'What changes would you like to see in your neighborhood once the new mayor takes office?"

That's the question we're asking people from neighborhoods all over Philadelphia. Below is the tenth of a series of 11 "Neighborhood Dialogues" that will run right up to voting day. Our focus in this dialogue is Germantown. Participants were chosen from among people involved in the Citizen Voices project. Sheila Laney, an office manager, has lived in Germantown since 1975, and Judith Callard, an editor at the Germantown Historical Society, has lived there since 1967. They spoke recently to Commentary Page editor John Timpane.

Judith Callard: I want the mayor to continue to support our elementary school system. For our children, the teachers were great, but the classes were a little too large, and disruptive kids were a difficulty. There are a lot of problems arising, I feel, from neglect. Physically, the schools can get beat-up, and they need to be better maintained. A lot of the schoolbooks are very old, sexist and racist. Schools didn't want to throw them out, but they ought to be replaced with newer ones.

Sheila Laney: I'm concerned about the overcrowding of schools and the whole problem of charter schools, which will do nothing to alleviate the crowding problem. My neighborhood school is Kelly. Eleven hundred children go there! That school was not built to handle that many kids. Now we have this focus on charter schools and vouchers, but that isn't going to solve the problem of not having books or computers.

Callard: I'm really against vouchers; public schooling is the way to go in this country.

Laney: I know African Americans support vouchers - but that just has to do with people thinking about their own children, and quality of education can't be solely about your child. What about the other children? Even if your children go to a better school, everyone else's children are going to grow up, too, and need an education, and if we do a bad job with them, we're going to have problems.

Callard: As for Philadelphia as a whole, I think more could be done in the neighborhoods, as distinct from downtown. I really like what they've done in Center City, but now we need the same attention here. Town meetings in the neighborhoods would make us feel there was more of an interest by the mayor. I like the idea of a one-stop place in neighborhood where you could go to deal with neighborhood issues, so we could feel some attention was being paid to us.  

Laney: The cleaning up of Philadelphia should be a priority. We get vacant lots, overgrown lots, trash everywhere. It's homeowners' responsibility to keep up their properties, but what about the streets? The sidewalks? The vacant lots? Those should be the responsibility of the city. The city needs to do something about it. It has gotten worse in the past 10 years. When I first moved here in the 1970s, I loved it: the neighborhoods, the trees, etc. I thought it was the most beautiful place. My parents moved here from a housing development. Keeping it clean may not be a priority of Center City, but it sure is for me. Let it be nice where I live for a change.

Callard: The historical treasures in the Northwest are wonderful. We have Cliveden, where the battle of Germantown was, and we have Wick and Grumblethorpe and a large number of historic houses. Most of these places struggle constantly for support. We're making efforts to draw tourists to the Northwest, and the city is helping with signage, but a little more consistent support would help the town to a rebirth.

Laney: They do have some beautiful houses in G-town, but if you walk around 3 or 4 blocks from them, you'll see houses that have been vacant for a long time, and they were once beautiful. What is going to happen to these houses? Neighborhood organizations usually don't have the money to address issues this big - so that makes those issues the responsibility of the city. Who owns these houses now? Do you leave the properties that way? Or do you tear down a once-beautiful house, and suddenly there's a vacant lot, trash and crime go in there, we go to the City to complain and are told there's a waiting list 3 years long? There has to be some kind of plan on how to attack these issues. We can't take a Band-Aid approach; they can't be telling us they can't do anything about it.

Callard: Safety is a big issue, along with other quality-of-life issues. Crime is always an issue. True, it doesn't seem too bad near here at the moment, but I know there are burglaries and petty vandalism.

Laney: I guess safety is always an issue, but I think if you deal with these other problems - if the neighborhood is clean, the housing not falling apart - these other problems will be alleviated.