City moves forward with public records settlement terms

Published 12:23 pm Wednesday, December 2, 2015

The Sammamish City Council unanimously voted Tuesday to allow a longtime Sammamish couple to submit a shoreline variance application for their Beaver Lake property.

The council’s action is in line with the June settlement agreement the city reached with residents David and Megan Gee after the couple filed suit in December 2013 regarding city staff’s “incomplete, inadequate and perfunctory” response to a 2012 public records request, court documents say.

Per the settlement agreement, the city paid the Gees $90,000 as well as allowing the couple to submit the variance that would allow them to develop in the buffer around a wetland located in the middle of their property.

The variance remains contingent on the hearing examiner and the Washington State Department of Ecology review. If the plans are not approved, the case will go to trial.

Although the Gees filed the lawsuit nearly two years ago, Megan Gee said the development issue began in 2008 when the city told her and her husband they could not build on the small wetland.

“It was seven years of heck,” Megan Gee told the Reporter in June. “It’s not over until they give us that shoreline variance.”

City spokesperson Tim Larson told the Reporter in June that the decision to settle was based on a “risk assessment;” that is, it would be more expensive to go to court.

The variance the Gees seek will not set precedent for other homeowners.For more information, visit www.issaquahreporter.com/news/307009861.html.