Welcome everyone.

Thank you for being here and taking the time to engage with our beautiful city work.

Your voice matters, and we are glad to hear from you.

I wanted to note that Councilmember Robinson is not with us this evening.

Do I have a motion to excuse her absence?

So moved.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

There is no oppose.

Uh city cleric are the let me just go back.

Okay, great.

We have one uh proclamation here, uh black history.

Oh, flag salute.

Councilmember Breyer, uh, would you please lead us in the flag salute?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation, one indivisible with liberty and justice role.

Thank you.

Now roll call.

City color, are you ready for the rule of call?

Of course.

Mayor Malikuti and Deputy Mayor Hamilton.

Here, Councilmember Bargava.

Here, Councilmember Breyer.

Here.

Council Member New and House.

Council Member Robinson is absent.

Councilmember Zimidouria.

Thank you.

Great.

Now we have a proclamation, Black History Mons Proclamation.

We have Jerry Lee.

Please come and sit on the table.

We have Jerry Lee, MG2 Foundation, Executive Director and Curator for the Black History Art Exhibition.

We have Shaw Lise Jackson, MG2 Executive Administrator.

We have Jay Taylor, MG2 Architect and Curator for the Black History Art Exhibition, and we have Fancy Wargos, Elevate CEO and Creative Director and Curator for the Black History Art Exhibition, and Deputy Mayor Hamilton will read the proclamation.

Whereas the story of Black History Month traces back to 1926, when historian Carter G.

Woodson established Negro History Week to address the absence and misrepresentation of Black history in the American narrative.

And whereas in 1970, Black students and educators expanded this observance into a month-long celebration, and in 1976, the President of the United States formally recognized February as Black History Month to honor the central role of Black history in the American experience.

And whereas Black and African Americans have made profound and enduring contributions to our nation, shaping its social, artistic, cultural, political, and economic foundations and enriching the lives of all Americans.

And whereas the City of Bellevue recognizes the ongoing need to confront racial injustice and inequity as persistent disparities and continued instances of violence and discrimination against black Americans remind us that more work remains.

And whereas the observance of Black History Month calls on us to reflect honestly on our shared history, including the experiences of Caribbean, African, and other Black immigrants who have shaped American society, and to recognize the contributions of black immigrants, including students, refugees, and those with temporary protected status as part of our shared history and resilience.

Now, therefore, I, Dave Hamilton, on behalf of Mo Malicoutian, mayor of the City of Bellevue, Washington, and the City Council, do hereby proclaim February 2026 as Black History Month in Bellevue, and encourage all community members to join in honoring the invaluable contributions of Black Americans to our community and nation while recommitting to the work of addressing racism and advancing equity so that Bellevue remains a place where everyone can belong and thrive.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Please.

Um is just uh amazing.

So thank you for all of us, and especially your early uh introduction into inclusion and diversity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and members of council, city and city staff for this honor and recognizing Black History Month.

As a community organizer, I'm rooted in the belief that culture is essential.

When we invest in artists, storytellers, and community builders, we create space for healing, opportunity, and belonging.

I'm grateful to be part of that work, and I'm happy to accept this honor on behalf of those who continue to shape this city every day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I'm Jay Taylor, um, architect, um, board member for Onyx Fine Arts Collective, and uh co-curator for the uh Melodies of Diaspora exhibit.

I'd like to uh on behalf of Onyx Fine Arts, I'd like to uh thank the uh the city of Bellevue uh and all the employees for their support and uh for their recognition of Black History Month as it is a testament to the community alliance formed between the city, the MG2 Foundation, Elevate, and Onyx Fine Arts Collective.

Thank you.

Uh good evening, honorable Bellevue City Council.

I'm Charlese Jackson working with MG2 Foundation.

And first I must say that I'm humbled to be one of the many um that could have been chosen to be accepting uh the Black History Month uh proclamation.

It means so much to me because I grew up poor but well taken care of by um a father who was blinded when I was three years old.

Um he had to start stop working construction, and my mother was a nurse, and she had to stop being a nurse to take care of her blinded husband and three daughters.

So we've seen a lot.

Um and we've been through so many challenges, and so we lived in the central district of Seattle, and for the past 14 years, I have been a resident of Bellevue, Washington.

So I must say uh that the growth that I have seen in in Bellevue since I first moved here, um relating to um diversity.

Um I'm just I'm blessed to still own that home in the central district, but um living in Bellevue, seeing the changes and how the city has grown and is embracing collaboration of many cultures gives me more even of a sense of belonging in Bellevue, Washington.

So I look forward to continuing the work and watching you all continue to work because together with the city of Bellevue, um I'm just honored to be a part of the city now, and um I'm looking forward to more unification and raising awareness and collaboration with you all, and thank you.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Do I have a motion to approve of the agenda?

Move to approve the agenda.

Second.

Any discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Council Mr.

Modavero, did you say aye or nay?

I couldn't hear you.

I said I.

Perfect.

All great.

We can motion passes.

City clerk, are there any speakers signed up for oral communication?

Yes, thank you, Mayor.

This evening there are nine people on our pre-registered list.

So before I start calling names, I'll go over a few of the roles that the council has in place.

So the total time for oral communications is for a period of not more than 30 minutes, and all topics must relate to City of Bellevue government.

People speaking to items on tonight's agenda will be called first, and then if time remains, people speaking to items not on tonight's agenda will be called.

In both of those categories, the presiding officer has authorization to give preference to those who have not spoken to council within the last 60 days, or who will be speaking on topics that will come in front of the council within the next 60 days.

Speakers are allowed up to three minutes to speak, and only three speakers will be permitted to speak to any one side of a particular topic.

And then finally, I want to remind everybody that in compliance with Washington state campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during elections.

No speaker may support or oppose a ballot measure or support or oppose a candidate for election, and that includes one's own campaign.

Any speaker who begins discussing those topics will be asked to stop.

So with that, I'll call our first speaker who is Sahara Meanie.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Malakoutian, uh, Deputy Mayor Hamilton and Council members.

For the record, I'm Sahara Meany.

I'm here on behalf of Habitat for Humanity to speak about our comments and feedback on the affordable housing strategy.

We strongly support the staff's proposal and appreciate their deep engagement with community members and stakeholders.

This strategy reflects a clear commitment to keeping Bellevue a welcoming and accessible place for people of old incomes to live and thrive.

We want to especially applaud the explicit prioritization of homeownership, including the use of clear metrics and targeted financial investments.

Homeownership is critical to long-term housing stability and economic mobility.

And your commitment and leadership is especially important as rising housing costs continues to push homeownership out of reach for many working families.

We also support the expanded affordable housing requirement as an important tool to meet Bellevue's housing targets and to implement House Bill 1491, the TOD bill by 2029.

However, we believe that success will depend on pairing these requirements with meaningful development incentives, such as the multifamily tax exemption to support feasible mixed income development.

As a practical way to accelerate delivery and remove unnecessary barriers.

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Your time begins now.

Great.

Mayor Melakutian, Deputy Mayor Hamilton and Council members.

My name is Nikki Stuck, testifying on behalf of the Bellevue Chamber Plush Committee.

First, we want to acknowledge that there is much to appreciate in the draft affordable housing strategy.

It includes several thoughtful proposals that could meaningfully improve housing affordability and supply in Bellevue.

We also thank staff for the listening tour over the past year.

The outreach to organizations, including PLUSH, BDC, and others is clearly reflected in this work, and we value that engagement.

With respect to the high priority actions in this plan, we generally support many of the proposed steps the city could take to increase housing supply and improve affordability.

That said, we have several concerns we ask council to address.

In particular, we caution against over reliance on taxing housing to fund housing, whether through inclusionary mandates that shift affordability costs onto renters for the life of a project or through fees in lieu.

Seattle's MHA program illustrates this risk.

Fee levels have risen to the point that they have constrained development and are no longer generating meaningful revenue due to their prohibitive cost.

Given current economic conditions, we urge caution with respect to new or expanded housing related taxes.

Any future revenue strategy should be limited and broad based.

We specifically ask that the plan before you align with the council's adopted legislative agenda, which included removed advocacy for additional real estate taxes that increase housing costs and undermine project feasibility.

While we remain opposed to costly inclusionary mandates, at a minimum we ask that council direct staff to apply the same level of rigor, time, and analytical intensity to incentive based approaches as is currently devoted to mandatory programs.

Additionally, we oppose any proposal that would mirror Seattle's rental registration and inspection program.

That program has well documented unintended consequences, particularly for small landlords due to significant administrative burdens.

The city Seattle City Council itself commissioned a report acknowledging these impacts, and given that experience, we respectfully request that any similar provision be removed from Bellevue's plan.

We also oppose strengthening broad tenant protection policies at risk discouraging housing providers from operating or investing in Bellevue.

Experienced other jurisdictions include operating deficits, property sales, and increased reliance on subsidies, ultimately undermining housing stability and supply.

Finally, several items in the draft strategy remain unclear, including proposals related to universal design and visitability, changes to the eviction resolution program, relocation assistance, and operating subsidies.

Before these move forward as a part of any approved document, we ask for greater clarity on what specific actions they would entail.

We share the city's goal of increasing housing affordability and supply and appreciate the collaborative process to date.

We look forward to continuing to work with council and staff to refine this strategy in a way that supports housing production and keeps Bellevue a strong place to invest and live.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Daniel Landis.

Good evening, Mayor and members of council.

My name is Dan Landis.

I am the Vice President of Development with King County Housing Authority.

We have a long history of partnering with the city to help find affordable housing solutions for the member the people of Bellevue.

I'm also a member of the East Side Affordable Housing Coalition, and I'm here on that on behalf of this coalition to it speak to our support of the affordable housing strategy that the city staff has put together.

It's a very comprehensive, bold, and thoughtful document that especially is good in recognizing that there isn't just one solution for affordable housing, but there are lots of strategies, lots of ideas, lots of actions that are needed for us to truly address affordability for all of the people that work and live in the city of Bellevue.

There are a couple of ideas in the plan, um, proposals that we would uh really like to draw out and support in our offer our support for.

And one of those is mandatory inclusionary zoning.

And what this is is a very uh innovative way to use the up zones, the value that is created from up zones as a funding source for affordable housing in market rate developments.

Uh we have seen this be very effective, increasing the amount of affordable housing in many communities across the area, and we encourage that the exploration of that in the city of Bellevue continue.

