Officials slugged through the minutia as the third day of hearings regarding permitting work on the southern portion of the East Lake Sammamish Trail concluded in Sammamish last week.

Longtime plans to pave and widen the 1.3 mile stretch of trail have been trapped in litigation since appellants submitted their first round of petitions regarding the city-issued, conditional July 2015 permit to King County Parks and Recreation.

The trail segment, one of three within city limits, is part of a regional urban trail corridor that runs from Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood to Issaquah.

The final day of hearings began after a site visit to the southern segment from the 4300 block of E. Lake Sammamish Parkway SE to Southeast 33rd Street.

Attorneys have 10 days to make their closing written remarks to the Shorelines Hearings Board, Sammamish City Engineer Andrew Zagars said.

King County and the city of Sammamish waved the 180-day deadline for decision, which would have been early September, according to Washington State’s Environmental and Land Use Hearings Office. Still, the Hearings Board is expected to reach a decision sometime in the fall.

Both parties filed appeals with the Hearings Board earlier this year after the city’s hearing examiner released his Feb. 8 ruling regarding initial appeals.

In early March, the city appealed to the Hearings Board on two counts: drainage-related issues and the placement of a stop sign at 206th Avenue Southeast-East Lake Sammamish Parkway Southeast intersection.

In the same month, the county filed its own appeal, despite King County Parks and Recreation Director Kevin Brown telling the Reporter that the city hearing examiner had it “right” in his judgment.

In its appeal, the county petitioned the overall permit process claiming the hearing examiner lacked the authority to review those initial appeals.

Construction on this segment of the trail was to begin almost nine months ago.

The county completed improvements to the northern portion of the Sammamish trail last year; the midsection is still in the design phase.

The total budget for the total Sammamish stretch of trail is about $39.4 million, according to King County Parks and Recreation Capital Project Managing Supervisor Frank Overton.

Funding is provided by the voter-approved 2014-19 Parks, Trails and Open Space Replacement Levy, as well as by grants from the Transportation Enhancements Program, the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program and state Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program.

The county originally purchased the railbanked corridor in 1998 and installed an interim soft-surface trail, which opened to the public in 2006.