Earlier in the campaign, I asked the 11 candidates for mayor about their top priorities for Fresno.

The answers weren't surprising - a safer community, more job opportunities, a vibrant downtown, a healthier city budget.

But the editors and I were curious if other community leaders shared those priorities, so we asked them to give us a list of their top five issues.

Most didn't even need five. And there was a common theme among the non-candidates that may surprise some people.

The key to improving Fresno, most said, is to have a mayor who will cooperate rather than compete with other government agencies.

Craig Scharton, a former Fresno City Council member who now leads the Central Valley Business Incubator, said he wants the next mayor to focus on improving quality of life, and expanding economic development. He wants the city to use great planning to fix bad neighborhoods, be innovative in its thinking and hire the best and brightest to lead city departments.

Read more about Scharton's list here.

Jeffrey Reid, a partner in the law firm of McCormick, Barstow, said he hopes the mayor focuses on
public safety, finance, transportation, a more efficient city hall, and the more efficient use of resources. Reid said the mayor needs to not try and tackle every issue alone.

"If the mayor tries to solve all these things, (he or she) will fail," Reid said. "The city is usually not the one allocated resources from the state or federal government to deal with all of these things. He or she needs to develop partnerships with other government agencies and groups that do have the resources. Sometimes that will mean being a supporter, not a leader."

Assembly Member Juan Arambula, D-Fresno, said that poverty, economic development, cooperation and transportation should top the list of concerns.

"A lot of the problems residents face have, as their root cause, the lack of a good job and a good salary," Arambula said. "Retaining the jobs we have, and attracting new ones to Fresno is key."

Arambula and Reid agreed that the mayor should focus on transportation, because of concerns that Fresno is growing so fast it's taking longer to drive across town. The answer, both felt, is to change the way the city plans new developments.

"Jobs and shopping should be built close to homes," Arambula said. "We need to make sure people don’t burn a gallon of gas to get a gallon of milk."

Tom Crow, chancellor of the State Center Community College District, also chose poverty and jobs as his top issues for the next mayor.

"To me, poverty is the issue that everything else circles around," Crow said. "It’s one of the most important concerns for this entire area. It impacts crime, education, and the opportunities people have in life."

Crow believes Fresno can tackle it's poverty issues if the mayor can get everyone to cooperate.

"It will take all of the players in Fresno to tackle these problems," Crow said. " I don’t think anyone has the ability or resources to take them all own on their own."

Our next step was to ask readers what they thought the top priorities should be. That didn't work as well as we had hoped.

It surprised me how few people offered up their own list of priorities when we put the question out there on this blog, and Scharton posted it on his.

Instead of new ideas, we saw political arguments about candidate endorsements and campaign finance. That's not a total shock, because by now many people have chosen their candidate, and they are focused more on comparing that candidate to others and less on why they made the choice in the first place.

If you've made your choice, tell us what helped you decide. If you haven't, what are the issues that you will focus on before you head for the polls?