Sixty-seven percent of Cincinnati voters say the city is falling behind other cities its size, according to a phone poll conducted last week for the Electoral Reform Commission. When pollsters asked them why, they often got essay-length answers that were "very pointed and extremely fascinating," said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.

They often focused on the city's racial divide:

• "I'm white and they call us racist, but we aren't and they are," said a South Fairmount man.

• "Racial profiling. I believe that the Cincinnati police department is crooked," said a Hartwell woman.

• "I think it comes back to the racial problem. I never thought black and white, but now it's almost like you have to. I feel uncomfortable about that," said a Sayler Park woman.

• "The different races of Cincinnati refuse to talk to one another," said a Pleasant Ridge man.

Twenty-two percent of poll respondents - white and black alike - said the racial problem was the most pressing issue in Cincinnati. (Crime, at 30 percent, was the top answer.)

That's not much of an improvement from 27 percent in August 2001, four months after the riots.

Newhouse, of the Virginia-based Public Opinion Strategies, also polled for Republican Sam Katz in last year's racially charged Philadelphia mayor's race. There, racial problems "didn't even come up as a response," Newhouse said.

The Cincinnati poll was of 300 voters and had a margin error of plus or minus 5.66 percentage points.

ODDS AND ENDS: More on electoral reform ...

• District election advocates may have missed their chance to change the way council members are elected. In 1998, a Build Cincinnati poll found 63 percent support for a hybrid system of 11 council members - eight elected by district and three at-large. Today, no district system is polling above 47 percent.

• Polls aren't the only reason it may be tough to get the six votes necessary for City Council to put a district plan on the ballot.

Every nine-district map drawn up by Cleveland consultant Robert Dykes would pit Laketa Cole, Sam Malone and Alicia Reece - all from Bond Hill - against each other in the same district as Christopher Smitherman of North Avondale.

• The poll may also send state Rep. Tom Brinkman, R-Mount Lookout, back to the drawing board. Two major components of his plan - 15 districts, elected in a general election without a primary - each get only 30 percent support. And his plan to cut council salaries isn't that popular either. Only 18 percent of voters say a salary of $57,000 is "too much."

"The poll may influence Tom to move off his 15-district system," said commission Chairman Don Mooney, a Democrat. "Not that polls have ever influenced Tom in his life."

THANKS FOR THE MEMOS: Malone laid down the law to his fellow council members in a memo last week: Keep my name out of your press releases.

"I view this request as an important reminder to honor this and other standards designed to promote and protect healthy professional boundaries and the integrity of this office," Malone wrote in a memo that he also read on the floor of council.

The memo was prompted by a Jan. 8 release by David Pepper, titled, "Pepper, Malone Propose Alternative Ways to Fund Anti-Violence Efforts."

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com