City staff outline approach, timelines for Sustainable Bellevue plan update

Justice Stewart, sustainability program manager in Bellevue’s Community Development Department, told the Environmental Services Commission on March 6 that the city is in the first year of a planned update to the Sustainable Bellevue (environmental stewardship) plan and expects to return to the City Council with draft and final plans in the fall of 2025.

Stewart said the current plan was adopted at the end of 2020 and covered 2021–2025; staff are using 2025 to set priorities, goals and targets and will move into a phase of drafting strategies and actions later in the year. “We anticipate bringing this as a draft and final plan back to council in the fall about a year from when they kicked it off,” Stewart said, adding that staff intend the resulting document to serve as the 2026–2030 Sustainable Bellevue plan.

The update focuses on five topic areas; Stewart told commissioners the presentation that night concentrated on materials management and waste and on natural-systems goals. He said staff plan to revisit some targets (including the citywide tree canopy goal), add a proposed metric to track total waste generation in addition to recycling rates, and propose a benthic index of biotic integrity as a stream-health metric that is measured annually.

Stewart reviewed progress under the current plan: Bellevue’s overall greenhouse-gas emissions are about 8% below the baseline, he said, but noted that population has increased roughly 25% and jobs roughly 35% since the baseline period, which translates to roughly a 26% per-capita reduction in emissions. The city’s formal targets, as adopted in the comprehensive plan last fall, are a 50% communitywide reduction by 2030 and a 95% reduction by 2050.

Commissioners and members of the public asked about metrics and implementation. On measuring materials management, Stewart said staff are leaning toward reporting both overall and per-capita metrics—“we always track the per-capita, and overall reduction both at the same time,” he said—and that the King County solid waste comprehensive plan will inform the waste targets. On reliance on external factors such as the electricity supply, he noted some outcomes depend on regional or state actions outside city control (for example, Puget Sound Energy’s supply and statewide policy), but staff will include those dependencies in analysis.

Stewart said outreach has included partnerships with community-based organizations (Eastside for All and Little Masters Club), business and institutional partners (Bellevue Chamber, Bellevue Downtown Association and Bellevue School District) and city subject-matter experts. He also said staff will produce a financial analysis showing estimated costs of actions proposed in the updated plan.

Staff plan to return to the commission with strategy and action details in late May or June and to brief the council on progress on April 1. Stewart said the July “draft” milestone in the timetable refers to the start of drafting, not a finished draft.