Great Neighborhoods - NE Bellevue

Community Adult Softball Recreation League

I'd like to see additional parks created so that people are not all funneled into the relatively few parks we have.

Some could be set up to entice families with kids; some for adult and older folks who want to go for walks without having to dodge small kids. (I'm a grandpa, so I love kids, but I also like walking without having to deal with their exuberant unawareness of surroundings.) But the main point is to give the community more choices so we can spread out when physical distancing is needed.

House To Lot Proportion

You cannot have a Bellevue canopy plan then allow 3,500 sq foot homes where once a 1,500 sq foot home existed. Guess what they cut down?!?! Kids cannot play in yards that don't exist. Limit 8,800 sw foot lots to 2-3 stories and 2,300 sq feet on the same house footprint, so there is room for trees and yards. Create similar caps based upon lot sizes. See the atrocity that replaced a 1,500 sq ft home and yard at 15532 SE 25th or the lot hog at 15611 SE 26th. All trees gone on both lots!

Cul-de-sac circle and yard maintenance

Most of the cul-de-sac green circles are an overgrown mess. A large proportion of non-HOA neighborhoods have unkempt yards. So many of them now are not mowed, bushes not trimmed, everything dry and looking dead in the summer. If we want to keep Bellevue beautiful, we need to take care of what we have now. How do we incentivize people to care about their immediate areas? I think some circle green cul-de-sacs are so overgrown it is too big a job for the local neighbors to tackle. The city could offer to clean them up one time in exchange for accountability from the neighbors to keep it up. And plant some trees in them while they are at it! Also, some elder people are unable to keep up their yards. Providing them information on volunteer organizations that offer to do yard work would help them out. Streets that are blighted with neglected yards need to be addressed. A good-looking neighborhood keeps pride up and less crime occurs where it looks like people care about the area. But more trees in parks next to neglected homes is not the answer. Thanks for asking. :-)

Safe Parks

Ensure parks do not allow homeless camps especially Crossroads Park which has seen a increase of homeless tents in the surrounding area.

Mark location of small trails.

There are numerous small trails in between or behind trails that are not easily found. I would not want to intrude on someone else's land. Could small City of Bellevue stickers be attached to posts so that nearby residents might explire them and meet neighbors?

Bringing people and their destinations closer together

Having lived in Paris for several months, I was amazed at how easy it is to walk everywhere! I quite literally never needed to take a car anywhere. The grocery stores were just a few feet away from apartments, which were just a few feet away from doctor's offices and toy stores and even more apartments. Naturally, Bellevue has different resources, a different history, possibly different priorities, and is a lot less dense, but maybe we could still do better. I'm quite naive when it comes to zoning laws and land use codes and stuff like that, but perhaps those are opportunities to bring residents and destinations like schools, doctor's offices, stores, leisure areas, etc. closer together? More mixed-use areas?

Supporting biking!

I like biking places! I also like thinking about things from a whole-system viewpoint, and when you look at global transportation systems, it would not really be feasible for the whole world to live with as much dependency on car ownership and personal car transport as Bellevue does, at least with current technologies. This makes me feel a bit bad because we are benefiting from a way of life (with relatively high consumption of materials and energy) that simply can't be sustainably extended to the whole world. I see promoting biking as an alternative to short-distance car travel as part of a solution to this problem. Also, promoting biking is good for people's health and has a lot of other co-benefits that I'm sure you all already know about :) Now for what Bellevue can do about it! I know it's said a lot, but creating bike lanes is truly a great idea. In my experience trying to bike around Bellevue, it's often not easy because I have had to rely on skinny shoulders, sidewalks, close proximity to cars, indirect routes, and bumpy surfaces. Perhaps efforts to create/expand bike lanes can first be focused on the places with the highest amount of travelers that might switch to biking, such as routes between residential areas and schools, or residential areas and workplaces. Maintaining existing bike paths in good condition is crucial, too. I think a good rule of thumb is that ideally, it should be no harder to bike between two places than to drive between two places. Bellevue should put lots of racks for people to lock their bikes to at common destinations - (stores, schools, parks, everywhere). If we want to see bike usage increase, it would make sense to put more racks than current bike usage levels would call for so that there is room for growth. And lastly, thinking of any non-infrastructure obstacles to biking that people currently might face, perhaps the City of Bellevue could help by disseminating information about biking. The City of Bellevue could organize classes/events, could co-organize them with local biking organizations/businesses, or could just help spread the word about events that they have no part in organizing. Classes/events might include topics such as: For young people (or beginner bikers of any age!), how to bike and getting comfortable on a bike Bike maintenance (how to change or patch a flat, lubricating chains, etc.) Biking etiquette, safety, and laws Why biking is good (for your health, for others in the community, to limit stress on finite resources and mitigate climate change, etc.) Oh and also, maybe the City could help with access to bikes for lower-income families, like by facilitating a program to collect unwanted bikes and redistribute them to people who want used bikes. Or by just encouraging people to give away their used bikes through OfferUp or something. This could actually be really great these days because the pandemic led to a huge boom in bike sales, and some people will probably want to get rid of all those extra bikes soon if they aren't using them as much as they thought they would be.

Continue to engage w/large employers in Bellevue to financially support affordable housing initiatives

Build on programs like those by Microsoft and Amazon, to see what could scale out for more impact for Bellevue residents.

Partner with local banks and credit unions (ex. BECU) to support economically and demographically diverse housing needs

Banks and credit unions (ex: BECU) that operate in Bellevue recognize benefit from stable residency.

Research what policies elsewhere have successfully supported durable demographic and economic diversity

Under what conditions are various policies (rent control, affordable housing unit quotas, incentives to retain small single-family homes instead of larger redevelopments, etc.) successful?

"Senior + Long Term Resident" grant or tax credit program

Financially enable people to age in their homes, by alleviating economic pressures driven by ever increasing property taxes or rent. If Senior is a property owner, this benefit cannot transfer to others via Trust, inheritence, etc.

Alleviate some demand pressures for housing in Bellevue through continued transit improvements

Easing commute friction within Bellevue and between Bellevue and surrounding communities will make it less necessary for employees to live in Bellevue, which will help keep Bellevue housing more affordable. Only one part of a larger solution, but important for all quality of life considerations in Bellevue (housing, transportation, climate change, etc.).