Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora, 66, is running for a third term as leader of the state’s capital city, and if reelected, its first openly gay mayor and first openly gay member of the Legislature said he plans to build up and diversify the police force, modernize the water department, address housing and make parks more accessible to children with special needs.
During Gusciora’s terms in public office, the Democrat said, significant progress has been made, but some long-term issues remain. In a third term, he said, he plans to continue making important strides in key areas.
Gusciora was born in Passaic and grew up in Jamesburg. He was inspired to pursue politics by his parents, who were both public servants. His father worked for the New Jersey Department of Health, and his mother was a court administrator.
The mayor said his approach and path in politics were inspired by the late Congressman Michael Lynn Synar of Oklahoma, for whom he worked after graduating from The Catholic University of America in DC with a bachelor’s degree in politics and international relations. He also drew inspiration from the late Princeton Mayor Barbara Boggs Sigmund, the late Trenton Mayor Arthur Holland and the city’s first Black mayor, Douglas Palmer. Gusciora also holds a law degree from Seton Hall University School of Law.
Gusciora served in the New Jersey General Assembly from 1996 to 2018, representing the 15th Legislative District. He was the assistant minority leader from 1998 to 2001 and deputy majority leader from 2008 to 2018. He chaired the committees on Oversight, Reform and Federal Relations as well as Environment and Solid Waste. He was a member of the Financial Institutions and Insurance Committee as well as the Labor Committee. He was sworn in as mayor of Trenton in 2018.
Among the issues plaguing the city is water. In 2020, the city and Trenton Water Works were sued by the state, which alleged continued failures to replace lead service lines, meet operational requirements and other issues regarding the city’s reservoir.
Gusciora discussed some of the progress he said he has made so far. “We’re replacing lead service lines that go from the water mains to individual people’s homes,” he said, adding that with over 10,000 service lines replaced and 20,000 more to go, the city is one-third of the way there.
“We feel we’ll meet the deadline in 2031 to replace all such lines. We’re also decommissioning our reservoir,” which is the single source of storage for water, and the city is going to distribute from “storage tanks throughout the service communities,” he said.
The reservoir contains water that has already been treated and is open air, which can cause contamination from the elements and animals. Instead, storage tanks will be distributed across service communities to improve functionality and avoid the risk of contamination.
“We put a new raw intake mechanism in the Delaware River, although not without some hiccups, but we continue to improve,” he said. It’s important that changes are made to the raw water intake mechanism, since the current design is not very resilient to frazil ice buildup, according to the city’s website, TrentonNJ.org.
“We reached millions of dollars in settlement for the PFOS [perfluorooctane sulfonic acid] litigation, and we hope to modernize our testing labs and just bring in the expertise that’s needed to run the water company and to assure the public that we’re delivering a safe and reliable product,” he said, adding there are other area privatized water companies that purchase Trenton water for their own use. “So that, in and of itself, shows that we’re reliable and that we can sell water outside of our network.”
He said the water department serves more than 200,000 customers “and we just developed a $731 million capital improvement campaign so that we can modernize the water department, but we’re also delivering a quality product.” Plans for improving water in Trenton include replacing all lead service lines, decentralizing the water storage, decommissioning the reservoir, building a new central pumping station, upgrading the water filtration plant and improving elevated tanks, valves and water mains, according to TrentonNJ.org.
Another major issue facing Trenton has been vacant and blighted housing. Gusciora said he took on 3,000 abandoned properties when he first came into office and has brought that number down to 77 houses and 800 empty lots by demolishing blighted properties.
Now, he said, he’s aiming to develop those abandoned lots. One issue facing his administration is that these lots are scattered across Trenton, making redevelopment more challenging. “Now, our next goal is to take care of the abandoned lots that we have to match up [with] developers. The challenge is that the lots are checkerboard in the neighborhood. They’re not all congruent to each other, so developers are reluctant to come in because they have to build one house at a time rather than a whole row of houses,” Gusciora said.
In the city, 52 percent of its property is tax exempt, and much of it is owned by the state. Typically, a city will receive revenue to support its residents through property taxes. Trenton provides services to that property, such as water, police, fire protection, maintenance and other emergency services. However, because the property is tax exempt, Trenton does this without earning revenue. To remedy this, a city like Trenton receives Capital City Aid, which is financial aid the state provides to compensate for the lost tax revenue.