We also want to highlight the um idea of creating new resources for affordable housing, especially resources that can be used to finance housing that uh may not be reached by the inclusionary zoning or the the market, uh especially that housing that's developed by nonprofits and uh your local housing authority.

Uh uh one of the really uh great things about having local funding sources is that that attracts a lot of investment into the community from outside the community, whether it be from the county, the state, the federal government, or even private investors.

Uh finally, I just want to uh thank the staff for doing such a good job of putting a comprehensive plan together, and uh the coalition is uh excited about continuing to work with the city on the implementation of these uh great ideas.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Claire Sew.

Welcome.

Thank you.

But today I come here as a youth resident to speak about the importance of including youth voice um while when discussing housing priorities.

Um housing decisions in Bellevue not only affect adults but also young people, such as students, and these voices are often missing from these conversations.

According to the Belleview's housing needs assessment in 2020, 19% of all individuals experiencing homeless homelessness in King County were under 18 years old.

And the human service needs assessment found that during a three-day um count in 2024 in Bellevue, 123 uh people were living in vehicles, and around 38% of them were children.

And just last school year, 651 students in the Bellevue School District were experiencing homelessness.

And these numbers don't just represent statistics, but they actually represent the students and teens in our schools that are trying to learn while facing um housing instability.

Youth in Bellevue are heavily impacted by these housing issues, but their perspectives aren't often as considered when planning new units or making housing policy decisions.

And including youth voices allows housing to better consider the needs of students, such as how housing stability affects their education, commuting, and more.

Um housing instability can lead to frequent school changes and other disruptions that can negatively affect their health and learning and academic performance as well as their mental health and well-being, which demonstrates the direct impact that housing policies have on youth.

And incorporating youth voice can influence the decisions on important factors such as the locations, um, access to community resources, and longer term opportunities.

For example, when developing new affordable housing, it could be helpful to consider proximity to school or libraries so that students and youth can have um better access to these educational resources.

So I encourage the council to consider the youth perspective and voices during discussions on housing priorities.

And this could include looking for youth input during housing um planning processes or considering how developments could impact students' accessibility to educational resources or transportation.

Incorporating youth perspectives in decision making and considering how housing policies affect students will help ensure um Bell V's housing better reflects the needs of young residents.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Mayor, I would ask briefly.

Um that speaker was signed up in support of the affordable housing strategy.

Do you want to consider that a supportive comment or more broad comments in general?

I think that was more broad calling.

Thank you.

So I am gonna call one additional speaker before we cap out on the affordable housing topic, and that final speaker is Brady Nordstrom.

Welcome, Brady.

Thank you very much.

Um I am Brady Nordstrom.

I'm here with the Housing Development Consortium, also with the East Side Affordable Housing Coalition.

You've heard the tagline a few times, I hope, uh, but uh we are over 30 organizations that work in the East Side to build, design, and operate affordable housing, um, everything from shelter and supportive housing all the way up to workforce housing, and uh that includes a lot of organizations in Bellevue.

Um some of the other speakers have covered some of the uh some of the details already, but I'll just kind of emphasize a couple other points that uh we strongly support uh the affordable housing strategy that staff has has worked together.

This really represents a lot of deep engagement from a diverse group of stakeholders.

That's why it has such a broad range of topics.

Also, um, as one of the other speakers said, it takes a broad range of approaches to make progress on affordable housing.

There's sort of this broad framework of you need supply, you need subsidy and help for um lower income housing, and then you need stability for community members, and so it's important to have and maintain strategies for all of those.

Um and I think that another piece is that this isn't this isn't uh a code update.

This is the starting place for conversation.

You as council are going to sort of guide with the help of community and staff the direction of a lot of these policies.

So I encourage you to think about it that way as a starting place.

Um and then just a couple other things.

Um, of course, uh we are supporting the uh affordable housing requirement.

Um this will need to be implemented in TOD areas uh in 2029 because of some state requirements anyways, but we're already having these conversations in some of the land use code updates that are working their way through.

So thank you for explicitly naming that.

And of course, uh, we want it to be balanced, so thank you for pairing that with other tools to make sure that it's feasible, that it works.

Um and uh revenue is this other piece that is super critical.

Um I don't think I need to say anything more because uh Dan before me said that so eloquently.

Um and then um I think I'll just end by saying um thank you as well for including these strategies to include those most impacted by the housing crisis in decision making.

Um, this there's a lot of strategies in there that sort of set up processes to do this.

And then um strategies to reduce costs and timelines for affordable housing are also critical.

This can scale public dollars, and some of these solutions can and should be expanded to market rate development.

Um, but we can uh get make these public subsidies go further in that way.

So thank you again and appreciate the conversation tonight.

So thank you.

Thank you.

So that was our third and final speaker that will be allowed to speak in support of the affordable housing topic.

And moving on to our next speaker is Kunal Chopra, who is joining us online.

Mr.

Chopra, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, your time begins now.

Great.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and members of the council.

My name is Kunal Chopra.

I'm the CEO of Sativa, a Seattle-based technology company and one of the participants in the city's Civic Innovation Challenge.

I'm here tonight to voice my strong support for this program and the city's broader commitment to innovation.

Programs like the City Civic Innovation Challenge do something that's hard to do in government.

They create a bridge between entrepreneurship and public service.

When a city invites entrepreneurs in to work on real civic problems, not to a traditional RFP, but through a living lab where you're collaborating side by side with city staff, you get better outcomes.

The entrepreneurs get to build something that actually works in practice, not just in theory, and the city gets to evaluate solutions in a low-risk pilot environment before committing to a full deployment.

That's fundamentally different and a better model than buying something off the shelf and hoping it fits.

The pilot approach lets the city test, learn, and refine before scaling, and it lets companies like mine prove value before asking for a bigger commitment.

It protects taxpayer resources while still moving the city forward.

And beyond the immediate results, programs like this send a signal to the broader entrepreneurial community that Belgium is a place where innovation is welcome, not just in the private sector, but inside government itself.

That kind of signal attracts talent, attracts companies, and positions the city as a leader in civic innovation.

The mentorship, the partnership with other companies, it all reinforces that this region is uniquely positioned for exactly this kind of work.

I can speak to this first time myself.

Certivo builds AI powered tools for managing vendor compliance, things like insurance certifications, cybersecurity policies, and other requirements, organizations place on the vendors they work with.

So the innovation challenge, we've been working closely with both the procurement and cybersecurity departments at the city to understand the specific compliance problems they face.

We didn't come in with a finished product and say, you're use this.

We work with the city staff to identify the right problems, shape the right solution, and then test it in the pilot capacity with the goal of proving it works before moving into any kind of broader deployment.

That process, problem identification, solution design, pilot dense scale is exactly how innovation should work inside government, and it's exactly what this program enables.

So I'd encourage the council to continue investing in this model, expand it, make it a permanent part of how Bellevue operates.

It's good for the city, it's good for entrepreneurs, and it's good for the residents use.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Barb Wilson, who is also joining us virtually.

Ms.

Wilson, can you hear me?

I can.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Your time begins now.

Great.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council.

I'm Barb Wilson with Microsoft.

And thank you for the opportunity tonight to speak in support of the updates to the city's multifamily tax exemption program.

MFTE has been the single most effective tool for delivering workforce affordable housing in our region.

The updates before you tonight are already working, and that's worth celebrating.

The Wilburden sub-area plan is becoming a real success story.

We're seeing strong developer interest, real momentum, and early uptake of the proposed MFTE supercharger.

That doesn't happen by accident.

It happens because this council chose smart supply-oriented policy.

Microsoft appreciates the leadership it took to push Wilburden across the finish line.

And we support these MFTE updates because they strike the right balance, increasing affordability while keeping projects financially viable.

After drafting codes that work the moment they're passed and don't rely on future economic conditions to change or rents to increase to make projects feasible.

As you look ahead to policies for HOMA and the upcoming Bellred work, we strongly encourage you to re replicate what worked in Welber Wilburden, especially the MFTE supercharger.

Aggressive mandatory inclusionary requirements have stalled housing production in other jurisdictions within our region.

When modest mandatory policies are considered, pairing them with strong incentives like MFTE is essential to keep housing supply moving.

Bellevue's approach shows that affordability and production do not have to be in conflict.

Tonight's action reinforces that leadership.

Thank you for your continued commitment to housing.

As the East Side's largest employer, we cannot overstate how critical this is to our employees, our community, and the long-term success of our entire region.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

I think our next speaker is Neil Kumar.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members, and members of the community.

I'm Neil Kamara, and I'm a 15-year-old freshman at Bellevue High School.

I'm one of the four people who was selected to be part of the inaugural to be part of the inaugural City of Bellevue Civic Innovation Challenge.

And I was also the only student who was selected.

Through being selected for this challenge, I was able to work directly with the City of Bellevue and at Belvey College to pilot Find the AI at Belvey College.

Find the AI is an AI-powered loss and found system designed to help people recover their lost items more quickly and with less frustration.

What stood out to me during this process was that this wasn't just a theoretical example.

This challenge was just about as real as it gets.

Additionally, I was able to collaborate with mentors and professionals who help me guide through implementation user needs and engagement.

This is also really great for entrepreneurs as because having a social found like um, because having such a strong framework for entrepreneurs to make their products fit in the city's um ecosystem is really important for success.

The impact of this work is very real.

Lost items create stress, waste of time, and unnecessary costs for students, staff, and visitors.

By making the loss and found process more efficient and accessible, find the AI helps people to reunite with their imported belongings and it saves them stress, right?

So more broadly, this experience showed me how innovation can directly improve quality of life in our city.

It also demonstrated the value of investing in youth voices as a 15-year-old, being trusted to work alongside city officials and a local college, sent a powerful message that good ideas can come from anywhere, and that Bellevue is willing to act on them.

Programs like the Civic Innovation Challenge strengthen our community by connecting government education and residents to solve problems together to help people.

By amplifying ideas from residents, such programs are able to address problems which residents face and can improve their lives.

I'm incredibly grateful to the City of Bellevue, Bellevue College, and MM mentors who made this opportunity possible, and I hope this challenge continues to grow and empower people in the future.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Patience Malaba.

And Miss Maleba, if you're joining us virtually, could you raise your hand so I can identify you?

Okay, I do not see her hands.

I'm going to move on to our final speaker on our list, which is Tim Hay.

I have relatively good and bad news.

Which would you like me to start first, Mr.

Mayor?

Welcome, team.

Thank you.

