With a 2014 election on the horizon for Klahanie voters to annex themselves in — or stay out — of Issaquah, a group of residents of the planned community told a Monday meeting of the Sammamish City Council they would rather be part of the Plateau.

Sammamish Plateau Water and Sewer District commissioner Tom Harman, speaking as a private citizen, urged the city to make a case to itself annex Klahanie at the county Boundary Review Board’s public hearing.

The public hearing will be held at the Issaquah Holiday Inn Wednesday.

“It’s interesting,” Harman said. “Sammamish is already on the Plateau, Klahanie’s on the Plateau, but it’s in Issaquah’s (Potential Annexation Area) because … it was determined to be in Issaquah’s annexation area (in 1972), long before anyone thought there would be a city named Sammamish. But it’s important to say that there is an alternative and have the Boundary Review Board look at the alternative and maybe get the city of Sammamish into the game.

“We talked amongst our neighbors and we would like to see Sammamish make a pitch so we can go into the city that can provide the best service.”The city of Sammamish already has formally stated its interest in annexing Klahanie and stated as much in a letter to the Boundary Review Board.

City Communications Manager Tim Larson confirmed Tuesday that Mayor Tom Odell, Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama-Aramayo and Councilman Don Gerend would be in attendance at the Board’s public hearing.

Dino Guzzetti, a Sammamish-based financial adviser and Klahanie resident, said he believed a Sammamish address would increase property values in the unincorporated community and bring in greater property tax revenues if annexed.

Another speaker, Mark Seely of citizen group Klahanie Choice, focused on the values Klahanie shared with Sammamiish. He argued the culture of the community was more similar to the northern city than Issaquah.

“Our kids share the same schools,” Seely said. “We attend your many festivals. We share the same geography, we utilize your trails and your parks, we enjoy your Fourth of July fireworks. We shop in your stores, we share your roads, we have many of the same interests you do and many of the same concerns your residents have.”

Though Klahanie Choice uses its fair share of pro-Sammamish rhetoric – frequently pointing out, on its Facebook page, such things as the city’s lack of a B&O tax and debt-free government – officially, the group just wants Klahanie residents to choose which city they join.

It’s a plight Odell sympathized with near the close of Monday’s council meeting.

“Klahanie is a choice,” he said. “And it should be a choice of Sammamish or Issaquah, rather than Issaquah or not-Issaquah.”