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Cutting through the noise in the final hours of Atlanta's mayor's race

Here are the issues you really care about, and what the candidates have to say about those things.

It's down to the wire in runoff for Atlanta's mayor's race, and in the final days, there's been a lot of noise on both sides – from the celebrity endorsements to the attack ads playing on metro Atlantans' televisions.

But how much of that gets to the heart of what Atlantans really care about?

11Alive's Chris Hopper went digging through our archives. Back in July, 11Alive released the results of its scientific poll, where voters told us exactly what they cared about – crime, affordable housing and education.

GUIDE | Atlanta chooses city's 60th mayor in Tuesday's runoff election

11Alive is breaking down exactly what each runoff candidate – Keisha Lance Bottoms and Mary Norwood – had to say on those issues.

CRIME

Most of the candidates' stances on crime in Atlanta can be found on their campaign websites. Here are the top three things each wants to accomplish in relation to crime.

Keisha Lance Bottoms

  • Wants to protect neighborhoods with cameras, security patrols and integrated officer housing
  • Implement a program to attract and retain the city's best officers
  • Provide mentoring opportunities for vulnerable youth and their families

Mary Norwood

  • Increase officer pay to boost retention and maintain a force of 2,000 officers
  • Offer a mentorship program to help young people turn their lives around and stay out of jail
  • Create a repeat offender intercession program and vigorously prosecute chronic offenders

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Both Mary Norwood and Keisha Lance Bottoms talked specifically about their plans at 11Alive's mayoral debate before the general election back in October. Here's what each had to say on the topic:

Keisha Lance Bottoms

“As mayor I will ask for a partnership, a public and private partnership, of $500 million from the public sector and $500 million from the private and philanthropic sector, so that we can expand this throughout the city and we can achieve the goal of 50,000 affordable housing units in the city.”

Mary Norwood

“What we have done is to change the state code so we can deploy a different way of going after code enforcement and taking abandoned houses and returning them to productive use. It will be an affordable housing supply for city workers whether fireman or police officers other city employees teachers and others.”

EDUCATION

Both have a long list of priorities on education available on their campaign websites, but here are the big things:

Keisha Lance Bottoms

Bottoms would like to created a children's savings account program to help put college and future opportunities in reach.

Mary Norwood

Norwood would like to pursue a program that will offer free tuition to two-year colleges for Atlanta's high school graduates.

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