I'm Tim Hay, obviously.

I'll start with the good news.

Although Bellevue isn't aware of its importance.

We have within a mile and a half of Bellevue Square, a classic wetland.

One worthy of study by those in various academic specialties.

It's a wetland of approximately eight and a half acres.

And about 128th.

Just west of the golf course.

Fed by two year-round creeks, the West Branch of Kelsey Creek and the larger Gulf Creek.

This unnamed wetland should be recognized for what it is.

O nature we all claim to revere.

And it's almost in the heart of our city.

This eight and a half acre critical area is home to coyotes, to tiny birds, the protected birds, hawks, blue herons, even bald eagles.

A deer family finds its nighttime safety by sheltering beneath the ground sweeping boughs of a specimen cedar tree in the wetland buffer behind our home of 61 years.

I want you to know about this and other absolute wet gems we have in our midst.

I hope and expect that you'll remember most of this when some important use asks to impede just a little into a wetland buffer.

Death by a thousand cuts.

The inevitable will occur.

And the bad news.

Thank you.

Actually, sorry.

Um I do see Miss Malaba joining us online.

Miss Malaba, can you hear me?

Good evening, Mayor Malakusan, Deputy Mayor Hamilton and Council members.

I am Patience Malaba, executive director of the Housing Development Consortium, and co-chair of the East Side Housing Roundtable.

And really I'm here tonight to applaud your leadership as council in moving forward the MFTE updates within the code.

We worked in collaboration with staff with our partners across sectors, and we came to a consensus of moving this package forward, and we are pleased to see your deliberations that are intentional.

They are reflective of the broad stakeholder consensus that's been engaged by staff, and we look forward to implementation.

We're particularly proud of the Wilbur 10 MFTE superchaja, which we all know has proven to be effective on the ground, and staff is justified to combine this work and willbit currently.

What we ask of the city is that if we move forward with MFT updates, we will work alongside many use code updates in alignment.

So it's all in parallel, and there are no delays in between, and we know you understand that.

So we are uh really placed with the incredible work that you are moving forward, and we had your adoption of the MRTE program tonight.

And if I can take a point of uh privilege here in speaking in support of the affordable housing strategy that you will have a status session for tonight.

Uh, we applaud the city staff for their work and look forward to getting that adopted.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Mayor, that is the our tenth and final speaker, so I'll turn it back to you.

Thank you so much, Armain.

Uh, do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I move to approve the consent calendar.

Any discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Everyone said aye.

The motion passes uh the first study session of tonight, innovation forum update.

Please go ahead, Daran.

Deputy Mayor and Council.

One of the very exciting initiatives that we've had over this past year has been the initiation of the innovation forum.

This public-private uh collaboration includes members of our community, businesses, startups, nonprofits, and educational institutions.

And I couldn't have done a better job than our two speakers this evening, Mr.

Chopra and Mr.

Kumar in describing uh the attributes of this work.

Um but we do want to keep it visible to you and to the public to keep growing its reach for our partners and also to be able to share some of the positive aspects of it and the value to the city and our collaborators.

And with that, I will turn it over to Sabra Schneider, Chief Information Officer, who's joined by PJ Rodriguez, our assistant director of information technology, and Molly Bendel, our program manager for innovation and digital equity.

Sabra.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, City Manager.

We're excited to be here tonight to talk with you all about the progress we've made on the innovation forum since we were last here in early June of 25.

Um tonight's session is information only.

Um we will be talking a little bit about the background of the formation of this progress toward our co-created work plan and then next steps, some things that you can expect over the coming six months or so.

Um as you may remember, uh, this program is designed to be very aligned with your vision for innovation for the city.

Um we seek to bring together government education, private business, startups who you heard from and public comments, um, nonprofits and community members to help drive innovation, both inside City Hall and outside City Hall.

Um, in an ideal world, it benefits both, and I think you heard a little bit about how we're experimenting with that with some of our challenge partners and comments.

Um we hope this work will spark innovation internally.

Um we also hope it will spark an environment here in the city of Bellevue where innovation can thrive, and we're excited to test new ideas and um help new companies form here.

Uh this work has been grounded in partnerships from the start.

Um, as a brief bit of background, starting in fall of 24, we did um stakeholder interviews across all these different interest groups.

We did a couple internal and external focus groups, a public survey, and then we held a preview event in City Hall that some of you attended, um, where we asked uh the attendees kind of the same questions.

What do you want the city to focus on?

How do you want to be involved?

Um, what does this work mean to you?

Um, as you may remember, the community came up with three areas they really wanted us to partner with them and focus on, um, and we've been doing that.

One of those areas is digital equity and access.

They want to make sure that the innovation work lifts all boats in Bellevue and that everyone can participate, and we're thinking deeply about how to include folks.

Um they also want to make sure this work is driven by community input.

So, what do we prioritize?

Have has the community taken a look at relevant policies?

Um, and they regularly talk to us about that work.

And then last but not least, we want to drive innovation partnerships across the stakeholder groups, and we're starting to do that with things like our challenge and our events, and um that work has been growing over time.

Um, as an example, our first innovation preview event.

We had, I think 50 people come that were not Bellevue staff, maybe 20 Bellevue staff.

Uh the and at our innovation event last fall, the most recent event we've done, we had 275 attendees.

So, over that course of time, the participation has grown tremendously, which we're quite excited about.

Um, we're gonna talk next about achievements and what we've done to deliver on the work plan that we adopted with the community at our second forum event, and I'm gonna turn it over to Molly to talk about that.

Thanks, Sabra and Council.

So, building off of the innovation resolution and framework that council adopted in July of 2025, the inaugural innovation exchange took place at City Hall on October 16th, 2025, where the mayor actually gave opening remarks.

Thank you.

The event hosted almost 300 attendees as shown in this slide, and as mentioned by Sabra previously, and programming included inspiring keynotes, lightning talks, interactive tracks, engaging workshops, and concluded with a vibrant evening plaza experience and the rain held out, which was fantastic mid-October.

One of the standout moment that we all kind of chuckle about, but also really it resonates is when the previous director of Washington State Department of Commerce, Joe Wynne actually sat on a panel.

Less memos, more demos, acknowledging the speed at which he was seeing the city of Bellevue currently innovating.

So we think that's that is something really to celebrate.

Next slide, please.

So along with the Civic Innovation Exchange in the summer of 2025, the City of Bellevue launched a community challenge for startups and community members to submit their ideas for helping to drive innovation and service delivery within the city and community.

We are now actively working with four participants, two of which you heard from earlier tonight to further the civic innovation work.

Pilot projects for the Civic Innovation Challenge officially kicked off and began in October 2025 and will conclude at the end of February 2026, so just around the corner.

Each participant has been paired with a design partner to collaborate and test their civic innovation solutions.

And these partnerships include Certivo, who you heard from earlier, in partnership with Procurement and IT has built an AI supported dashboard for real-time vendor compliance to streamline rule-based notifications for expiring documents and missing approvals during the procurement process.

Juganu, in partnership with transportation and Bellevue College, aims to implement a smart lighting system to monitor not only lighting but also curb management and traffic safety.

Legislate in partnership with the city attorney's office has deployed an AI-powered dashboard for quicker ordinance lookup and compliance checks and Find It AI.

Again, acknowledging our youth participant, Neil, who is a Bellevue High School student who spoke earlier in partnership with Bellevue College, is testing a mobile AI lookup system that students and visitors alike can use to easily access and search lost items on campus.

In addition to that, Find It is also striving to automate item intake and monitoring to help reduce Bellevue College's staff lookup time.

And just kind of to summarize overall, we're really excited for the continued partnership and shared learning, and want to say a special thank you to all of our inaugural partners who have learned and grown along with us.

And with that, I will turn it over to BJ.

Thank you, Molly.

As you may recall, and Sabra has mentioned already, is that there were three subteams that were formed to kind of help move us forward.

Those were the three pillars.

And again, just as a reminder, it was the support and enhance digital equity, uh, augment policies and priorities.

This is foundational components, basically the policies, what can we do to make sure that we're enabling.

And we'll talk more about that because uh there's a couple of things that you passed that enable that.

And then, of course, the uh grow uh our innovation systems, which is where the partnership is happening.

Out of those three groups, we basically had uh nine short-term goals.

What we mean by those goals are those goals that we can accomplish uh within a uh span of uh a year.

Five of those have been uh completed, and let's talk more about that at the next slide.

So uh just a couple of items to note in here.

We did host the innovation exchange event uh last year.

Molly talked about that a little bit, uh, along with our uh innovation civic uh challenge.

Um we also had a partnership uh with uh uh Bellevue College to where we hosted a smart uh or they hosted Bellevue College hosted a smart city hackathon.

This involved uh uh you know high school and uh and college students uh in the region uh as well as international students from South Korea.

It was really kind of exciting event uh in there.

And uh I mentioned also previously that uh we you know there's some policies that you all adopted.

So the innovation uh resolution was adopted by this council in 25.

Uh and uh in Bellevue College also followed suit in adopting uh their own innovation resolution as part of that commitment.

Um internally, we did have an AI policy operational policy that we adopted uh that was uh community informed.

So we adopted that policy here also in 25.

And on the digital equity side, we did have a uh device um uh hosted device drive during the innovation exchange as well as hosting a small business workshop that talked a little bit about um AI.

Next slide.

So of course, we always talk about the partnership in here, is one of the key components.

Uh we are extremely fortunate in here that there has been a lot of interest, a lot of support across the community, across uh the public, across uh local businesses in this uh uh endeavor.

And I just want to call out we have a lot of volunteers that have helped uh uh realize some of the goals that we've accomplished.

So I just want to call that out.

We are um excited to welcome our our public partners in Washington State, uh, King County uh and and Bellevue College.

These are our founding partners, and we are looking to start up a uh a living uh innovation lab, hopefully that's in Bellevue College.

But in order to do that, we want to expand our partnership across the region, right?

So we want to uh seek out private partnership.

We are excited for these uh future partnerships, and um uh I'll pass it on to Sabra for what that next step looks like.

Absolutely.

Um we're uh advancing um almost all the things that we talked about in this presentation, and I want to highlight um one advancement in digital equity that we expect to deliver in Q1 of this year.

We are going to pilot a device distribution.

Um, so we're partnering with a nonprofit called PCs for people, um, and our great partners in community development at Mini City Hall to put together an application process that will award 60 laptops that come with a year of free connectivity, some lightweight basic training, um, and a sort of a smooth handoff with our Bellevue Mini City Hall partners.

