How to get a seat on Bellevue's Planning Commission
Before Bellevue changes its zoning, seven residents go through it first. They're the Planning Commission: volunteers who meet two Wednesday evenings a month to hear from the public, work through the city's drafts with its planners, and tell the City Council what they'd change. Applications for the vacant seat closed on 23 October 2026. Interviews are next, on 6 November.
This year it's shaping neighborhoods and BelRed
The commission doesn't approve buildings. It works on the rules every building follows, and this year those rules are about neighborhoods. It finished its hearings on new plans for Factoria and Eastgate in September, and the council takes them up on 10 November. Lake Hills and West Lake Sammamish are next.
Then there's BelRed, the old light-industrial strip between downtown and Overlake where the 2 Line now runs. A draft of its new land use code, dated 14 October, is on its way to the commission for a hearing.
The job is reading, listening and voting in public
It's unpaid. Meetings start at 6:30 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesdays, at City Hall or on Zoom. Before each one comes a packet of staff reports, and commissioners are expected to know the plan and code behind every item. At the meeting they question staff, hear from residents and vote, all on the record.
Miss three meetings in a row without an excuse and the council is told, and it can replace you. And under the state's open meetings law, commissioners can't work through commission business with enough colleagues to make a quorum outside a meeting, even by email.
Terms run four years, two in a row at most. Jonny Lu chairs the commission now, with Andres Villaveces as vice-chair. Four terms end in May 2027, among them Carolynn Ferris's second, so watch for the next application notice ahead of those terms ending.
Interviews come next
The deadline was 5 p.m. on Friday 23 October 2026. The city's 16 October planning bulletin schedules interviews for Friday afternoon, 6 November. The mayor appoints and the council confirms; the bulletin gives no date for that decision.
For questions about the work or the selection process, write to Kate Nesse, the planning manager who works with the commission, at [email protected], or call 425-452-2042.
You can write to them without a seat
An email to [email protected] goes to every commissioner. Send it by 11 a.m. on the Tuesday of the week before a meeting and it's printed in the packet they read ahead. Send it by 11 a.m. on the day and it's still emailed to them before they sit down. Whatever you write becomes a public record.
How this was checked
How this was checked
Read on 14 October 2026 from the city's Planning Commission page (role, meetings, members, terms, comments), its vacancy notice (deadline and appointment process) and its Great Neighborhoods page (neighborhood plan dates). The selection section was checked again on 27 October against the city's 16 October planning bulletin linked above. The attendance and open-meetings rules come from the commission's 2022 handbook, and the commission can change its rules by vote. The authority for all of it is Bellevue City Code chapter 3.64.
