On September 14, 1956, East Redmond incorporates as a town of the fourth class. The impetus behind the incorporation is to stop one of its residents from operating a gravel pit on his property. The fight dooms the town from the start, and the incorporation of East Redmond is not a happy occasion. Lawsuits and acrimonious town meetings will follow, and bitter feelings will prevail. More than 75 percent of the town will disincorporate the following year, but East Redmond will respond with a series of annexations reclaiming part of the disincorporated territory. This will lead to more strife and litigation, which will eventually be resolved by a court order disincorporating the town effective March 20, 1964.
Incorporation
The land east of Redmond along Union and Novelty Hill roads was a bucolic countryside in the early 1950s. Local homeowners, many with 20- and 30-acre properties, happily tended to their cow farms and chicken farms and, in a few cases, their mink farms. But the peaceful atmosphere changed in 1954 when Konstantine Dincov (1907-1975), the owner of roughly 30 acres at 19461 Novelty Hill Road, entered into a five-year renewable contract to sell gravel to King County and the Acme Construction Company. (It was used as part of the construction of Highway 2-A from Kirkland to Woodinville, which later became part of Interstate 405.) His operations included running a loud rock crusher and a smoky asphalt pit, which his neighbors objected to. They decided that the best way to stop it was to incorporate as a town and pass an ordinance prohibiting Dincov from running his gravel pit. From the start, their motives were no secret.
Residents in the area to be incorporated voted on the question at the log cabin in Redmond's Anderson Park on August 14, 1956, and it passed by a vote of 119 to 68. Six days later, Dincov sued to block the incorporation but dropped the suit when town officials promised he would quickly receive a permit to run his gravel pit. On September 14, the incorporation paperwork was filed with the Secretary of State. The new town, with a population variously estimated between 300 and 400, was roughly 4.5 square miles covering an area that stretched north in an uneven ribbon from the Fall City Highway on either side of 196th Avenue NE (also known as the Red Brick Road) to NE 85th Street, where it expanded east to 208th Avenue NE. The northern boundary of East Redmond reached just beyond Novelty Hill Road. A subsequent annexation added a parcel to the town southwest of 196th Avenue NE that touched the northeastern shore of Lake Sammamish at 187th Avenue NE, while another annexation added a thin L-shaped parcel that snaked east of 208th Avenue NE at NE 85th Street.
East Redmond's first town councilmembers were Frank Bastian, Verne Engstrom, George Keller, Robert McInnes, and Ajay Smith; the councilmen subsequently chose Keller as the town mayor. Additional town officials were named; they included Wes Youngquist as town marshal (although, since East Redmond had no jail, local miscreants were housed in the King County Jail) and Earl Diller Jr., who was named town manager. Council meetings were held in a cabin on Art Johnson's property on the first Monday of the month.
The new town promptly ordered the county to quit working the pit and refused to grant Dincov a permit. The county filed for a restraining order against the town, but this was denied in a January 1957 hearing. It went downhill from there. By this time, at least one councilman (McInnes) had resigned over what he saw as the council's heavy-handedness in passing ordinances, while the town marshal was accused that winter of operating a speed trap on Union Hill Road.
Disincorporation
The matter reached a boiling point in an acrimonious council meeting on February 4, 1957, when nearly 100 citizens presented the mayor – described by a Seattle Times reporter as "a soft-spoken but firm dairy farmer" ("Action of East Redmond …") – with a newly filed petition to disincorporate the town. A local judge ordered the town council to set a date for the election, but reversed his decision a week later when he was shown evidence that revealed many of the 123 signatures on the petition differed from how the same signatories had signed their voting registration. Evidence also was presented that showed some of the petition's signers had changed their minds and decided that they did not want to disincorporate.
