Plummer's still got game • BLM ponders what to do with wild horses • Land swap on hold because of Tamarack's financial situation • You might live in a red state if... • Housing market be damned; Avimor is still building up • There may never be a Sandpoint Bypass

Plummer's still got game

ESPN.com answers the question where in the world is Jake Plummer by saying the former Boisean and NFL star is living in northern Idaho spending a good chunk of his time rekindling his love for the sport of handball.

Jake and his wife, Kollette, a former dancer and Broncos cheerleader, moved to Sandpoint after he retired from the NFL, splitting time between there and a second home with 47 acres in Coeur d'Alene.

Playing several times a week, Jake has lost 20 pounds from his NFL days and is in, he says, the best shape of his life.

Plummer also hosted this year for the first time a Halloween Handball Bash in Coeur d'Alene.

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BLM ponders what to do with wild horses

The Times-News reports that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will decide soon how to handle a vast surplus of captured wild horses, the care of which has consumed most of the agency's budget for managing the animals.

About 30,000 horses are now kept in long-term pastures in the Midwest and short-term facilities elsewhere in the country, eating up nearly three-fourths of the $37 million wild-horse budget.

The problem has been compounded by a nationwide decrease in horse adoptions and higher hay and transportation costs.

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Land swap on hold because of Tamarack's financial situation

A land swap that would have exchanged three 640-acre parcels owned by the Idaho Department of Lands inside the Sawtooth National Recreation Area for U.S. Forest Service lands next to Tamarack is no longer on the table.

The Mtn. Express the plan, described by some as a win-win situation was shut down because of Tamarack's financial woes.

The paper says the exchange would have allowed the resort to expand.

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You might live in a red state if ...

Just how red of a red state is Idaho? Elementary students chanted "assassinate Obama" on a school bus in eastern Idaho last week.

District spokeswoman Janet Goodliffe says the second- and third-grade students were young and most of them didn't understand what the word "assassinate" meant.

But the Rexburg-based district is in a "highly conservative" community where mommies and daddies overwhelmingly voted for Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

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Housing market be damned; Avimor is still building up

The Idaho Business Review reports that with home sales way down, Eagle development Avimor is building the community up in an unconventional way: focusing on amenities.

With "tens of millions of dollars of infrastructure freshly completed," the company broke ground about a week ago on a $2 million, 12,000-square-foot community center.

Eighty miles of on-site trails are open to the public, and four small parks, including one with a lake, have been added. Avimor also broke ground on a large community park, which will have a terraced amphitheater and athletic fields.

All this while Dan Richter, general manager of developer SunCor Idaho, says, "What I'm budgeting for next year in houses is about one-sixth what I would typically hope to do. But the following year we hope to be back – we're hoping the economy will start healing and be back to some semblance of normality in 2010."

Twenty homes are currently under construction at the development.

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There may never be a Sandpoint Bypass

The North Idaho Community Action Network has asked a federal judge to halt construction of the U.S. Highway 95 bypass in Sandpoint.

The Spokesman-Review reports the filing came less than two weeks after state officials broke ground on the $70 million Sand Creek Byway, intended to route high-speed traffic away from downtown Sandpoint.

Officials with the Idaho Transportation Department said they will fight the injunction.