Originally published Saturday, December 13, 1997

By DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Bellevue is a community of neighborhoods that is taking its place in the region as an urban center, under state and county growth management, says Margot Blacker, an eight-year Bellevue City Council member and former planning commission chairwoman.

"We're a full-service city with different neighborhoods and increasing diversity. We are the natural leaders of the Eastside -- we should be, and I see us continuing to be."

Blacker says Bellevue deserves credit for progressively tackling civic issues ranging from street trees, pedestrian access and urban design to storm water runoff (through streams, not more invasive pipes), and parks and open space acquisition, arts and cultural programs.

"Bellevue is seen as a rather affluent, upper middle-class city," says Blacker, who spent 20 years in civic life. "But while we know that is changing, it still projects as a very clean, fresh, progressive city."

Blacker and others give a great deal of credit to former three-term Mayor Cary Bozeman.

"I think Bellevue is a beautiful city, but it has changed a lot," said Bozeman, now executive director of the Olympic College Foundation in Bremerton. He says he went to Bremerton -- which reminds him of Bellevue in the '70s -- partly because his moderate politics didn't mesh with the community's neo-conservatism.

"We looked at the future and taxed ourselves to pay for it. Yes, our taxes did go up . . . but we did things to make our kids' lives better," says Bozeman, a former Bellevue Boys and Girls Club director. "Now, it seems to me, people do things that make their own lives better."