Um we'll probably be announcing that sometime March April time frame.

We're dotting the I's and crossing the T's on all the legal work, but we're pretty excited to share that as a model, um, both for City of Bellevue residents and for some of our partners in the county and the state long term.

Um we plan to host a second civic innovation challenge.

One of the speakers uh earlier mentioned that it would be great to do that again.

Um Bellevue College is interested in partnering with us for round two and emerging interest from King County and Washington State to do the same.

So we think what we've started can be a model across the region.

Um, again, making sure that this is a place people want to come and innovate, Bellevue and the region at large.

Um last but not least, we'll get a save the date on your calendar soon.

Um, but we're targeting June 3rd for our next innovation exchange.

We've outgrown City Hall, so we are intending to do that in Maiden Power.

Um we had uh stop enrollment in our first exchange a couple days before it happened because um we we're we're we were gonna be over capacity.

Um so we're excited to be able to welcome more partners.

We've started that planning um with the three public sector partners that I mentioned.

Um, and then as PJ touched on, we're really seeking to grow this partnership.

Um we're excited to create a living um laboratory at Bellevue College that would be able to test smart city features in the wild and have students engaged in thinking about how do we use AI, how do we use these features before they go into prime time?

And Bellevue College and our other government partners are excited in figuring out how to make that happen, and then potentially how to spread it, like learn from what Bellevue does and grow it.

Um so that's what's on tap for the next six or eight months.

Um, as a reminder, this was information only.

Um, and we really appreciate your support of this work, and I will turn it back over to you, Mayor.

Thank you.

No, thank you.

Thank you, uh Saverov, Molly and PJ and everyone else.

You had uh several slide to show all of our partners and all of our external stakeholders.

So I want to thank them all.

Uh, this is this is not just about innovation uh to just be say we are innovating.

This is uh helping people uh improving access uh equity and how the city will day to day.

So great job.

I will go to first Councilmember Smotovirio.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for this amazing update.

Um I was reading the numbers, so like from 60 attendees to 273.

That is a quite a growth.

Congratulations.

Uh, and I'm really proud of our especially our student winner.

Um, Neil, you did a really amazing job.

And when I first met you, I just felt like you uh such a bright star that's gonna make our next generation really make the um progress in our city.

Um then I'll should also appreciate work from the staff and especially community volunteers.

This work would not be able to complete without your support.

Um I do have just like two questions.

May I ask that, Mayor?

Please.

Okay.

One of the things I had wondering, because uh Sabra, you actually mentioned that that we are deploying um we're giving our device pilot pretty soon.

And uh, you know, how would the eligible um low-income families able to learn about it and apply for it?

Is there like websites and how can they access that information?

Great question.

There is not a website yet.

We are working with our partners in community development and outreach and comms to put together a strategy for outreach.

That's part of why we're um you know, doing the handoff at Mini City Hall.

Uh, the and you'll see more about that when we announce it.

Um the community development folks and our partners in the communications office have been great about thinking through how we do that outreach and how we can partner with organizations that they already work with, um, as well as some of the nonprofits that have been long-standing parts of this innovation work.

So we're trying to hit it from all those angles.

Thank you.

Um, and uh my last question would be um with you know the AI operational policy that's being placed for a few months.

Can you tell me what has been working really well and then you know how that will be informed um I guess the privacy policy review?

Great question.

Um the privacy policy is next on our list of uh policies to work with the public on.

Um and it we did talk about it a bit with the public as we talked about the operational AI policy.

The city um uh you know has been using AI for a very long time.

Um the new implications of generative AI are what we really wanted to put some guardrails around and that policy guides staff and our vendors on how Bellevue thinks about responsible AI.

Um, a great example of that that I think you've heard from um director Rebecca Horner and her deputy Jake Hessel guesser on is our partnership with GovStream AI, um, where we really want to be able to track how they're using it, where data is coming from, you know, a great deal of transparency around where solutions came, um, and that work is a model for how we've been using that AI policy to date.

Um, although certainly with staff as they think about kind of the everyday use of AI and productivity, um, that policy helps guide their work in that too.

Thank you.

That's not my question.

Thank you so much for your hard work.

Thank you, Councilmember Smoteburio.

Councilman Breuer.

I just want to say how excited I am about this.

I think this is gonna be fantastic.

It's going to set a model for the nation.

I'm quite confident in that.

And I think also it engages residents that are young, which is super fantastic because I think this program will really curate model citizens.

Um, and what more could we ask from our residents to be engaged and now help us find solutions to permitting that takes way too long?

So this is incredible.

So thank you so much for your work.

That's all the feedback I have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Breuer.

Councilmember Borgava.

Yeah, um, equally excited.

I think this is great.

I really love the progress you made.

Um, the outcomes and the participation really broadways, I'd love to focus on a sort of expert approach to innovation, which is great.

I also love the focus on equity, which I think is super important.

So I really appreciate you making that one of the core sub drivers.

Um, I do support the lab idea, which I think is going to be a great place for us to lose through innovation and see how we can scale something other works.

Um of course to the partners, the four partners you've chosen for the pilots and uh the young ones in the back there, uh congratulations.

Hopefully we can find something good.

Um the only uh I guess if I have to just frame one question um based on the pilots and the work and all of that that you've done so far, uh looking out, maybe you know, of course, your second iteration is gonna happen and all of that.

But those are uh sort of all the launches.

Would you look out six to twelve months?

If you were to sort of and you don't have to be specific yet, but even at a high level, what would be the outcomes from this for residents within our community that you think we would be able to change?

It's a great question.

I'll hit on a couple things that one of our committees talked about today, actually.

Um, and one of those is we'd like to broaden the reach of our um challenge recipients.

So, for example, the recipients, as they mentioned in public comment today, have been partnering with Bellevue staff, some of our startup volunteers, and in some cases Bellevue College.

We are hoping that if we are successful at creating that kind of living innovation lab at Bellevue College, that we can add to that mix local large companies, students, you know, sponsored internships with some of those startups who are probably seeking support and help.

And then we create this huge learning ecosystem at Bellevue College that benefits smart cities and potentially our other government partners as we learn together.

We've also talked about, and I were trying to figure out the right partner to land this with.

That's awesome.

Those are great outcomes.

I think beyond just the opportunity that creates, which are great outcomes for the residents.

The process of actually making that happen and the inclusion, that also is on its own a great outcome.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Bargabo.

Councilmember New in House.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just adding to the kudos.

I'm as excited now as I was excited when this first uh launched.

So thank you so much for all of your great work.

Thank you for the update.

Thank you for uh Deputy City Manager Joe Todd as well.

He was part of this brain child to begin with, help get it launched.

There's tremendous momentum here, excitement here.

I'm just very excited to see where this ends up going.

Um, and I think the the amount of participation and and partnerships and some of the real outcomes of this is going to be uh really beneficial, both immediate and long term.

So thank you all so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilmember New Enhouse.

Councilmember uh Deputy Mayor Hamilton.

Great, thank you.

Appreciate the uh presentation.

I love this project.

I just think it's one of the smartest things that we're doing in Bellevue.

The cost benefit ratio seems so favorable for the city.

I imagine it's getting back more than we invest by far.

I really like the digital equity goals and all that has already been accomplished.

I hope that we keep this focus area as a top priority and look for ways to add goals and enhance the ones uh already identified.

Uh thank you for the focus on AI.

Uh, since this is a quickly emerging uh and impactful technology, it's important that we watch closely and respond appropriately as it expands.

I'm also really impressed with the work around enhancing the innovation ecosystem.

Bellevue has a really robust innovation ecosystem, and tapping into it and enhancing it along the way is the exact right move.

Uh really excited to hear back from you when the first group of civic challenge partners complete their pilot programs.

Certainly thrilled that uh Neil was here to talk about his today.

Uh, you selected a great group, and their projects are interesting and hopefully impactful.

Uh, great work plan for 2026.

Just think this is all super exciting.

Really excited to see what comes next.

So look forward to having you back and keep us posted.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Uh, I also just wanted to appreciate uh this is started with listening, you just start listening to everyone and then move to action.

So I really appreciate that.

Uh, you worked with community all along, and you are continue doing that, so that's great.

It was an idea, now is a pilot.

Hopefully, we see the impact of that, and hopefully uh that would be the next step to see what amazing impact you are going to have.

Uh, like Councilmember Breyer, I am also convinced that Bellevue can position itself as a regional model or nation model for responsible civic innovation, especially around AI and digital equity.

I have three short questions.

If you can go to a slide nine.

You had you offered AI for small businesses workshop.

I am wondering what level that was.

Was it just Chat GPT proms do this for me and maybe some help to create a website, or was a deeper level how you can use AI to maybe improve your sales or marketing or pricing?

Great question.

It was an evening event that was part of the Innovation Exchange Day in October.

So during the day, residents, you know, everyone was invited to the whole event.

But during the day, we had an afternoon that was focused on kind of a prompt a thon.

We nicknamed it, where we did teach people prompting skills, kind of beginning intermediate advanced.

So that was a three-part workshop, and we had some small business owners take advantage of that.

What the bullet on this slide is referencing was one we did in the evening because we thought some small business owners might not be able to come during the day.

And it was fairly short.

Those were designed to be kind of lightning workshops.

So it was not as in depth as what you're describing.

I think we did a 30 minutes on here's some kind of quick ways, you know, some quick things to think about.

That said, part of what we intend to do when we find the right partner with training is think about how do we curate online curriculum and then supplement that with our whatever day it ends up being, you know, innovation Saturdays at Bellevue College and other places for people for whom online learning might not be their favorite.

Um so we're gonna try to you know look at that from both um both angles.

Great.

That actually leads to my next question.

Next slide partners.

Do you all do we have any private partners so far that you are working on?

Is there a lease?

Can you share names?

Yeah, great question.

Um we have been really lucky in that, and I'm just gonna go back here.

We have been really lucky in the all the private partners on this slide and more have come to our forum, have offered training, have had a boot, you know, have contributed in in quite a few ways.

Um, and we're hoping to deepen that relationship with some of our private sector partners.

Um, T Mobile and Microsoft have been early thought leaders with us.

Um, Chasm Labs, uh, King County Housing Authority, you know, these are folks that have been at the table with us talking about this work for a long time.

Um, IBM and Centric helped put on some of that training.

