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Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Scheck talked with citizens across Minneapolis about the city. (MPR File Photo)

People in the state's two largest cities -- Minneapolis and St. Paul -- will vote for a mayor on Tuesday. Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Scheck has been covering the Minneapolis mayor's race and has been talking to citizens for a couple of months about the city's future. We asked him to open up his reporter's notebook and give us a sense of what some of the voters have been saying about their city.

Minneapolis, Minn. — Minneapolis is like any big city. It's basically a city of neighborhoods. What some view as an important issue in one neighborhood, is not that big a deal in others. Take North Minneapolis, which has seen more than its share of violent crime over the past few months

One on sunny Fall afternoon, kids are out on the playground of Jordan Park Elementary School. Anne McCandless lives just up the road from the school. She's a retired police officer who has lived in the neighborhood since 1982. McCandless is up front about her desire to see things get better on the North Side. She wants more economic development and civic pride among her neighbors.

"The crooks hang out where people don't care, where there's this perception of 'I can do anything I want and nobody will complain,'" McCandless said. "If we get enough people in here, businesses and residents that do care about what's going on and are vocal about it, then I know our perception will change."

"The crooks hang out where people don't care, where there's this perception of 'I can do anything I want and nobody will complain'. If we get enough people in here, I know our perception will change." - Anne McCandless

McCandless tells me the public safety concerns on the North Side are overblown. At the same time, she says she sometimes thinks about selling her home and moving to a different neighborhood.

McCandless isn't the only one. As I drive away from her home, I see "for sale" signs posted in several yards.

While some people are trying to get out of their homes on the North Side, Ann Berget is just trying to stay in her home in a more prosperous neighborhood on the city's South Side. She's happy to give me a tour.

Berget's house was built at the turn of the century. The large, two-story home has a big backyard. Berget wants to talk to me about property taxes and the value of her home. She paid $53,000 for it in 1979. She says it's now valued at four times that amount. Berget says the increasing value of the house , and annual 8 percent city property tax hikes are making her nervous. She says she and her neighbors aren't sure they can keep up.

"We're all starting to get a little bit older," Berget said. "We're wondering about what's going to be ahead for us in our retirements and we're wondering if this is going to be a long term trend. If it is, does it imperil our commitments to our neighborhoods? One day, am I going to be taxed out of my house?"

Berget tells me she thinks many middle-class residents will move out of the city if the trend continues. She says parents don't want to pay high property taxes and are worried about the city's school system. I visited with some of those parents when they were out looking for schools the other day.

Hundreds of parents were at the school choice fair at a downtown hotel on a Saturday morning. People shuffled from table to table talking to school administrators and teachers about the different schools they could choose for their kids. The school system is a big concern to these people. Some are worried about the achievement gap among minorities.

Others, like Chauntel Williams, want their children to have a well-rounded education.

"I'm looking at what they have to offer, besides math and reading and science," Williams said. "Do they offer music? Not a lot of schools offer music and that makes a school more interesting for your child to go to."

Williams lives on the city's South Side and has four boys. She says she wants the schools to place a greater emphasis on math and science. Williams is pleased with the school system, but she worries that children attending private schools are getting a better education.

"You know how they have these private schools that provide the "best education?" Williams said. "How come they can't provide that same education for regular schools? Why should we have to go into our pockets, they're not in college. Why can't they get the same education?"

Williams told me she'd like to see all of her boys graduate from college and maybe play professional basketball. The mayoral candidates have been talking a lot about schools, but there's not really much they can do to directly effect them. . Both candidates say they want to increase after school programs--both at schools and at the city's parks. That's an issue Liz Wielinski is interested in. When I visited her home in the Columbia neighborhood in northeast Minneapolis, she told me she's worried about the future of the parks and park programs.

"This is where we people who live in small, tight-knit urban communities go in order to get out," Wielinski said. "The fact these these things are not available for people is not good for people."

People who live in tight-knit urban communities also get out to places like shops and restaurants. And both mayoral candidates have been talking a lot about economic development and business.

Manny's Tortas is one of the newer Latino businesses on Lake Street. Manny Gonzalez owns the store and is eager to give a tour and offer one of his Mexican sandwiches that are popular with the late night crowd. Unfortunately, I can't take free sandwiches.

It isn't so easy to get to his restaurant these days. A big road construction project fouled up traffic all along Lake Street. Gonzalez, who moved from Mexico City to Minnesota 22 years ago, says he's worried that some of his fellow business owners may have to close their doors because of the construction. He wants the city to provide low-interest loans to help them out during the construction period.

"I just hope a lot of businesses can survive," Gonzalez said. "Hopefully, the city can somehow help us survive. "We took a part of this street that was dead and nobody wanted to live here. We came and we started making business and obviously the avenue is becoming a really nice area for Minneapolis."

Gonzalez says he'd like Lake Street to become a latino equivalent to San Francisco's Chinatown. He says the immigrant population is changing Minneapolis for the better--making it more cosmopolitan.

As I walk through the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, I can hear the light-rail trains running. There are lots of immigrants here, many from Africa, and people talk to each in their native languages.

In the shadow of one of the high rises, several Somali elders smile at me as I walk by. Inside the building, I meet 77-year-old Fadumo Mohamed. She's a Somali refugee who arrived in the United States in 1995 and moved to Minneapolis five years later.

Mohamed is now a citizen and says Minneapolis has been welcoming to Somali people. She tells me through an interpretor that she wants more English classes for immigrants who can't speak the language. She also wants better schools, job training opportunities and a stronger economy.

"Unless we have jobs available for the people, we will have a tough time for the newcomersm," Mohamed said. "The refugees will have a tough time to stay in the basic living and to create income for themselves and take care of their basic living."

Mohamed says more Somalis are becoming voting citizens. She says as their political power grows, candidates will have to start paying attention to them. Mohamed says she wants to see the candidates for mayor spend more time in her neighborhood when they're not looking for votes. That's a sentiment shared by just about everybody I talked to.33