Mayor Charlie Luken says his annual State of the City speech today will focus on police-community relations, job creation and housing.

        But it will also highlight a neighborhood where all those issues collide: Over-the-Rhine.

Luken

        “While it is one neighborhood, and it may seem to some people that I give it too much attention, I will lay the groundwork for meaningful change there that will affect not only Over-the-Rhine, but the whole city,” Mr. Luken said.

        The mayor's speech today, to a Rotary Club luncheon at the Omni Netherland Plaza Hotel, is his first major policy address since being sworn in under a new system that gives him broad power to set the city's agenda.

        Mr. Luken said he would use that opportunity to outline the three or four issues that will take precedence in 2002. On each, he said, he would “set objective criteria by which to measure our progress.”

        “I think people will use this speech to keep our feet to the fire,” he said.

        On police-community relations, for example, he will announce a time line for implementing the U.S. Justice Department's recommendations on the use of force.

        The annual State of the City speech is so important that one member of City Council said he's upset that only Rotarians — and about 40 invited guests — will be able to hear it.

        “In my mind, the State of the City really sets the tone, and it sets out the mayor's agenda and platform, what he would like to see the council do,” said Councilman Paul Booth.

        “He should speak to us as a council, and collectively as a city, telling us, "This is where we are now, and by the end of 2002 this is where we're going to be.'”

        Mr. Booth has introduced a resolution that would require the mayor to give the speech to City Council.

        Mr. Luken said he's agreed to give the speech to City Council in 2003, but he had already committed to allow the Rotarians to host it this year, as they have every year since Mr. Luken started the tradition in 1985.

        No one gave it much significance at the time, he said.

        “At the time, it was kind of scoffed at,” Mr. Luken said. “It was considered pretentious of me. But it's grown and evolved.”

        The speech that Mr. Luken will give to Rotarians today is so important that, Mr. Luken admitted, “it scares me a little.”

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