ideology that has further isolated America from the rest of the world (and itself).

‘The economy, stupid’

After years of exponential stock market gains and forward progress, the American economy will experience a pullback in 2025 that will lead us into a recession. With the coming trade war between the U.S. and countries like China, the European Union states and… checks notes again… Canada and Mexico, the idea of a recession isn’t too far-fetched. 

In looking at the cryptocurrency boom, with the price of Bitcoin more than doubling in the past year, it appears a substantial bubble has formed. The trouble with bubbles is that when they burst, recessions often follow. 

The ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza will only exacerbate the economic recession, as will Trump’s unpredictability and threats of a trade war.

Finally, AI has been called the “biggest gamble in business history,” with more than $1 trillion being spent on data centers to underpin the expanding technology, despite the fact companies still have no idea how to use it and, when they do, AI continuously seems to get basic facts wrong. 

Despite these failings, the tech industry has gone all in on AI, which is leading to an eventual showdown. Will investors lose their nerve and pull back from this technology being shoved down our throats, or will AI finally prove its worth? 

Soncirey’s ‘Predictions’

The rise of the fish people

This past November, the Idaho Department of Lands approved the Idaho Club’s application for an encroachment permit (again) near the mouth of Trestle Creek, putting the golf community one step closer to achieving its 16-year-old dream of being the Cour d’Alene-based Black Rock’s poor cousin. Because members of the public and conservation organizations have launched every protest humanly possible at the proposed marina and housing development, most 2025 letters and legal challenges will come from the fish people who live under the old, dilapidated dock already present at the development site. 

Like DnD’s Kuo-toa or Lovecraft’s Deep Ones, these four-limbed, piscine creatures are immoral and so won’t necessarily object to the project’s proximity to a major spawning habitat for the protected bull trout — who they call “no-limbs” and frequently bully — but rather will sue based on squatters’ rights and their interpretation of anti-discrimination laws. 

The latter lawsuits will be based on the fact that underwater golf has yet to be invented, and the fish people cannot afford memberships to the Idaho Club’s land course, as the organization does not accept bodies previously dumped in the lake as currency. 

Hoping to avoid another 16-year setback, the Idaho Club will offer to install flat screens and Lay-Z-Boy recliners on the underside of each dock and will allow the fish people to ritually sacrifice anyone who hits golf balls into the lake. Ninety-five percent of their residents will be slaughtered on the altar of the goddess Blibdoolpoolp by the year’s end.

Schweitzer Mountain job market

With climate change affecting the region’s snow more and more each year, skiers will finally snap in 2025 and attempt to “Be the change you want to see in the world,” as their office motivational posters have always told them. They will consider lobbying for reform or promoting green energy sources, but will quickly decide that’s far too much work and will instead hire unemployed Idahoans to get together and push the mountain north. 

The unpaid employees will be spurred by the knowledge that, as a reward for their back-breaking work, they’ll receive 5% off Schweitzer’s $1,399 annual passes. 

Those who mortgage their houses to purchase the passes will laminate them and keep them locked away in local bank vaults, as they will be unable to afford actual skis. 

To ensure tourists can still ski while the mountain’s on the move through warmer areas, Alterra Mountain Company will spend billions of dollars covering Schweitzer in shredded styrofoam to get the look and feel of snow without the costly upkeep of snow machines. 

The environmental impact will be so devastating that all of the mountain’s native fauna will choke to death, creating a job boom for locals, who will dress up as bears, moose and even squirrels to give Schweitzer that true, North Idaho feel. 

The animal impersonators will be paid in fallen lift beers and whatever pizza they can pick out of the garbage bins behind the Lakeview Lodge.