As Mayor Bloomberg gets ready to deliver his fourth – and what could be final – State of the City address, he needs to think bold and big, because custodians can be replaced.

The mayor can rightly claim to have gotten New York City back on track after the derailment of September 11th and the deepest budget deficit in our city’s history. Crime has fallen to levels unseen since the innocence of the early 1960s,and the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, deserves great credit for keeping murders under 600 for three years in a row.

But a speech promising only “more of the same” in the coming years will not be enough to gain re-election. Last month’s Marist Poll showed that while a majority of New Yorkers now feel that the city is moving in the right direction, they are lukewarm about this mayor and his administration.

Next Tuesday’s State of the City Address at Hostos Community College in the Bronx offers the mayor his last, best chance to use the power of incumbency to define the terms of the debate in the upcoming election year. The limp State of the State address by Governor Pataki showed how not to do it – broad self-congratulation, followed by a litany of absurdly small initiatives, all while ignoring the obvious underlying fiscal challenges facing the state.

Over the past few months, Mr. Bloomberg has been gearing up for re-election by polishing his credentials as a reform mayor, giving speeches bashing the MTA and Board of Elections, while strengthening his alliance with the Independence Party in the name of fully enfranchising unaffiliated voters. With the State of the City speech, his best bet would be to build on this foundation by laying out a clear and ambitious agenda of reform that can define a second term.

Mr. Bloomberg’s strongest selling point has always been that as a billionaire he cannot be bought – he is uniquely free from the influence of special interests. The nature of New York’s Democratic Party makes this a distinguishing factor that will only become clearer in the rough and tumble of their mayoral primary. Moreover, the underlying problems facing New York City that cause us to constantly careen to the brink of bankruptcy are institutional. More than one out of every 1,000 Americans is a New York City government employee. Democrats do not have the political freedom to take on unwieldy authorities, entitlement costs, or the municipal unions.

One way Mr. Bloomberg could seize this advantage is by laying out a vision to cut the size and cost of city government through a complete e-government revolution. The Bloomberg terminal and the 311 phone system show Mr. Bloomberg can think creatively about technology; more can be done to increase efficiency and lower headcount through the creative use of e-government.

Mr. Bloomberg, unlike the Democrats, has the freedom to lead the charge for Medicaid and pension reforms. Mr. Bloomberg’s first deputy mayor, Marc Shaw, is the former executive director of the MTA, which puts the mayor in a good position to tame that dysfunctional and unaccountable authority once and for all.

Given the speech’s location at Hostos College, it is perhaps too much to hope that the mayor will rediscover his first campaign’s pledge to reform bilingual education, but before cautious status quo voices are allowed to kill this overdue initiative, Mr. Bloomberg would be wise to re-examine the practical and political merits of such a fight. His Democratic opponents will be unable to pick up this mantle, and such a reform is broadly popular, even in the Hispanic community, where polls have shown that 62% of Latino voters support English-intensive immersion. If this mayor doesn’t make good on this original reform promise, it’s hard to imagine what administration will.

One clearly distinguishing factor of the Bloomberg era is the spate of construction that is occurring throughout the city. But there has been little discussion about the need for construction reform in New York – despite the fact that studies show that the cost of local construction is inflated by as much as 20% through red tape and industry corruption. Democrats are unable to lead this fight because of their indebtedness to the unions, but Mr. Bloomberg is free to raise the issue. The time is right and the competitive economic costs to our city are real.

Most high-profile construction is occurring in Manhattan, and much oxygen and political capital has been spent on the West Side stadium debate, leading to the politically damaging charge that Mr. Bloomberg is a Manhattan mayor. There are two outer borough urban development opportunities that the Bloomberg administration can announce in the State of the City and make their own. The results of the election will come down to two main factors: turnout in Staten Island and the political swing of Queens. To this end, Mr. Bloomberg could announce that the police academy will be moved to Staten Island’s Stapleton Homeport, bringing an influx of development and cadets to this under utilized 122-acre space in the most troubled area of this Republican base, while allowing the current site near Gramercy Park to be sold off for a profit. In Queens, the Rockaways are still an untapped beachfront asset, where the Bloomberg administration can drive and claim credit for redevelopment in the same way that the Giuliani administration revitalized Coney Island.

In assessing an administration, it is the big themes that stand out. The danger with a speech such as the State of the City is that it can become a list where the forest is lost for the trees. To energize the electorate, the mayor must get New Yorkers to rally around the momentum of a reform administration and heighten the sense of consequence surrounding this election. Mr. Bloomberg will have better chances campaigning as a crusader than as a caretaker.