TRENTON — With his administration roiled in controversy, Mayor Reed Gusciora painted his team as capable and competent — if not without faults — as he enters the home stretch in his first term of office.
The first-term mayor, in office for 39 months, delivered his fourth annual State of the City address Thursday inside City Hall before a throng of masked spectators and cabinet members, dressed to the nines.
He spoke amid a backdrop of dissension, controversy and continuing gun violence following a record year of bloodshed in 2020, but made no excuses for it.
“Our residents want results,” Gusciora said. “They do not want the acrimony and dissension that often percolates throughout City Hall. There is, of course, blame to go around, and I’ll accept my share of it. The buck stops here.”
Try as he might, Gusciora had to acknowledge the elephant in the room as his first term has been defined by constant clashes with city legislators and more defeat than wins.
He’s now contending with a swirling “cloud of corruption,” as one legislator put it at a recent meeting: scandalous claims from former housing and economic director Ben Delisle, made public as part of a blockbuster whistleblower lawsuit, that prompted investigators from the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation to drop three subpoenas on the Gusciora administration, examining the city’s alleged corrupt procurement practice.
The ex-director claimed he was pressured by Gusciora to bypass bidding mandates to raze a slew of abandoned properties that the mayor wanted demolished ahead of the 2022 mayoral election.
Seizing on that development, one of the mayor’s biggest critics, councilwoman Robin Vaughn, who the mayor jokingly acknowledged as the “quiet one” before giving his address, pushed forward a resolution demanding Gusciora’s resignation, citing Delisle’s lawsuit and continuing gun violence that has plagued Trenton for decades.
The mayor survived that vote, and looked to move on from it Thursday, as he focused his speech on a few positives, including his administration’s shepherding of Trenton through the global health crisis, and prospects for progress represented by $73 million in federal aid the city is receiving from President Joe Biden’s administration — about a third of the city’s annual municipal budget.
He said nearly three-quarters of Trentonians had been vaccinated against the deadly COVID-19 virus, a big win in a majority-minority city where other cities have faced vaccine reluctance amid more vulnerable populations.
Gusciora also announced the city has received a pair of proposals to overhaul the abandoned Roebling Block II, the site of the failed Princetel deal that led to much division between the administration and council.
He asked legislators to make the redevelopment project a priority in the coming weeks, citing it as a potential capstone as their terms of office near an end.
Gusciora said another developer has approached the city about turning another neglected section of the city into the capital city’s own “Wall Street,” a place where Black and Brown entrepreneurs can thrive in the future.
“Let’s put our own Wall Street on the map,” Gusciora said.
For the administration, millions in federal coronavirus funds represent the best way to turn around Trenton’s future.
Gusciora has put forward a plan for how to spend the money that includes modernizing city infrastructure, upgrading the police radio system and improving the city’s libraries and community centers.
About $7 million was used to balance Trenton’s budget to keep taxes flat this year for Trentonians.
Another $2 million is going for mental health services to support those residents impacted by gun violence, the mayor said.
The mayor cited the city’s real-time crime center as the biggest tool to fighting back against the ongoing crime problem.
It’s already helped solve some of the city’s notorious murders, and Gusciora said it will help quickly nab scofflaws and deter future offenders from pulling the trigger.
The mayor credited new police director Steve Wilson with prioritizing other crimes in the city. He said his efforts were “clearly paying off.”
Police have seized 187 guns, 6,000 grams of cocaine, 42,000 decks of heroin and more than $800,000 in suspected illegal funds from the streets.
“Sometimes, we have to fight tooth and nail for every inch of improvement,” Gusciora said. “Every derelict house taken down. Every pothole filled. Every deadly weapon seized. Every youth that can finally spend a fun and safe day in a park or a pool. But that’s a fight worth having — and one we intend to win. And, as our residents showed us this year – failure is not an option.”
