'Best of Bonner County' honors community's favorites

Thanks for participating in the 14th annual Best of Bonner County.

We had more votes, more nominees and more interest in this contest than we have ever had.

How do I know that you — yes, you — voted?

Nearly 10,000 individual votes were cast and as we sifted through the ballots recently we recognized most of the names at the bottom of each ballot.

So if you didn’t vote, I guarantee you know someone who did.

How do I know how many votes were cast? Because the entire business office and a few other employees and friends reminded me as they counted the results by hand for the better part of a week.

Of course the talliers used Excel spreadsheets and were pretty clever about maximizing counting time. And yes, we could offer the contest online so that counting would be automatic.

When I started this contest, I wanted it to be an honest measure of what our residents were thinking. Did you like the new restaurant? Nominate it. Have a great place to take visitors? Tell others!

While there is some ballot stuffing, we have limited it because only ballots that come straight from the Daily Bee are counted. No copies, only original ballots.

Online it is possible to disable the cookie function and vote often. The current method allows voters to cast a ballot as often as they like but they have to buy a newspaper. A win-win to be sure.

The numbers are staggering:

• More than 50 restaurants received at least one vote as the best restaurant.

• 23 churches had at least one vote as the best.

• The best place to have a cold beer beat out the best church by two nominees. Favorite church? Cedar Hills. Favorite place for a cold beer? The Tam!

• The best bar was the 219.

While some voters filled in all 78 categories, others zeroed in on one or two.

• It was fun to see Joe’s Autobody climb to No. 1 after climbing up the ladder the past three years.

• The Hoot Owl and “Wanda the waitress” still set the standard for wins. The Hoot Owl has won the best breakfast category every year. I think that Wanda has won all those many years as well.

The Hoot Owl’s lead is tightening, with Stacey’s seriously closing the gap. I bet Stacey’s will give Hoot Owl a run as more people discover Stacey’s.

Thanks to everyone for supporting this annual reminder to shop at home. That’s what the Best of Bonner County really is, 78 categories of places to see and support.

Please spend some time going through the special edition that is part of today’s Daily Bee.

The hard work of the entire Bee staff — editorial, advertising and business — is appreciated and I can truly say this wouldn’t happen without you.

Thanks also to you, the hometown reader, shopper and store owners, who make this annual exercise in participatory local democracy such a hoot.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

David is the publisher of the Daily Bee.