Um, but as this work matures and our vision for a living laboratory at Bellevue College matures, um we're seeking to kind of figure out who wants to partner on the next iteration of this with us.

Um, and we're excited to figure that out.

Um that's that was great.

I think you also answered my third question in this question.

Uh thank you so much.

We appreciate you.

Please come back soon and give us another update.

We are all excited to hear what impact we are seeing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We appreciate your support.

Thank you.

Uh I think we can have 12 minutes break and come back by 720, and then we have the second slide session.

Back we have our second study session, affordable housing strategy.

Our city manager is going to introduce that.

Thank you, Mayor.

Deputy Mayor and Council.

The Affordable Housing Strategy is a very important body of work that will help us provide a roadmap for the city's ability to continue to work towards preserving affordable housing and increasing the supply of affordable housing.

Um, and also address other community goals relating uh related to our housing broadly between now and 2032 through a very extensive engagement process.

Uh staff gathered input from a broad range of interests that included people within our community, some of whom uh are living in affordable housing within the city, businesses, developers, uh both market rate and affordable, and community organizations, etc.

The input is broadly reflected in the goals and the strategies of the draft plan that you'll hear about today.

Um and it's also reflected in the comprehensive menu of potential actions.

The focus tonight is on receiving council input to these goals and strategies, and additionally the actions, with a focus perhaps on the subset of the high priority um implementation actions identified for the next seven years.

This we believe will allow for additional dialogue with the community and input from the council.

So our staff is prepared to share some thoughts on that and their next steps this evening in the presentation.

And with that, I will turn this over to Bianca Siegel, our director of the Office of Housing, and Hannah Bonmiller, Senior Affordable Housing Planner.

Jacca.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council.

Great to be back here with you.

And we are really excited to be sharing the draft affordable housing strategy with you tonight for your feedback.

So the strategy is focused on helping to meet the need for affordable housing in our growing community, particularly via income restricted affordable housing, as well as additional supportive approaches.

So it's ensuring that our workers can live nearby, keeping people stably housed and out of homelessness, helping families to grow and thrive in the community, all of that requires a really robust set of tools.

I'm gonna ask Hannah to take us through the presentation tonight and look forward to more discussion after.

Thank you, Council.

Our objective tonight is really to orient you to this project, to provide an overview of how we were able to engage the community throughout this year-long update.

We'll provide a high-level overview and highlight some of the select actions, and then as mentioned, we'll close out by talking a little bit about next steps and implementation.

Starting with some key background, the affordable housing strategy is the city's strategic plan on housing.

It is focused on our near-term actions.

We have an existing strategy that was adopted in 2017, and that was implemented over the past seven years.

And as part of that was the subsequent next right work program.

The strategy focuses heavily on that income restricted affordable housing, but as City Manager Carlson mentioned, we also address other housing priorities such as stability, access, and overall affordability.

The update was launched last November, or excuse me, November 2024, in order to build on that past implementation success, as well as to continue to address the need for affordable housing in our community.

As part of that update launch, a new need-based affordable housing target was established by council, and that is based on a portion of our planned 10-year overall housing growth.

And in line with the need, the target does weight towards that deeply affordable housing under 50% AMI.

The update draws on existing city guidance in the strategic target areas and the comprehensive plan and seeks to implement the policy guidance within the comp plan.

There are five overarching goals that structure the strategy and elevate different community and policy priorities.

Affordable housing is focused on that income restricted affordable housing.

Housing equity is focused on and centers on addressing inequities and disparities.

Housing stability aims on keeping people in their homes and neighborhoods, and housing for unique needs aims to create units for all different types of households and individuals.

Finally, supply and diversity focuses on creating more housing overall and more types of housing in our community.

Because we do have a deep need for that under 50% AMI housing in our community, as reflected in our target.

The update does intentionally prioritize strategies and actions within the affordable housing goal area.

They help us move towards the target, and so they are elevated within the plan.

Also important to this update is that there are different needs and solutions at different levels of affordability, and that's something that we've been attentive to in order to achieve the and move towards the strategy sub-targets.

While our 50 to 80% AMI housing may be able to be incentivized or feasible for through regulations and the right conditions, we know that that under 50% AMI housing needs public investment to cover the cost of development and ongoing operating subsidies.

Funding for these deeply affordable units comes from a variety of different sources, including local funds, county funds, state funding, and federal tax incentives.

And while local funding makes up an incredibly important part of that funding stack, we cannot make these deeply affordable units pencil on our own.

But our local funds can play a very important role to leverage and attract other public and private investment, for example, by buying down already subsidized units to deeper levels of affordability.

This project had a very strong policy and community engagement foundation that we built on from the comprehensive plan update.

And the specific engagement within this plan aimed to refine what we heard as community priorities into those strategies and actions and further to think about how we prioritize across these multiple objectives.

This engagement focused on new and inclusive ways to get different people, different groups of people out, including our organizational partners, the public at large, and those who are most impacted by housing issues.

We've highlighted some notable outcomes on the right hand of the screen, including reaching 150 people with lived experience through listening sessions as part of our pilot community facilitator program.

And while they had to leave, we did have two of our community facilitators who are able to join at the beginning.

So just want to thank them for their support tonight.

We engaged through educational public events, through that community facilitator program, through surveys to both organizational partners and the general public, and through presentations and workshops with our partners.

This has led us to have broad reach over the course of the plan, hearing from over 60 organizations.

Our last phase of feedback was in the last quarter of 2025, where we solicited feedback on those draft strategies with the public, our organizational partners, and with council at our last October 21st study session.

And that input was used to refine the strategies and then prioritize the actions and identify those high priority actions.

Moving on to the document itself.

The action plan is a flexible tool for implementation.

It contains the actions, which are the specific tasks for implementation and the metrics for tracking and reporting on our progress.

Of the 81 actions within the action plan, we've elevated 20 as high priority actions.

These high priority actions are those that have high impact and high alignment with community-identified priorities and goals.

And the objective here is to emphasize those over the implementation of the seven years, not necessarily implement them all first, but phase them over that seven-year planning period.

That subset of 20 high priority actions is illustrated on the screen as they are phased over the planning period.

As you can see, some are already on our work plan, while others are scheduled for implementation in the near mid and longer term.

Of the 80 total actions within the action plan and including those 20 high priority actions, we contain or we published within the supplement details for implementation.

This includes the lead department, estimated investment level and impact.

We've also for each strategy have implementation metrics shown at the bottom of the screen for this strategy, and that helps us track progress and report.

At our October 21st study session, council wanted to better understand impact towards our new affordable housing target.

The chart on the screen shows the potential impact of our current pipeline of units and what we anticipate producing from those priority actions.

That's illustrated in blue.

A few takeaways to highlight here is that we expect to build more affordable housing overall than the last decade and estimate over 4,000 affordable units in the next 10 years.

And that's illustrated on the right hand of the screen.

At the 50 to 80% AMI level, we anticipate that we will exceed our sub-target.

And this is primarily due to actions related to land use tools and tax incentives that we've been working on.

And then lastly, we anticipate greatly increasing our under 50% AMI production over the past and our existing pipeline, estimating up to 1,600 units being produced.

But given that we do have a significant need-based target, we'll need to continue to work towards that target over future development cycles.

And so as we are moving towards these goals, it's very important for us to continue to assess progress towards that target and the other key metrics within the plan.

The action plan contains both outcome and implementation metrics.

The outcome metrics are at the goal level.

They look at high level impact within the community, while the implementation metrics are looking at performance of the different strategy implementation.

On the screen are just a subset of outcome metrics from each of the goal areas.

And as part of implementation, it's key for us to come back to council every six months to report on these key metrics and what actions will be brought forward or have made progress.

Under the affordable housing goal area, this is highly emphasized within the plan.

It's the goal area that's going to move us towards that new affordable housing target by building and preserving new income restricted units.

One strategy to call out here is a new focus on acquisition and preservation.

Specifically, a strategy to acquire that naturally occurring affordable housing to preserve it as permanently affordable.

A specific task that we've identified under that strategy is to work with Arch to help provide expedited short-term loans for acquisition for affordable housing developers so that they can move to acquire projects at market speed.

Another strategy under this goal that we heard a lot of support for is exploring new revenue sources.

This strategy and action would really be an exploration, thinking about what predictable and ongoing tools might be able to help support our affordable housing needs.

This could be levies, fees, increment revenue, and bonding, and council would be involved in how those exploratory discussions advance.

The comprehensive plan added new policies around housing equity, recognizing the legacy of disparate and disp and disproportionate housing policy and outcomes.

Some implementing strategies to call out here are a new focus on alternative ownership models, including a specific action to think about how we can better incentivize affordable homeownership within our community.

We also want to continue the inclusive engagement that we've heard a lot of positive support for in this plan by finding ongoing opportunities for folks with lived experience to continue to help be involved in these decisions.

For housing stability, this is not necessarily the ability of a person to stay in one unit, but the ability of somebody to stay in and continue to afford their neighborhood.

And housing stability was something that was really emphasized in the engagement stories that we collected.

Calling out a couple of strategies and actions relating to accessing and navigating the affordable housing system.

Some actions include increasing navigation services either at the city or by partnering with our nonprofit organizations and improving some of the existing resources that Arch offers by making them into a more central user-friendly hub for affordable housing seekers.

Finding available and affordable housing can be extra challenging for folks who may have unique housing needs and need housing that's designed or suited for them.

This goal area focuses on that, and a specific action that we've identified under inclusive design is to do a review of our code and standards with the lens of accessibility features, thinking about how we can incorporate key features so homes can be visited by those with disabilities and easily retrofitted.

We're also thinking about the needs of larger households and families by thinking about how we can prioritize funding to those larger unit sizes.

And then our final goal area we want to highlight is housing supply and diversity.

We know that housing supply and having a diversity of units is really key to overall market affordability.

Reducing the cost to build was the number one thing that we heard from our development partners in our partner surveys that we did over the course of the plan.

So some key actions within this goal area are to continue to work on our middle housing efforts by thinking about amendments to minimum lot sizes, as well as thinking about new and event and new and innovative ways to reduce the cost to build in one specific action we've identified here is how to leverage wood frame construction.

And I'll pass it over to Bianca to close us out.

Thanks.

So you've heard in the presentation, of course, the affordable housing strategy had a really robust engagement process.

We've heard from a lot of different folks over the 14 or so months that the plan has been in development.

And that's reflected in the plan.