A smaller part of the town, located near Novelty Hill Road and 206th Avenue NE, filed its own petition to disincorporate, but this failed by a vote of 111 to 71 in May. This hardly solved the problem. Another petition to dissolve most of East Redmond was certified in June, with a vote set for October. Both Seattle papers, the Post-Intelligencer (P-I) and The Seattle Times, followed the strife closely. This was especially true of the P-I, which ran a story detailing acts of alleged vandalism against the town manager's property, and further airing in another article that "everyone has an opinion – usually violent – one way or the other, but they just don't want to see that opinion in print" ("East Redmond Seethes …").
The vote wasn't close. On October 8, 1957, East Redmond voted 176 to 24 to disincorporate more than three-quarters of its territory, leaving a mere .87 of a square mile of the town that covered much of the area along either side of the Red Brick Road between the Redmond-Fall City Road and Union Hill Road. Its population similarly dropped dramatically, to about 50. Mayor George Keller was now ex-mayor because he lived in an area that was no longer part of the town. To add insult to injury, only two of the five town councilmen now lived in the new East Redmond. This wasn't enough for a quorum in the miniaturized municipality, and the two remaining councilmen swiftly appointed another member to reach the required three. But town leaders weren't deterred by the vote. There was always annexation.
Annexations
A month after the election, East Redmond annexed part of Dincov's land back into the town. However, the annexation did not include all 30 acres of his property. Instead, it included only the portion of his land which contained the gravel pit and the stretch of Novelty Hill Road adjacent to it. His home was excluded, leaving him a county resident with no vote and no say in East Redmond's affairs. At least two other residents who had favored disincorporation complained of similar treatment. The town explained that the annexations were "aimed at consolidating, straightening, and giving some contiguity to the town limits" ("Redmond Annexation Strife …").
Eight annexations were passed by the East Redmond Town Council between November 1957 and February 1958. This was followed by two more annexations in 1959 and three in 1960. Of the 13 annexations, 11 were for less than 100 acres. Three were for 8, 10, and 15 acres, while one of the final annexations added less than an acre to the town. Nevertheless, the additions increased East Redmond's territory to approximately 2.5 square miles, and by 1963 the town's estimated population was 374, according to a lawsuit filed by the county prosecutor's office that year.
Arbitrary and Capricious
Once again the genesis for the lawsuit was Konstantine Dincov, who had filed an action more than a year earlier demanding that King County Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll (1906-2003) show cause why a disincorporation proceeding should not be brought against East Redmond. The town objected, but its filing was dismissed by the Washington Supreme Court in February 1963, allowing Carroll's office to proceed. Judge James Hodson of King County heard the case in a non-jury trial in March 1964, and ruled against East Redmond on March 10. Noting that "every error possible was committed in the original incorporation" ("Judge Voids …"), Hodson ruled that "town officials were arbitrary and capricious in excluding and including certain areas to cover Dincov's gravel pit" ("Incorporation of E. Redmond …"). He added that he was satisfied that the prosecution had proved that the incorporation's objective was to put the gravel pit out of business.
Hodson's ruling included findings that the required prior notice of the county hearing to set a date for the 1956 incorporation vote was not published until three days after the proceedings took place; additionally, the vote was held in Redmond instead of the boundaries of the proposed town of East Redmond, both violations of state law. The judge also ruled that the town's original 4.5-mile area violated another legal requirement that limited fourth-class towns to an area of one square mile. Though this provision was repealed by the legislature in 1961, it made no difference: Hodson further found that nowhere in its town limits did East Redmond meet an additional legal requirement that mandated a population of at least 300 within one square mile.
The ruling was appealed, and East Redmond continued with its town council election, which, coincidentally, took place the day Hodson handed down his decision. A five-judge panel of the Washington State Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the decision on July 1, 1965, though it limited its ruling to the sole issue of the town's lack of compliance with the legal requirement of 300 residents per square mile. The ruling also held that the effective date of the disincorporation was retroactive to March 20, 1964, 10 days after Hodson's decision.
But it was already over. Several months before the Supreme Court's ruling, a routine county mailing to Mayor Frank Bastain of East Redmond had been returned unopened with a pointed message: "Gone out of business" ("This, Our City").
