We have studied this mail in ballot up and down for several days, read all of the letters to the editor, even read all of the news releases with claims and counter-claims. It can be confusing and often because of what the protagonist say as well as how they say it.

First, even though this is only an advisory election and the result could be ignored by the Washington State Department of Transportation, you should mark your ballot and mail it in - or drop it off at the High Point Community Center from tomorrow through election day. It will accomplish one thing, and we agree with Mayor Nickels on this, it will send a message. We are just not sure whether that message will be to the mayor and tunnel supporters of to Olympia where the real power lies with this issue.

The think that bothers us the most is that the tunnel option really is the best one - if, and that is a giant IF - we had the money to pay for it. We have listened to all of the pro-tunnel rhetoric and wish we could afford a real tunnel, not that stripped down potential death trap dreamed up by City Hall to apparently act as a stalking horse for a surface street option. The tunnel, to make any sense, should start at the south in at Safeco Field and then merge into the Battery Street tunnel.

The problem is money. Nowhere do the mayor or council members who favor the tunnel mention where the money will come from. They talk about what we have from the state, figuring State House Speaker Frank Chopp and the governor will cave in if the people vote overwhelmingly for a tunnel. The pro-tunnel types make crazy charges about the state hiding facts about the viability of "Tunnel Lite," but it is all smoke and mirrors.

We hope people will vote for the replacement of the viaduct and against the tunnel.

Tearing down the viaduct and starting tunnel construction that could last up to 10 years, and cost two or three times the estimated $3.4 billion, could ruin countless businesses, wreck havoc on those that count on the viaduct for access to their jobs or to hospitals and other essential downtown services, and just plan does not make any sense.

Remember, folks, we are about to recreate a major north-south arterial to get people through the city as well as to its downtown.

Send a message, loud and clear, that a tunnel is a fool's project that can swell your power bill, your property tax bill and could never be finished because doing engineering on the cheap spells disaster.

Vote viaduct.

- Jack Mayne