Accountability Comes to Town (ACT) does not account for claims they mail to Federal Way voters. They won’t provide data to support their scary and misleading statements, so I guess they are not transparent either.

These are the facts. Federal Way has the lowest violent crime rate (3.7 per 1,000) of “strong mayor” cities Auburn (5.6 per 1,000), Kent (6.2 per 1,000) and Renton (5.1 per 1,000). Federal Way’s overall crime rate is lower than any of the other three cities too.

Contrary to “spending spiraling out of control,” another “unaccountable” ACT allegation, Federal Way spends about $490 per capita while Kent, Auburn and Renton spend between $765 and $914 per capita, and Federal Way’s general fund is about $43 million compared to $53 million to $74 million for the other cities. We are spending less per capita then those “strong mayor cities” with our current council-city manager government. No spiral is apparent.

So our current city is safer and more economic than the strong mayor cites. Who wants us to change to strong mayor? Over 60 percent of the money supporting ACT came from self-described real-estate agents, developers and lobbyists who do not live in Federal Way. We can guess that they might want the “strong mayor” to grant exceptions to some of our good land-use ordinances preventing building on unstable, landslide prone areas or on wetlands. I cannot speak for them, but urge you to vote against Proposition 1 and keep our council-city manager government.

Margaret Nelson, Federal Way