City ends contract in water level study
November 24, 2010
By Caleb Heeringa
Consultant was personal friends with member of selection committee
New: Nov. 24, 2:42 p.m.
Measuring the average water level of Lake Sammamish for the benefit of hundreds of waterfront property owners just got quite a bit more expensive.
The city announced Nov. 17 that they would be halting work by an environmental contractor tasked with finding the “ordinary high water mark” for the lake due to concerns that the contractor was a friend of Senior Stormwater Program Engineer Eric LaFrance, who oversaw the project and took part in the selection process for the contract.
“We want to make sure this is squeaky clean,” Deputy City Manager Pete Butkus said. “It’s a very emotional issue for many people and we want to make sure it is technically correct and there’s not anything that would allow someone to question the results.”
In September the City Council approved $30,000 for Northwest Environmental Consulting to measure the average high water level, a sometimes touchy issue. Since landowners cannot build close to the water’s edge, a higher water level means less buildable land for property owners.
Northwest will keep about $20,000 of the money in exchange for the work that has been done thus far. The rest of the money will be rolled back into the city budget and the City Council will hire a new firm to start over on the work next year.
According to a city press release, City Manager Ben Yazici believes the matter was simply a case of poor judgment by LaFrance, who is friends with a high-ranking employee at Northwest and invited them on LaFrance’s boat prior to the selection process for the contract.
“Even though the two people in question are longtime friends who worked together in a different setting, I think their social contact right before the firm-selection process certainly could create an ‘appearance of fairness’ problem,” Yazici said in the press release.
Yazici is out of the country and unavailable for further comment.
The city had four contractors apply to do the work and Northwest was picked as the most qualified, since the firm had done environmental studies for the city in the past, Public Works Director John Cunningham said. The group in charge of picking the consultant to do the work consisted of Cunningham, LaFrance, Deputy Public Works Director Laura Philpot and the citizens’ advisory group appointed to oversee the study.
The group, appointed by the City Council, included Planning Commissioner Stamp Bump, Parks Commissioner Judy Peterson, local homebuilder and waterfront homeowner Dwight Martin and Brent Jones, who has experience in environmental work. Cunningham said the potential conflict of interest between LaFrance and the consultant was raised by a waterfront homeowner not associated with the advisory group.
Butkus said the city would be looking into whether or not the incident warranted some sort of reprimand of the employee, but declined to comment on the specifics, saying it was a personnel matter. He said there was no indication that either LaFrance or the contractor was acting nefariously to influence results of the study one way or another – the city is just doing its striving to ensure the validity of the work it was paying for.
“We think the responsibility for this lies with the city,” Butkus said.
The city paid for the study in response to citizen complaints during the state-mandated update of its shoreline regulations last year. The city had been using a height of 28.18 feet as its number, which mirrors the level measured in a 2004 study done by the city of Bellevue.
Some shoreline residents preferred using the decades-old number set by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – 27 feet. Individual homeowners can pay for their own study and submit it to the state Department of Ecology if they disagree with the city’s number.
Butkus said the project will be managed by Philpot and LaFrance will not play a role in picking contractors for the study when the city starts from scratch next year.
Reach Reporter Caleb Heeringa at 392-6434, ext. 247, or cheeringa@isspress.com.
Other Stories of Interest: Lake Sammamish, Ordinary High Water Mark, shoreline, Shoreline Master Plan, water
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