Borough presidents may not have as much power as the city comptroller or Council speaker, but you wouldn’t know it from the scene last week at the Evander Childs High School campus where those officials and many, many more — including two former Council speakers and former borough president Fernando Ferrer — turned out for Ruben Diaz, Jr.’s debut State of the Borough address.

With high-profile attendees and a gaggle of TV news cameras trailing his entrance and departure, Diaz got the treatment of an up-and-comer.

His speech addressed the usual laundry-list of issues that are staples of such speeches — economic development, crime, education, etc. — but at least a few passages of the nine-page speech stood out.

In helping to orchestrate the defeat of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal late last year to turn the Kingsbridge Armory into a giant shopping mall — with no provision for a living wage requirement as the borough president and local activists demanded — Diaz picked a high-profile fight with the city’s powerful real estate interests. If anyone didn’t get the message, he threw another punch.

“When New Yorkers are already struggling to pay their rents, when they must worry about feeding and clothing their children, when our poverty rates are the highest in the nation, we cannot accept that the minimum wage is the best salary a developer can offer while they take so heavily from the taxpayers’ wallets,” Diaz said referring to the project’s public subsidies. “If you want charity, you must be charitable. If you want a public benefit, your project must benefit the public.”

Though light on details, Diaz announced that he and Councilman Fernando Cabrera would be forming a task force to study new uses for the Armory.

The crowd’s overall enthusiasm ebbed considerably when Diaz discussed his support of charter schools. But the hearty applause returned when Diaz chastised charters that share school buildings with other public schools without sharing their resources.

“The criticism has been that when a charter school takes up residence in a public school building, it does not participate in the life of that building,” Diaz said. “The equipment is newer, the walls are freshly painted. The charter school becomes an oasis within the school building, and the parents, students and administrators at that public school feel left out. We need to bridge this divide. That is why I am challenging charter schools to use some of the funding they receive through philanthropy to make everyone’s world a better place.”

Diaz, like his predecessors, wants desperately to attract a hotel to the borough — an elusive milestone which many Bronx leaders feel is essential to developing a growing tourism economy.

“For too long, a real hotel has been absent in our borough,” said Diaz who said he was partnering with the New York Hotel Trades Council. “Our business community and not-for-profit groups, which are in dire need of first-class conference space, could see this hotel become the centerpiece of a new revival.” 

Diaz highlighted other issues like promoting green buildings and getting guns off the street. Read the full text of the speech and view video samplings at www.bronxnewsnetwork.org.