BATON ROUGE — Mayor-President Sid Edwards set forth his vision of a better Baton Rouge at the Rotary Club on Wednesday afternoon.Edwards said there are several hurdles the city must overcome. These range from crime to divisiveness.He said he has a plan to tackle crime, starting with increasing officers' pay and hiring retired police officers.“We’re looking at a new policy ‘Retire Rehire,’ and trying to get them back into the building back on the streets back working,” Edwards said.Edwards said he’s already working on bringing more jobs to the city and making it more appealing to the eye, planning to organize a city-wide clean-up effort and working to manage blighted buildings. But he said he's already encountered some hurdles, especially with blighted buildings."Sometimes they were owned by somebody and there's a lineage of up to four or five generations of families that are involved with this. So there's litigation, so you got to get people an opportunity to fix their own stuff right. So it's just not as easy as knocking it down," Edwards said.Edwards said he also plans to ease traffic flow by closing the Washington Street exit off Interstate 10 and widening Airline Highway to six lanes.Above all else, Edwards said his greatest priority is uniting the city as one.“People got to be willing to change. People got to be willing to open their eyes but most importantly their hearts for all of us to understand one another,” Edwards said.Edwards said there’s a great divide in the city, whether it's politically or racially. He said it takes everyone to bring about prosperity.“No matter what some people are not going to do it. The key is we have to rely on the ones who are. You do it without a price, without something in return and that’s the people we’re looking for,” Edwards said.Permalink| Comments