Um and uh in the last week and a half since the full document has been published, we've heard from a bunch of folks that still have some questions and might benefit from some additional time uh to better understand what's in it and be able to ask those questions.

So we welcome the opportunity for additional discussion.

Um we anticipate uh scheduling um probably uh two additional information sessions um in the near future.

Um we're happy to answer questions from folks, provide additional clarification about what's included in the plan, have a conversation about the recommendations.

Um we look forward to hearing the council's feedback tonight, um, and then we will follow up with the community and come back to you with that information for further consideration.

We want to note also, uh, just in terms of moving forward with the plan that the implementation is not just in the Office of Housing, it's really a citywide effort.

A number of departments are involved in that.

Um, and so uh we would coordinate with them uh in moving any of the items forward.

Um cost-related impacts um or or potential future revenue would of course be part of your budget process.

Uh, and then we will have twice yearly uh reports to the council that will address progress made on implementing uh the uh items in the plan, as well as a discussion of upcoming um work plan items and priorities, and and we of course very much invite feedback.

Council would also be asked to weigh in on the initiation of any of the uh implementation actions that involve uh code changes, allocation of funding, uh, any of the broad range of things that the council already uh is responsible for decisions on.

Um, we would come back to you for feedback at the beginning, um, and then of course, decisions uh as any of those projects move forward in the future.

I think that's it.

We are available for questions and discussion.

Thank you so much, Bianca and Hannah and the whole team, uh, the whole Bellevue team for the work that's went into this and for the amount of listening you have done that has been reflected in the whole material.

Great job presenting uh tonight.

Everyone, I think, agrees on the goal.

We want Bellevue to be a place where people can afford to leave the stay and build their future.

So I appreciate the whole intention behind this.

Deputy Mayor View Solvita.

Okay, great.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation.

Uh, you have put a ton of work into this update, and it really shows housing affordability is the top issue for our city and really everywhere else in the world.

Our community has been very clear that they are struggling to afford their housing and they need us to address it.

Improving housing affordability is a tremendous challenge.

It takes the deep work that you have done here to help us meet the challenge.

I'm impressed with your work and generally supportive of the draft.

Having said that, I think we do need to take some more time to engage stakeholders with an extra focus on housing suppliers, market rate and nonprofit, to be sure that our final affordable housing strategy can pass the simple test that the Seattle Times editorial board implored our legislature to use.

In it, they said that if a policy makes housing more costly or takes longer to build, don't pass it.

Consider an alternative.

Enact policies that pencil in today's market, not aspirational measures that might work down the line.

Today's market is the next six years.

I would like us to use that test and others as we complete our stakeholder engagement and prepare to adopt the final housing strategy.

Uh the strategies within the affordable housing goal section look very good.

Um the strategies within the housing equity section also look very solid.

Uh just one clarification, uh, if you could um clear something up for me.

The draft affordable housing strategy sets a target of ensuring that at least 10% of units are affordable to those making under 10%.

But there's a conflict in the draft affordable action plan that has at least 10% of units in all neighborhoods should be affordable to those making less than 80%.

And I appreciate the conversation we had earlier today, but if you might just address that so that everybody can be clear.

Yeah, thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um thank you for pointing out the discrepancy within the action plan.

Um, the statement that at least 10% affordable to those making under 80% AMI, that is the correct metric within the full uh draft strategy.

It was um uh uh typo to write 10%, we'll correct that in the final version.

Thank you for your um then moving to the housing stability section.

Um I think it would be really helpful uh to see some examples of potential tenant protections because I I have some concerns that might not be well founded, and I think a couple of examples could help me clear that up.

Um I do have some concern about HS.4, the rental registration and inspection program.

I have some serious concerns about increased costs uh and administrative burdens generally and the challenges with complying, especially on small-scale landlords.

Uh I would just assume this strategy be removed tonight, as there is limited evidence that the Seattle program has succeeded in improving the quality of rental units, compliance costs are high, and the impact again on smaller landlords are more than they can continue to bear.

But we have some more time to engage with stakeholders and collect data, so I have no issue with giving this strategy some time to prove its value if it's possible.

The housing for unique needs section looks good, and I'm especially pleased to see us addressing the need for family-sized affordable housing.

The housing and supp the housing supply and diversity section also looks good.

Nothing to add on that.

Uh just one final thing.

Um, and that is that I don't want the final action plan to include any action that goes beyond our adopted state legislative agenda.

For example, HS.1.4, I believe should be removed from the action plan and included in a future legislative agenda if council decides it should be.

I think it's out of place in the action plan.

I have the same comment for HS.2.3 as it belongs in a future adopted federal legislative agenda if it belongs anywhere.

So that's it for me.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Councilmember Samadavirya.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, thank you, by the way.

Amazing job, uh, Bianca, Hannah, and the whole team for the comprehensive work, especially congratulations, Hannah, for winning the MLK award.

Um your service and the whole team service to go the common good is noticeable and it's impressive.

Thank you so much for all your hard work.

Um, some comment I want to actually share my gratitude for you to actually reach out to over 150 people with living experience because their experience about the community is very special.

Um, because as we know, the teachers, essential workers, and seniors, they are the pillar of our community.

Without them, Bellview would not be the same.

And I am so grateful you putting this hard work to showcase how we are moving together to a Bellview that's affordable for everyone.

Um I just have a few questions, kind of clarifying it.

Um the first question is along the line with um Deputy Mayor about the rental registration, because in the notes it says it's going to be thoughtful design to mitigate impacts.

Um is there a timeline when would the council see like the details of that design?

I'll start.

Um so that strategy, just to be clear, is not one of our identified high priority action items.

Um it is not scheduled.

Um it is on a list of potential actions to consider in the future.

Um if we were to move forward with that at some point, it would involve uh, of course, a lot of discussion with stakeholders and council uh and data analysis uh and and further work.

So it's there to note that that can be an opportunity to address some of the housing stability concerns.

It is not a commitment to move forward with the program uh without further analysis.

Okay, so we would have an opportunity to assess it to see if it's actually an effective um tool, right?

Yes.

Okay.

And then um you said we're gonna able to see some data um about six months.

We are planning to bring uh updates back to the council twice a year on uh on implementation progress on the affordable housing strategy, and so part of that will include uh available data on progress, um updates on implementation actions and discussion about next steps.

Great, thank you.

And my last question is um I mean, as you see, there's a lot of um and unpredictability for developers and then for the um stakeholders that's building the affordable housing.

Um I think that is there any opportunity for us to expand to streamline the process for um any type of project that includes affordable housing, um, have a faster process.

Um, so we have a way actually support a production rather than slowing it down.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Simon DeWeria.

Um the city has established an expedited permitting program for 100% affordable projects.

That's been shown some early success.

We do have an action within the plan to continue to support that expedited permitting program and to potentially use the staff expertise to see if there's ways that we could expand the eligibility to further utilize those efficiencies.

Thank you.

That's all my question.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Thank you, Councilmember Samo de Virjo.

Council Member Bargabo.

Thank you, Mayor.

I also want to reiterate gratitude for the tremendous effort for 14 months to develop what I think is a really thoughtful and comprehensive affordable housing strategy.

And I cannot overstate the importance of this work for our city and for our region.

It is God's own work.

So thank you.

Councilmember Samadaveria called out.

It helps innovate, helps innovate and makes faster progress and more resonant progress as well.

So appreciative of that.

I also want to start with some really, really positive things.

Really like the focus on home ownership, the expedited permitting programs and the things you've laid out in your strategy are really great.

I love the idea of focusing on the funding aspect of affordable housing.

I think you've got that spot on.

I also really feel like the inclusion of stability equity and unique needs beyond just production and retention of housing is a really broad base.

So I want to give you kudos and say it loud and clear that this is great work.

Thank you.

You're not suggesting the remaining 50 are not important, but you don't think our focus should be on those, correct?

Um so the other act of the other remaining actions within the plan still do have a associated phase that we think that they could be implemented during.

Um the high priority actions are uh anticipated to be implemented across those seven years as well.

Um what we are trying to call out is that we believe that those actions specifically have uh the greatest impact, particularly in number of units and the most alignment with what we heard uh from the community conversations around what should be prioritized.

Um so the attempt is to make sure that those 20 uh what we think may be the most impactful actions are elevated um uh while the other ones are still considered for implementation.

I got it.

Um helpful.

I think it's uh really important to note that I mean one of the things even um city manager Carlson uh laid out was that we throw the engagement has been great.

I think the last bit of the actual action plan came across in the last couple three weeks, and I think a higher level of engagement with stakeholders, and you've noted that that there's going to be opportunity for that.

So I really appreciate that and reiterate that as well.

So thank you for what you're going to do here because we've received a ton of feedback about the places where folks didn't quite follow the rationale, the root cause, why do we want to do this in Bellevue?

Some examples are, for example, the um piece that Deputy Mayor talked about, the registration program.

We've seen the challenges that Seattle has had with it.

We do not want to create an opportunity where we restrict the amount of housing and affordable housing, especially we have in the market for folks who might be smaller landowners landlords and prevent them and create friction for them.

Similar is the thinking on the finding the balance between fairness of eviction and eviction processes, and then creating sort of what could be possible friction for or impedance for small landlords to come in and put their units in the market.

So I think fanning those balances and thinking about those would be areas that I would be really, you know, as sort of reflections on the study session, places where I'd like to learn more.

Um I think rental assistance and rent control is another area where the puts and takes and what the outcomes will be.

We've always felt that the rental assistance program allows for higher levels of production of housing and doesn't create the impediments.

So something that for us it'd be just great to get more deeper point of view as so as we come together as a council to sort of decide on these critical things that I think have uh very long term impacts on the production of housing, the velocity and the simplicity of what Deputy Mayor said about can it be built and can be built quickly are really good yardsticks to use uh you know, for us to think about.

And then uh very briefly, you've talked about the focus on mandatory affordable paired with other policies.

I know your intent is to keep this flexible and open, but the idea of incentive-based opportunities in different parts of the city, I think we should keep that on the table, and let's just as you reiterate iterate on this, flash that out so it's clear.

And very quickly, the last couple things.

Um you put a lot of great thought into what you create called the high priority actions.

The only ones that I thought worth considering are the acquisition, you know, um of land, especially around transit, which has probably long periods of time required for that to come to fruition or longer periods.

I think starting as early as possible to create those opportunities might be a win for us in the long term.

So putting that in your maybe consider that for priority right now would be one suggestion I have.

