The removal of Maple Valley’s City Manager David Johnston from King County’s Donut Hole proposal evaluation committee is just the latest bump in what has been a long and arduous road for the two governments.

From King County’s perspective, it was a simple legal matter, but for Maple Valley officials it is yet another slight in an ongoing battle over what the 156-acre county-owned property will become once it is developed. The property is located on Kent Kangley Road and 228th Avenue Southeast.

Johnston had been offered the opportunity to serve in a nonvoting, advisory role on the committee evaluating a pair of proposals submitted to the county as part of the Request for Qualifications process. This comes after Kirkland-based developer YarrowBay chose not to complete the purchase of the 156-acre property in February. The city had been part of the process that began in March.

The RFQ was issued by the county on June 16 and responses from developers were submitted by July 26, according to the RFQ documents.

“This first phase RFQ is intended to identify the most qualified developers based upon responses to the RFQ,” the documents stated. “The top-ranked developers (Finalists) as identified by King County will then be invited to prepare and present formal Request for Proposal (RFP) submittals in response to the second phase of this competitive process.”

But, after a letter to the editor from Maple Valley Mayor Noel Gerken was published by The Reporter as well as the Voice of the Valley on Aug. 5 and Aug. 9 respectively, the county had no choice but to remove Johnston from the evaluation committee, explained Sung Yang, director of government relations for King County Executive Dow Constantine’s office.

“Because it stated a preference for a particular proposal and named the proposal… we had to ask under our own procurement rules for the Maple Valley representative, David Johnston, to no longer participate on the committee,” Yang said in a telephone interview on Aug. 12.

“The county’s bid process is an open, competitive bid process, so we had to make sure for the integrity of the process… to make sure there isn’t any kind of bias with respect to the evaluation committee.”

The committee is made up entirely of county staff members, Yang added. There hasn’t been any discussion regarding replacing Johnston with someone else from Maple Valley.

“What we were hoping, obviously, was to have the city itself represented,” Yang said. “The letter itself did not allow for that possibility once it was published.”

For Gerken, losing the spot on the evaluation committee is just more of the same controlling tactics for the property — it’s home to a 13-acre county transportation and roads maintenance facility, nine holes of Elk Run Golf Course and undeveloped land — which is completely surrounded by the city limits.

“It’s tough with King County,” Gerken said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “They like to do everything their way.”

Gerken explained his letter to the editor was the city’s way of being proactive — to publicly state its goals for the property and put a bit of pressure on the county. The county’s reaction was disappointing, the mayor said.

“We wanted to be true partners,” Gerken said. “We’ve always wanted to be true partners but they’ve never wanted us to be and this is more evidence of that.”

But from the county’s perspective, Yang said, the desire to work with Maple Valley remains even if the way the city offers input has changed.

“I want to be clear that we want to continue to work with the city of Maple Valley in the ways that we can,” he said. “We believe that is important in order to be successful. We’re committed to doing so.”

And while Gerken said communication between Maple Valley and King County has been rocky at times, especially three or four years ago, there has been improvement.

“At least they call us occasionally, we do talk and we’ve been meeting,” Gerken said. “We are communicating. There is dialogue. It’s better than it certainly was but it’s certainly not what I would consider equal partners in any sense.”

The two proponents that responded to the RFQ were Polygon Homes and Powell Development.

Currently Powell is constructing a new commercial plaza at Four Corners that will be home to a Fred Meyer, banks, restaurants, shops and a 10,000 square MultiCare health facility. The plaza is expected to open in the spring of 2012.

The county evaluation committee now needs to review those proposals for the Donut Hole.

“The next step is to evaluate the proposals and depending upon what we find through that process, it could be a shortened process or a longer process,” Yang said. “It depends on the proposals and the information contained within.”

Yang said he could not, due to the legal restraints of the procurement process, give details of the RFQ proposals at this time.

Yang told The Reporter in July that the RFQ process, rather than putting out a request for proposals, was the best way to find out if there were any developers interested in making the Donut Hole fit the vision Maple Valley officials have for the land because it widened the net.

At the same time, Johnston told the Reporter the city felt the county had reneged on its promises to allow Maple Valley to be more involved because county staff issued the RFQ apparently without telling the city.

“We found out two weeks after the RFQ was issued that it had been issued,” Johnston told The Reporter in July.

Johnston added the city was disappointed in the way the county handled things after what had seemed to be a promising reboot of the process during the spring.

In the meantime, while the county works through the RFQ process, the city could resume its pre-annexation work as laid out in a memorandum of agreement signed by the city and the county in October 2008.

“We need to annex,” Gerken said. “The sooner we annex the better. I understand the county doesn’t want to allow us to annex until they have a deal.”

The goal for Maple Valley would be to see the Donut Hole become not just a space for 1,600 residences, as was proposed by YarrowBay, but home to a mix of uses including office space that would accommodate businesses,  provide living wage jobs in industries that are growing such as technology, biomedicine and energy companies.

This RFQ process will test “if the current economic and market conditions will allow for a kind of development that’s envisioned there in terms of financing, etc.,” Yang said in July.

Gerken said though there was a negative reaction to his letter, he was glad the city took a proactive step, because he believes, “in the end it will help our position.”

“We need to be true partners,” the mayor said. “So, that means we need to agree then move forward in agreement. It’s a simple concept and we’re not quite there.”