Living in the Spirit Lake, Idaho area???

[Toyman at Jewel Lake]

I'm torn on the issue of "the rich" moving into the area. First, I have nothing against anyone being rich, more power to them...wish I was. I do feel the pain of out of staters coming in and driving up housing costs. Incomes around here can not support the level of housing cost that SoCal can, and first time home buyers are really hurting. On the other hand, it's the "rich" that are paying the bulk of our property taxes. Homeowners get an exemption on the first $75k in housing assessment (did it get raised recently?), so someone in a less expensive place only pays taxes on a smaller portion of their assessed value. In addion, many of the more expensive properties are vacation property or second homes, as such they get no homeowner's exemption. If it weren't for "the rich" the rest of us would be paying even more in taxes.

IMO a bigger issue is the demand for services, particularly the level of services. Many locals are happy living in a rural area and don't mind putting up with gravel roads and wells. When you have a demand for city level services, paved roads, etc, costs (and taxes) increase dramatically. School taxes (and costs per student) are starting to get out of control as well. Our local district just got another big supplimental levy passed.

Getting back to Spirit Lake. It's kind of a cool little community, good access to public land, the lake(s) and a small town feel. It's only about 1/2 hour to either CDA or the Spokane Valley. As to the tweakers...I'm sure they are around, but there are one or two pretty much everywhere. There is no substitute to checking out the area carefully. There is a lot of nice rural property around, and it doesn't seem to be as overpriced as some areas.

[yummychocolate3d]

I have lived in Spirit Lake south of town about 4 miles on 6 acres for about 10 years now and I think its a great area esp. if you are raising kids. Lakeland school district is the best school district in this area. They emphasize on math and science. They build character in your children teach them how to be self-managers. Its easy to get around. I do all my shopping in Rathdrum 7miles south and Post Falls etc... but Major shopping is 25 mins away in our small city of CDA pop 40-50K like Costco, Walmart, grocery stores, etc...lots of nice lakes (big and small), rivers and golf courses within 5 to 15mins away. I work in downtown Spokane Wa (40mi away) but i only commute to Post Falls 15 mi. and take the Vanpool into Spokane for 50 a month. This is the snowbelt so A "Normal" Winter is usually 3 feet of snow that sticks only after Christmas but the last 2 winters have been horrendous we had 8 to 12 feet of snow but only in a 3 week period not the whole 3 months of winter. When we had a normal winter Cda and Spokane had none to 1 foot. The roads are kept up very well and plowed on the Hwy because thats the main arterial in Spirit Lake, Rathdrum and Twin Lakes is Hwy 41.

[threejane]

There's also the outlying areas of Athol, where you can still buy property. Makes it kinda difficult to tell people where you live though. Even though you have an Athol address, you're in Bonner County and you don't quite live in Careywood...heh, we just say we're out past Athol and in Granite, and no one knows what we're talking about.

Water can be an issue on this side of the highway, some people hit it at 250 feet and some people (like us) have a 600+ foot well that gets cranky in summertime.

Everyone can have jerk neighbors...I'm sure if someone who was uptight about noise and little kids moved into our neighborhood, they'd have a heart attack with the kids and dogs and gun and dirtbikes and so forth.