And the other thing is, of course, I really love the idea of shepherding and creating faster um permitting and uh funding sort of processes uh with the city for affordable units.

I would encourage us to think about that from a broader lens of all um uh units to get faster processing and permitting.

And just a question for you.

Does that mean that if you have affordable units, you would move to the front of the line for permits?

Is that what you're thinking here?

I think there are a number of ways to approach that.

We would have to talk about it with our colleagues in development services.

Um there is already a dedicated team that works with affordable housing projects, and those have been exploited as a result in a really effective way.

Okay.

Um, and so we'd look for just additional ways to build on that success.

Okay.

I'd just love to learn more as you think about that.

That's it.

Thank you, Councilmember Borgaba.

Councilmember New House.

Thank you, Mayor.

Appreciate it.

And uh I too want to thank you for all the great work that you've put into this.

This is uh a large body of work, challenging, um, a lot of moving parts.

Um, really appreciate the amount of outreach uh that you've done as well.

Thank you for putting all the organizations on there.

You probably knew I was gonna ask that, so thank you for putting that on there, all the different organizations.

And it's you know, so and it shows really a clear, robust um um outreach, which is really good to see.

And we continue to um uh the the you know uh Bellevue continues to work uh really hard to expand uh housing options within our city.

It's the right thing to do, it's the right goal.

Um and uh I'm I'm proud to keep moving this um uh this uh work forward.

But I also want to make sure as we move forward that we're careful not to, as I see, make mistakes that um other municipalities have had um or have made.

Um and and and while there is so much good work in here, and I don't want that to be lost in this conversation, because there is a lot of great work.

Everything from the the centralized user-friendly services to the expanding housing navigation services, which I really like, the incentives for affordable housing, home ownership, the land use tools, etc., those are all really good things.

But as I'm going through this, it it to me it it just feels like a lot of regulation, um, really heavy regulation potentially.

Uh might not be in that top 20, but I think that's what concerns me, and it concerns some of the feedback that we've been getting from a lot of different um stakeholders, especially through the rental registration, the inspections, um, expanding compliance bureaucracy, and that's to be completely transparent.

That's what I was concerned about with the Office of Housing when you first started talking about this.

That this would become a very bureaucratic um uh kind of institution where I've always think of Bellevue as being very um very very fluid, being able to pivot very quickly and be able to move quickly to create more not only affordable housing but housing in general, and I don't want us to lose that.

I think that's been one of our um uh key signature pieces that uh that have really been helpful for us uh in the past.

So, and the reason I get so concerned about the regulation is that typically it hurts the small landlords, they leave the market, the rental supply shrinks, rents go up, and then several elements of the draft plan, I think risk going down that path potentially, maybe not now, but potentially, and I think that's what so much concern here.

I really want a bellevue plan, I guess is what I'm saying.

And what I'm what I'm seeing right now feels more like a Seattle plan than it does a Bellevue plan.

Um so I'll be looking for that um in the future.

As I mentioned about the outreach, all the number of great stakeholders and partners that you that you did uh talk to.

There was two I didn't see on there.

I was wondering if you did reach out to them to give them an opportunity to give some feedback.

The Rental Housing Association of Washington and the Washington Multifamily Housing Association.

Did you get their thoughts at all on the plan?

Um, Councilmember, I would um want to double check.

Um, I would think if it did not make that um excerted list that we may not have heard from them as part of um either our uh workshops or our our survey.

Okay.

Well, I would encourage you because we we are going back out, we are doing having more conversations rightly so, because a lot of the stakeholders had not seen some of these actions and want to weigh in.

So I would please uh encourage you to uh to do that.

And then after you drafted the strategies um and and and plan and put that into form and and present it uh this evening.

Um did you start did you share the strategy uh and the well it seems like you didn't stri you you maybe you shared some of the plan but not the strategies.

Is that correct?

Um during our uh final phase of feedback in the last quarter of 2025, we did share uh the full draft strategy list with our organizational partners, um the public as part of our open house and our survey when it was included in the council study session that did not have the same uh level of detail as the action plan.

Um so I think we are uh seeing some um uh requests for some additional time to sit with that level of detail.

Okay, well, I would encourage you to do that.

I I I I don't think they knew it or were aware of it, and again, as I believe as my colleagues have shared, why we have received so much uh concern um and questions regarding elements of this plan that they had not seen before.

Um so and and I don't want that to derail us from doing you know doing good here.

Um I want to keep this moving forward, but the only way to do that I think is being as transparent as possible and keeping everybody you know on the on the on the train as we're leaving the station here.

So appreciate you doing that.

Um of the methods that um uh that were suggested, and I think some of my colleagues have mentioned this, but I'm gonna mention again about preserving housing stability.

I think encourages policies that are proven to worsen affordability and restrict housing supplies.

So HS 1.3 mentions to create a policy to stabilize rent increases and land use incentive affordable units.

What concerns me there, so first the state already has a rent increase limit with limited um exemptions, and attempting to expand this policy to a local level could potentially be a violation of state law prohibiting local rent control.

I would defer to our city attorney on that, but that is my understanding.

And then creating a rent increase limit for land use incentive affordable units is likely to reduce the overall creation of proper maintenance of the units as well, and that is a concerns because as funds are restricted, housing providers lose their ability to properly operate their their their business, and that could potentially worsen our housing crisis.

And then uh HS 1.4 mentions the uh support state legislative for uh legislation for reasonable expanded tenant protections.

Again, the legislature, I think, has already has an extensive set of tenant protections already and policies that point to where a lot of small housing providers are going out of business because they are not able to uh keep up with all of the regulations that are coming from Olympia.

Um so encouraging the expansion of these policies, I think will further harm housing production potentially in Bellevue, and again, it could drive those smaller providers out of the market, which I do not want to see happen at all.

So and then concluding here, I'll talk about you know, I think what we know works are incentives, and I'd like to see more incentives here because it has proven time and time again that it works.

Tools like, as we've heard during oral communications tonight, MFTE work, the FAR bonuses work, the fee waivers work, the expedite and permitting, which I know we're we're already doing, but that works too.

Um and all of that produces housing.

They make projects feasible, they bring units online faster, and vouchers remain probably the single most effective and immediate way to stabilize households.

So I'd like to see an emphasis there.

These are proven approaches that align with state law, deliver results without unintended consequences.

And several items in the plan as well, I think need more clarity.

Um because on some of them I could see them being beneficial, and others I could see potentially maybe not being what we want to see in Bellevue.

So I would try and look look through some of these outside of the 20.

Um look a little bit harder and give a little bit more context in terms of uh what some of these plans would look like.

And I think you're doing that as you get this input as well.

So that's really good.

Um then we uh and then with all of this, I think we just need to avoid that that kind of mission creep.

Um again, getting to some of these potential ideas that are you know, maybe are uh, you know, being on this council for two terms, sometimes you know, you you you think uh some things that may seem at the time innocuous and then they come back and they they they come back in different ways that you didn't expect them.

Not necessarily negative, um, not necessarily positive, but I think for this to be successful, we all need to know what this is gonna look like in the future, that we have clarity in terms of what that looks like.

So um, so bottom line, straightforward is yes to incentives, vouchers, faster permitting, and streamlined design review, but be you know very much a no on mandates, rent control, rental registration, and anything that's really undefined that does not produce housing.

That's our number one goal is to produce housing and produce as much affordable housing as possible and as needed in the city of Bellevue.

So that is my feedback.

I know that was a lot.

Thank you so much for answering my questions.

And again, I'm gonna reiterate you know, some of those comments there do not take away at all from the great work here.

And I really um look forward to continue to working with you as well as you working with the other partners to you know help us fully flesh this out going forward and make sure that uh, you know, this is uh this is a win for for for everybody as we create more housing and a more affordable housing.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Burton Yuan House.

Uh Councilmember Breuer.

Yes, thank you for the diligent coordination that you've done to compile this list of uh a variety of tools to help uh enabling housing affordability.

Uh in fact, it's not unfound in me that you are so good at coordinating Bianca, you manage to match your water bottle with your necklace.

Uh and you look fabulous, might I add.

Um you too, Hannah.

So it's my understanding that the scope of this discussion is gonna be the high 20 priority items, but I in the interest of time will say that systemically I agree with the ideal outcomes uh listed here, or the intended outcomes rather.

But some of the actions I need clarification on.

So I'll begin with those items.

Uh Affordable Housing 5.1, where it states expand affordable housing through inclusionary zoning and fee and loo as supported by economic analysis.

I appreciate that you qualified that sentence with what is economically viable.

Um for me, housing affordability is critical, uh, but not if it delays or blocks housing development entirely.

So to be clear, I don't want to kill this, but what I want to understand is that is there an opportunity to ensure that there are bonuses or other mechanisms that could be paired with this to guarantee economic viability?

Because in the chart, this is compartmentalized as development incentive, uh, but it also states mandatory mandatory inclusion.

So I was uh the lines seem a little blurred there and just wanted to gain some clarification.

Yeah, thank you, council member.

Um, for that item um age 5.1.

Um this is um looking at um a variety of land use tools within our TOD area.

Um, part of this action was spurred um by some state legislation that came about last year that does require us to look at mandatory affordability provisions within our TOD areas.

Um so uh part of this intent is to implement that bill.

Um uh this item, as well as any land use code change uh that would go forward would come back to council as part of um a process for council launch in which you'd have input on scoping and priorities of that specific land use code amendment um and then would come back to you for final approval.

Um so being able to um scope some of those considerations as well as project feasibility in different priorities would be your prerogative uh when that came back to you um during implementation.

Excellent.

Okay.

I also want to commend the explicit prioritization of home ownership.

I think this is fantastic and the kind of sustainable long-term bold vision we need.

So that was excellent.

Um next item is uh AH 7.3, exploring new local revenue sources for affordable housing.

Um I do want to exercise fiscal responsibility here and efficiency.

So I want to make sure that we're getting good use of the funds that we've we've already got a hold of.

Do we have any metrics uh in place that show our dollars?

Uh what dollars are putting in and what the intended outcome uh is that we've sought out.

Yes, be our current funding programs.

Yes, we do, and actually um you'll be getting more information about that uh in about uh month, a little later this month, um, as we talk about our funding recommendations um for the next round.

But we do track uh the uh funding levels and the outcomes very carefully.

Okay, excellent.

Looking forward to seeing that.

Um a levy, I think is cool.

