2019 Outstanding Community Partner Award Winner
Congratulations to the City of Bellevue, Washington
The City of Bellevue partnered with the Livable City Year program at the University of Washington as their 2018-19 community partner. The City of Bellevue, WA was nominated and awarded the 2019 Outstanding Community Partner Award. The award, which recognizes “one exemplary community partner” from among the local government partners of the EPIC-Network during any of the last five years, was presented at the 8th Annual EPIC-Network Conference (formally the Sustainable City Year Conference), held in Tampa, Florida, April 7-10, 2019.
The City of Bellevue was selected for the award for going above and beyond to insure a quality product for their participating city staff and community residents, and a quality experience for the participating UW faculty and students.
“Innovative partnerships like these extend our ability to provide high-quality services for the entire community.“
– Brad Miyake, City Manager of City of Bellevue
Since September of 2018, the city and university collaborated on projects exploring topics ranging from public/private business incubators, smart buildings, food truck permitting, and neighborhood planning, just to name a few. All of the projects advance City Council Vision priorities.
In its nomination for the city, the university cited community engagement that included dozens of residents participating in a question-and-answer session with Health Services students about neighborhood planning. The city created momentum at the beginning of the partnership through coverage on Bellevue TV, press releases, and website content. City staff also brought in countless community leaders to advise on individual projects. Also, the city took the extra of adding secondary project leads (city staff assigned to supporting a course working on one of the many projects completed during the partnership) to cover in case the primary project lead fell ill or was redirected to other city priorities.
