The Redmond City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to uphold a hearing examiner’s decision to approve the city’s site entitlement plan for the proposed Redmond Bike Park to be built within Hartman Park on Education Hill.

The vote followed an appeal hearing during which Education Hill residents Steve Gasser and Harold Zeitz addressed the Council to have the hearing examiner’s decision, which was made last December, overturned. Redmond City Attorney James Haney also spoke, representing the city during the proceedings.

Both Gasser and Zeitz live near the proposed park location and said they are not against the idea of formalizing the 2.5-acre site at Hartman Park, where neighborhood kids have been building dirt ramps and jumps for the past two decades, into an official bike park. They are concerned however, about the city’s plans for expansion — among other things.

“We were all told the size of the park would not change,” Zeitz said, referring to the residents of Education Hill.

He said the proposed plans have the bike park at about eight times its current size.

Zeitz, along with fellow Education Hill resident Robert Katz, represented an appellant group of 32 Education Hill residents during the hearing. Zeitz was the only one permitted to speak according to city code, but about 100 people — young and old — attended the meeting wearing green in support of their cause.

Haney explained during his rebuttal that while the bike trails within the city-owned parcel of land will expand, the footprint of the site itself will remain the same size.

In addition to their appeal of the site entitlement plan, Zeitz and Katz have also filed an appeal with King County Superior Court regarding the State Environmental Policy Act’s (SEPA) determination that the bike park would not have a significant impact on the environment. Zeitz said the court date for this appeal is currently set for July 2013 so this project could be delayed for many more months.

He added that with City Council’s denial of their appeal Tuesday night, they plan to continue with legal action to King County Superior Court. Zeitz said the timelines of the site entitlement plan and SEPA appeals may join together in a shared court date but he is not sure yet.

Both Zeitz and Katz said they are willing to withdraw their SEPA appeal, stop further legal action and work with city staff to find a solution everyone is happy with if the city is willing to do the same.

Gasser, the other formal appellant, said he cannot afford an attorney so his legal battle with the city will end with Council’s Tuesday night decision.

“My next step is to give up,” he said. “I have to throw in the towel.”

Another concern for Gasser was that the City of Redmond did not give residents sufficient opportunity to provide input, but Haney said since 2009, there have been more than 30 public meetings.

During their pre-vote discussion, council members sympathized with the appellants and their concerns but said their role in the quasi-judicial proceeding was not to create policy.

“We are sitting as judges,” Council member Kim Allen said.

She added that the council had a narrow criteria on which to base their decision, acknowledging that the appeal process was flawed. Allen said she would like city staff to reexamine the process to address these issues. She was met with a round of applause.

Katz said there is still hope because once the two-week, quasi-judicial time period is up, council members could go back to representing Redmond citizens and have the power to order city staff to work with residents to revise the plans.

He said a number of council members seemed visibly upset after seeing how many people were against the bike park’s current plans.

“Not all hope is lost from (Tuesday night),” Katz said. “They are human beings that sit on that panel.”