The Mirror supports Jim Ferrell for mayor.

“Ferrell is willing to hire a staff member to run the day-to-day operations of the city, with the intention of freeing up the mayor to recruit new businesses and pursue long-term goals for Federal Way. Ferrell’s tenacity helped create the office of mayor in 2009, and in 2013, that tenacity is what the office needs.”

Between the two, I could personally care less who the mayor is. However, when this city moved from a council manager form of government to a mayor council format, one of the significant reasons held up for change was that we would have a more responsive manager or mayor that was directly accountable to the people and the cost would be the same or comparable, as we would be eliminating the position of city manager.

Now we are told that would be mayor Jim Ferrell wants to hire a staff member to run day to day operations while he engages in mayor type stuff. Meaning to say, that they are hiring a city manager in addition to a mayor, and that the cost will be far more significant than the original council manager form of government that Federal Way started out with.

This raises another obvious question, and that is whether or not anyone has analyzed or compared the two forms of government to determine if the mayor council model that is currently being practiced is truly the most effective and cost efficient. To me, it looks as if Federal Way will just be adding another upper level bureaucrat to the pile. In other words, did the voters of Federal Way make a mistake?

David Koenig, Federal Way