For example, according to TrentonNJ.org, the city received $50.5 million in state aid in 2025, but only $10 million is payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT. Gusciora said that under the administration of former Gov. Chris Christie, much of the Trenton Capital City Aid Program money the city used to receive was reduced and replaced with transitional aid, a program distressed cities utilize. Transitional aid requires far more state oversight, which can limit local autonomy to act and may not adequately suit the needs of the capital city, Gusciora said.
“Under the Chris Christie administration, they did away with Capital City Aid and put us in the transitional aid program, which other distressed cities are in. The unique thing about Trenton is that if the state paid its property taxes, we’d be out of their hair, and we shouldn’t be treated as a transitional aid town with a host of requirements and monitorship. The state needs to go back to the traditional Capital City Aid payment in lieu of property taxes that make us whole,” Gusciora said.
Despite the reduction, Gusciora said, he has been able to make strides in revitalizing properties across the city. He said he worked alongside the Trenton Housing Authority to apply for a Choice Neighborhood Grant, a highly competitive national grant, with only seven cities awarded, including Trenton. Gusciora said he is determined to provide housing to all families or individuals no matter their income level.
Crime is another issue Gusciora said he plans to tackle. There has been a 45 percent year-to-date decrease in the homicide rate as of 2022, according to TrentonNJ.org. In 2021, homicides peaked at 41, but as of the end of August of this year, there have been four, the website reported.
Major cities across the country saw a 20 percent increase in thefts and robberies in 2022, as did Trenton, according to the website, but burglaries dropped by 27 percent. The same source reported that this is likely because of the increased local law enforcement and the growing prevalence of video doorbells.
Furthermore, 354 firearms were recovered in Trenton in 2022, a 9 percent increase from 2021, according to the website. It also stated that aggravated assaults rose by 7 percent, but the sexual assault rate dropped by 23 percent.
In Gusciora’s first term, the Trenton Real-Time Crime Center was opened with the New Jersey State Police, as was Trenton Community Street Teams, which are civilian-led conflict mediators tasked with addressing conflicts before they become violent.
During his previous terms, more than 200 young individuals and ex-offenders were hired as an alternative to employment in the shadow economy. Those individuals and ex-offenders go into neighborhoods and schools to talk to youth and other citizens about alternatives to violence. In addition to this program, Gusciora has funded the city’s Summer Youth Camp for city children and has continued to increase both the number of mental health counselors and police officers.
“One of the pitfalls of the Chris Christie administration was cutting our state aid, and we had to lay off 125 police officers,” Gusciora said. “But last year, 23 new police officers were hired.” And as of late August, another 29 have been hired according to the mayor. “So, we’re getting back to the ranks of policing, but we’re also diversifying the police force. We have, for the first time, the first Latina female captain and the first Black woman captain on the police force. When I came in, of the top ranks of lieutenants and captains, only two were of color.”
In terms of recreation, Gusciora said that in the last couple of years his administration has refurbished 26 of the city’s 60 parks. He said he also included “recreational equipment for special needs children and intends to continue modernizing parks, so they are inclusive of everyone’s needs.”
During his previous terms, he created new and safer trails, expanded or maintained recreational programming for youth and public pools with a focus on accessibility. Cooper Field Sports Complex, for example, was previously vacant but now supports 150 children.
As the city’s first openly gay mayor and openly gay member of the Legislature, Gusciora said he finds it very rewarding to receive emails and letters from those inspired by him as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Some, he said, have told him they are given a sense of purpose after seeing all the ways of making meaningful and tangible differences in people’s lives. He said he is proud to support and influence the desire to do public good and overcome perceived differences.
He said that his administration — along with City Council Vice President Jennifer Williams, the first transgender woman to be elected to a municipal office in the state — works with a rescue mission, soup kitchen and other nonprofits to help fill in the gaps and provide a safety net for LGBTQ+ youth.
Gusciora added that his team brought a Pride festival back to the city and that although many LGBTQ+ bars in Trenton have closed over the years, “we still want to create a sense of community and a space that the community can gather and celebrate just a good life and hopefully enjoy our city as anyone else can.”
The mayor said the most rewarding part of his job is helping people, especially on an individual basis.
“There are many seniors that have structural problems in their houses,” he said. “Being able to personally inspect the house and offering assistance through grant funding is very rewarding.”
He also said that seeing his administration’s fifth public pool opened and being used by seniors and disabled children using the new parks with support for special needs children brings him joy.
Gusciora added that he plans to continue leading real change and redevelopment that leaves no one behind.
