Transit & urbanism advocate; conservation ecology researcher; democratic socialist; bi polyam furry; he/him
Working to inform & organize in Bellevue & Tacoma
Newcastle's proposal would include the 3 recommendations by ARCH, but also 1) provide people on fixed income the option to set their payment date, 2) disallow landlords from using a lack of SS number on impacting rental decisions, and 3) carve an exception for small landlords. 
Re: the affordable housing donation, city staff confirmed to me that Amazon has donated (not loaned) $2M towards the construction of Samma Senior Apartments in Bothell. However, money can't be accepted by ARCH directly, so it needs to go through Bellevue first. 
Since Bellevue is a Council-Manager form of government, citizens don't directly elect Mayor. Rather, the 7 CMs choose a Mayor and Deputy Mayor amongst themselves every 2 years. The next vote will happen at the January 3rd meeting, so they'll be discussing the rules for that vote.
9 people were signed up for public comments, but 7 of them were on the same side (support/against) of the same topic, so by Council rules, only 3 of them will be allowed to speak.
I hear there's going to be people testifying in the budget hearing asking for more funding to implement the city's environmental stewardship initiative. As I & others have noted before, the city wants to reduce GHGs by 50% in a little over 8 years' time.
Tonight's East Main study session is because CMs were unable to come to consensus around FAR & height at the previous meeting. Tonight's meeting will seek to work out those details. Supposedly staff has met with CMs to iron out their concerns.
Regarding the former - unlike other cities along #Eastrail, Bellevue does not own the trail ROW. The majority is owned by King County, and about 1 mile near the OMFE is owned by Sound Transit. County & city have been conducting outreach to guide trail design standards. 
The apprentice initiative is being introduced by CM Barksdale, who notes that such a requirement would provide an avenue for tradespeople to acquire needed skills & time while providing job opportunities for Bellevue youth. He's seeking Council comment & feedback tonight. 
I don't mean this as any personal slight against Mr. Ellis or his work, but it's weird hearing this item being introduced when, just four months ago, Council was (relatively) united around no longer wanting to name things after people.
Demographic data for the people that the city's homelessness outreach coordinator has contacted in 2020 & 2021. General note to @bellevuewa - "transgender" is not a gender itself, but rather an additional adjective to be used to describe one's gender (in contrast to "cisgender"). 
CM Robertson presented her proposal as a good faith effort to increase community trust in supportive services, but other CMs are fearful it will increase barriers & take time away from other projects. Staff coming back today w/ more info on time commitment.
The latter agenda item is being introduced by conservative Councilmember Jennifer Robertson, who has historically opposed the location of the yet-to-be-constructed Eastgate shelter. 
As a response to their denying the parking LUCA back in May, the body passed a new ordinance at their July meeting saying that they'd accept the state-mandated terms, but not the city-adopted ordinance which would go beyond the state requirements. 
A couple of modifications to tonight's agenda - City Manager is reporting "on a few items" and item 8f has been removed from the consent calendar and will come back for discussion at a later meeting. Glad at that, since this is a *pretty* big item to just pass on consent. 
Originally meant to just look at the legality of a moratorium, the motion was expanded to include a review of how much rental assistance is still needed & how many renters are at risk of eviction in Bellevue. Not sure staff will have that data by next week.
A resolution is on the consent calendar to spend nearly $125k on audio/video updates for BPD's command center. According to the agenda memo, police staff have been needing to borrow equipment from other departments. Money would help fund 65" 4k LCDs, projectors, & cameras. 
*Really* looking forward to seeing who gets to read the Pride Month proclamation. I will lol *quite* profusely if it's one of these two people. Not much more that I can say than that.
I only found out about the EBCC drama because I stayed to the very end of the meeting, where Council announced the resolution to approve $40k in legal fees. As noted below, this was neither on the published agenda nor in the city news release the next day. theurbanist.org/2021/05/21/eas…