Published March 21 2025
Plus, Keep Bellevue Beautiful and State Legislative session updates
The City Council Tuesday interviewed five candidates and unanimously appointed Claire Sumadiwirya to the council seat Councilmember Janice Zahn is expected to vacate on March 28.
Zahn announced her intention to resign from the council after being selected in January to represent the 41st Legislative District in the State House of Representatives.
The council interviewed Vishal Bhargava, Eric Drever, Diala Ezzeddine, Jaskaran Singh Sarao and Claire Sumadiwirya for the position. Sumadiwirya’s appointment term ends once the results of the November General Election are certified. More information is in a city news release.
Keep Bellevue Beautiful Update
The council also received an update on the city’s Keep Bellevue Beautiful programs, including Adopt-A-Street, in which 60 groups or individuals are maintaining more than 45 miles of Bellevue streets. At over 160 cleanup events volunteers have removed 260 bags of litter.
In addition, Keep Bellevue Beautiful held Signature Street cleanups in Newport, Wilburton, Eastgate, Crossroads and Lake Hills. More than 180 volunteers – including 100 youth and corporate teams – participated in these cleanups, which resulted in the removal of 20-30 bags of litter per event. Participants in the Bellevue Probation Work Crew conduct litter cleanup activities twice a month across 35 planned routes.
With the Abandoned Shopping Cart Retrieval program, people can report stray carts on the MyBellevue app, and a contractor collects them during weekly sweeps. So far, 5,392 carts have been retrieved and returned to their retailers.
Full details are available in the council materials.
2025 State Legislative mid-session update
Staff presented a mid-session update on the State 2025 Legislative session, reviewing progress on legislative priorities the council adopted last October.
Priorities for Bellevue this session include funding to continue Grand Connection Crossing design work, investments for ongoing transportation projects along the Interstate 405 corridor and State Route 520, improvements for the digital permitting platform MyBuildingPermit.com and partnerships to address the housing affordability crisis in Bellevue and throughout the state.
The Legislature is facing a $10 to $15 billion operating budget shortfall over the next four years, based on revenue forecasts released Wednesday. The House of Representatives and the Senate will release their respective operating, capital and transportation budget proposals in late March.