I think this allows that residents of Bellevue to decide on something.

Uh, this is something I'm open to considering.

I've heard that there's broad-based support for it.

I think a levy could bear witness to this as opposed to just increasing taxes.

Um next item is AH 7.4.

Advocate at the state level for new local revenue tools like an authorized reincrease.

Uh I want to be cautious in introducing new taxes when residents and a lot of the folks I spoke to have expressed explicit opposition to this.

Uh I will say though, securing additional revenue for affordable housing is an outcome that I support.

So if members of our business community really want to avoid these taxes at all costs, which I can understand, I think this opens up an opportunity to bridge that with uh uh private partnerships.

Uh so I I try to explore that a little bit with our private partners.

Um HS 2.4 is the next item.

Uh work with Arch to create a centralized rate forecast hub and creating search tools, canonizing anything and digitizing everything is amazing.

So thank you for this.

Is that my cue to hurry up?

No.

Okay.

Um housing for unique needs.

So Washington State Building Code is applied to permitted construction, uh, which according to my understanding adopts accessibility provisions.

If we're already ensuring ADA compliance for our buildings, what is informing the housing for unique needs access that's been laid out?

And I asked this with sincere curiosity, not out of malicious dismissal or anything like that.

Um, and this is related to the visibility visitability standards.

Is that correct, Councilmember?

I yes, I think one of the access, actually, I have the here, it's one of the last towards the end.

One of the accesses that is laid out is unique housing needs.

I think just it was a more general question as opposed to the the uh specific points.

Yes, um, so uh four unique housing needs.

We have two strategies within them.

One is focused on more inclusive design, which is really setting standards that uh particularly allow seniors, folks with disabilities, and those who have other access requirements.

Um and so while um in that strategy, we're not proposing any specific code changes at this time.

We are proposing some actions to further explore what work the city could do.

Um so that includes just doing a code review to see if there are ways that we could potentially do code tweaks to incorporate some of these key visitability features as well as thinking more about how we can uh incentivize uh those features within new construction.

So a new construction isn't required to have items or design materials or whatever concepts that are that you know consider folks with disabilities or or senior citizens.

Um there are many base requirements that are within the building code.

Yeah, um we have heard through um engagement and review of best practices that sometimes there are needs that go beyond those base standards that we may want to consider for the city of Bellevue.

Okay, I see.

So community engagement is what informed this access.

Uh correct.

Okay, makes sense.

Thank you so much.

Um okay, and then last item I want to talk about.

I know this is not the top 20.

I think it's uh exploring the rental registration program.

So I think it's easy to say I don't think anyone should be living in substandard conditions in Bellevue.

Um so I reviewed some of the data to a Seattle's approach, and I think it significantly raised cost, and there's some privacy concerns related to this, if memory serves me correctly.

So I'm I'm wondering if we can commit to the outcome of ensuring that all our units meet uh the appropriate uh conditions, but iterate it on a way so that we're not conducting this that would like I guess impose undue operational cost onto those who own the unit.

So I guess in not saying that you've done this, but avoiding a prescriptive policy here and just making sure that we find something a little bit balanced there.

Uh that's one thing.

Um let's see, I think yeah, those are all the comments that I had.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmember Bryan.

Thank you.

Councilman Breyer, you're a SIL top one shortest comment anyway.

So there is no signal for you to wrap it uh at all.

Uh again, thank you so much.

An amazing box of tools that uh hopefully will help us to get to our goal.

As all of my colleagues mentioned, I am also deeply care about housing affordability.

And that's I think the share agreement among everyone.

More housing, especially for people who are being priced out of Bellevue.

As everyone mentioned, and all of the emails that we receive, the tension shows up in how we are going to get there.

Uh and maybe some of these uh proposed tools could create barriers instead of uh removing them.

Like Councilman Breyer, I would love to focus on outcome.

So we need actions that protect people who are struggling while also keep housing feasible to build.

So I'm looking forward to your next round of stakeholder engagement and how you're going to strike that balance.

Again, appreciate your very, very hard work and amazing product that you um gave to us and presented to us.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mayor.

Great.

I think we have another study session that our city manager is going to introduce.

I cannot pronounce that Latin word, so I leave it to you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Deputy Mayor and Council members, tonight, this third study session is on the omnibus code amendments for 2026 land use code amendments.

So staff does regularly come to you to and to our community to do some cleanup work in our land use code.

And historically, that's focused on technical adjustments and clarifications.

We are going to approach this one with some added efficiency and effectiveness by expanding the scope a little bit to include some state law compliance changes and also some uh small code edits that um we hope to be um non-controversial.

And so that would be our omnibus approach to it.

Uh we have Nick Whipple, Assistant Director of Code and Policy, and Kirsten Mant, senior planner for code and policy, and they are here to describe this um package and to seek council's direction to initiate the work.

Nick?

Welcome.

Great, thank you.

And good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the council.

Um so as noted, um here with Kirsten Mant to present um on the 2026 omnibus code amendments.

Um this will include both Bellevue City Code amendments, as we call them BCCAs, as well as a land use code amendment.

We are seeking direction this evening for council to initiate the 2026 omnibus amendments.

We were having some fun with the bus putting a bus up there.

Um not related to the topic in any other way other than the word.

Um and so we are looking for some direction to have the planning commission process the land use code amendment portion of this omnibus package, and then we'll bring back um the Bellevue City Code Amendments at the same time that you're reviewing the eventual PC Planning Commission recommendation.

Our agenda will touch on what is the omnibus 2026 land use code amendment.

Um Kirsten will walk us through the scope and our engagement approach as well as our timeline and the next steps here.

So we'll first start with what is the omnibus 2026 LUCA.

Um, as the city manager mentioned, um, we have historically done cleanup amendments and engaged with council, get direction to have um some cleanups of the land use code really to address some scriptner errors, cross-references, um, pretty straightforward elements.

What we are looking to do is create a couple more buckets um to address as part of this omnibus LUCA.

Uh, omnibus is really just relating to a package of amendments that are previously published separately.

Um, and so we're looking to uh address a few other items uh for administrative efficiency.

Um Kirsten will walk through those, but um they relate to some minor um mandates that we do need to comply with where we're just wanting to achieve minimum uh baseline compliance, um, but they're not very controversial, maybe wouldn't warrant a standalone code amendment process, so we can just package it with this.

And then there's some other items that do um require some policy consideration, and that council has established a policy, and we are um we have been implementing the code, and we feel maybe there's a uh more uh direct way to align with that established policy after we put that code into practice.

So I'm looking for those opportunities as well, with the caveat that we are avoiding controversial items that would require or warrant additional public input and public process.

So that's kind of our our gauge for what's in the scope versus out of the scope.

Um so with that, we'll have Kirsten walk through these uh categories in more detail.

Great.

Thanks, Nick.

Um, so as Nick mentioned, uh, one of the first three buckets is the sort of traditional just cleanup again, it's things like formatting, correcting references.

We have a list that we maintain with our land use planners that make note of things as they notice it.

So kind of combing through that and making sure we're doing some good cleanup work.

We have eight bills currently wrapped into this project, some of which have some code components, some of which are mostly processed, but we're just confirming that we have everything in line.

Uh, some examples are uh 1757 is a trailer bill to the residential redevelopment bill from the last cycle, uh, has some cleanup items.

Child care reform is expanding where child care use can be in the city, uh mandating that.

Uh, things like the building cladding bill is just we cannot require a specific cladding material.

So some pretty straightforward and simple uh code amendments here.

And I do want to note as as is in the memo, not all of these are due for compliance this year, but we figured these are some small cleanup items, may as well get them done.

In terms of some of the small policy scope amendments, a few examples that we've kind of heard might be a good idea, are looking at uh some other smaller smaller visions to the tree code.

Uh this is uh, for example, property line trees.

You can't currently count a property line tree towards your total retained trees, so that felt like a simple fix to allow people to count those.

Uh reducing some of the retention standards for the SR1 land use district to put it more in line with the other SR land use districts.

Um another suggestion was looking at uh permitted uses in our highest density residential only land use uh uh districts to make sure that we're capturing the zone capacity for those districts, so removing a single family as a permitted use there just so that moving forward we can really ensure we're getting that capacity we need uh in those districts that we have zoned it for higher capacity.

And those are land use districts that are uh starting at 10 dwelling units per acre up to 30 dwelling units per acre.

And then another one that we've talked about is adding in some code compliance language for the critical areas code.

Uh this came up in discussions with our utilities department needing some you know some teeth or recourse for uh amending issues that happened with critical areas enforcement, and right now they don't really have that.

So didn't really get a chance to get that into the critical areas code, but figure that could be another kind of small win for this package.

Uh the engagement approach for this one is is fairly limited in scope again, just because of the scope of the package.

We're not planning anything that's particularly controversial, but obviously want to make sure we maintain our online presence.

If people have questions or suggestions if someone's noticed something that uh they see as a necessary fix, we're certainly taking those in and reviewing them.

Um, of course, presenting and consulting with planning commission and city council uh and um just generally getting some feedback.

We will have a presence at some upcoming engagement events just to get them get the word out there, talk to people, um, see if anyone has anything to say.

In terms of timeline, we are targeting action by July.

There are a few uh bills that compliance is due by around that time, so that's just sort of formed the basis for that timeline.

So, of course, we're here tonight asking for initiation, uh, looking at doing some preliminary outreach just beginning of this year, getting deeper into the code drafting and the planning commission process in March through May, and then aiming for a study session and public hearing in the second quarter, so we can hopefully meet our timeline for July.

And that is all we have for presentation this evening.

We're asking people to get on the bus with the on the bus amendments.

Thank you, Chris and uh Nick and Rebecca and the whole team.

Thank you for starting this initiative to make our uh code usable, up to date, and legally sound.

Uh new method, I'm just going to look at you if you have any comments, raise your hand.

No, raise your hand on this side.

Uh Council Russamo de Varia.

No one has any question in the on here.

Do you have any question?

I don't have a question, but I am on the bus with them.

Thank you so much.

We are all on the bus vitu, and good luck.

Thank you.

Oh, we need a motion.

No, don't good luck.

I need someone to make a motion.

I move to direct staff to initiate work on the 2026 omnibus amendments and direct the planning commission to review and process the Luca portion of the omnibus package.

It has been moved by deputy mayor and seconded by council new and house.

Any discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

The motion passed.

And I think by that note, we can adjourn the meeting and see you all very soon.

Have a great night.