To the editor:

Allison Silberberg is our city’s best choice for mayor.

Many of Alexandria’s problems involve the city’s infrastructure: rainwater and sewage flooding, dangerously outdated gas and water lines, too little affordable housing, deteriorating public facilities including schools – leading to overcrowding – and delayed telecommunication upgrades.

Fixing these problems is not just about fixing them, but also about how and when they get fixed. We need a dynamic economy, partly to grow the tax base to finance the investments to fix these problems. However, growth does not have to involve environmental insult or out-of-scale overbuilding. Resolving the city’s problems also must be transparent.

As our mayor from 2016 to 2018, Silberberg demonstrated a remarkable ability to support growth and solve the city’s problems transparently and inclusively.

• She tripled the dedicated funding for the Affordable Housing Fund.
• She led approval of the long-delayed plan to resolve sewage issues for all four outfalls into the Potomac River.
• She led the initiative to renovate eight city parks, including Taney Avenue Park, Windmill Hill Park, Beverley Park, also known as The Pit, and Powhatan Park.
• The $1 billion Virginia Tech Innovation Campus for Alexandria was secured during her term.
• Two new public schools, Patrick Henry and Ferdinand T. Day, were built or opened during her tenure as mayor and a new wing was added at John Adams — all of which are on the West End.
• She initiated and drafted our city’s Statement on Inclusiveness, which brought favorable national attention to Alexandria.
• She fought to protect our small businesses in Old Town by opposing and helping defeat the business improvement district tax.
• She established the Senior Advocacy Roundtable.

As our next mayor, Silberberg will build upon these accomplishments and tackle new problems, including a firm commitment to stop our serious sewage and stormwater flooding. She will rebuild the public trust that has frayed under the current mayor.

Silberberg is the best mayoral candidate to mobilize our energies and talents in the city’s interests. We want a mayor who solves problems and listens to the city’s residents and its citizens’ associations.

Allison is the candidate who will get things done and will do so with transparency, truth and ethics. She has a demonstrated track record on the city’s issues. Allison Silberberg is the mayor you can trust.

-Sue Berryman, Linda Bogaczyk, Alexandria