Now that Reed Gusciora is Mayor and everyone seems to want to sing “Kumbaya“and forget how low he sunk to win the election, perhaps we can all rally around some measurable goals.   After all, isn’t that what people naturally need in order “move forward” in the same direction.

I’ve had any number of people suggest that we need to all work together.  But what does that even mean?

What is the work?  What are we trying to accomplish?  What are the best tactics towards reaching those goals?   How do the 85,000 citizens of Trenton pitch in?

Unless someone can answer those questions, the next person that suggests we all work together, is likely to get slapped.

Work together doing WHAT?

My confidence that Mayor Gusciora ever provides “goals” for his administration is low, albeit not as low as the confidence I had in Tony Mack or Eric Jackson.   It’s possible though.  I know at least a couple of people on the transition team that know what a measurable goal is.   However, I know that there are likely many others who would advise against setting goals.

But you know what, in some ways it’s too late. The Mayor has already made one big whopping campaign promise that can equate to improvements in three of the measurable goals we use to measure city success.  Reed says he wants 1000 new homes in 1000 days.   That’s pretty big.  Improbable, but nonetheless big.

This is a different kind of approach to the one Doug Palmer had.  The Palmer administration was always trying to hit home runs with big multi-million dollar projects that sounded impressive to voters.   Unhappily, by swinging for the fences all the time he struck out all the time and even hit some foul balls that injured people (the hotel).

1000 homes in 1000 days is more like trying to hit a bunch of singles.   He may not hit a 1000 but if his approach works at all maybe he hits 500, which is about 500 more than Palmer.

But what about the real goals that matter and objectively measure our success? ReinventTrenton and other groups use the following:

• Crime levels as measured by the Uniform Crime Report
• Population growth as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau (in the case of Trenton, every year)
• Graduation rate as measured by the NJ Department of Education
• Median Household Income as measured by the U.S. Census, and
• Economic success as measured by our Tax Base

Let’s start with the three that Reed is sort of talking about: Population, Tax Base and Household Income.

Adding 1000 homes is a big goal but to measure the impact we need to make some assumptions.  First, what home price is necessary for the city to break-even between property taxes and costs to serve the property owners.  For Trenton, a house needs to be about $200,000, that’s somewhat lower than the average for Mercer County.   Let’s assume Reed does the right thing and targets $200,000 as the average price for these homes.

Tax Base

Trenton’s tax base is $2,395,945,829. Given the home price assumption, 1000 x $200,000 equals a $200,000,000 increase in our tax base. His goal should be $2,395,945,829 + $200,000,000 or roughly $2,600,000,000 ($2.6 Billion).

Population

Our current population is 84,964.  If 1000 new homes were added averaging, let’s say 2 people per home (just under Trenton’s average of 2.2).   1000 homes at 2 people per house equals 2000 new citizens.   Reed should have a goal of 87,000 residents.   That would be a healthy turnaround of 2.3% and above the growth rate for the State of New Jersey.

Household Income

Trenton’s current Median Household Income is $34,415 over 34,654 housing units (both houses and apartments).   To buy a $200,000 home, a household income will need to be at least 1/3 the value of the home, or $67,000 but let’s call it $70,000 to make the math easier.  If 1000 homes were added with an average household income of $70,000, the city-wide average could go up to reach a goal of $35,413, an increase of 2.9%.

The next two goals aren’t as dependent on the 1000 new homes, so perhaps Mayor Gusciora’s goals should simply reflect improvement trends over the last year.

Crime

Our Uniform Crime Reports  for 2017 are 3276.   This was down just over 1% from 2016.   If that trend continues Mayor Gusciora should be able to achieve a 4 year goal of 3147 by 2021 or a 1% yearly decrease.

Graduation Rate

The 2017 graduation rate was 70.14%, an increase of almost 5 percentage points over 2016.  That kind of improvement isn’t likely for 4 years straight, but he does get the benefit of a shiny new high school.   Without doing a lot of complicated trend analysis, I’ll simply throw out a goal of 80% by 2021.   Hamilton and Ewing are around 90% so this isn’t quite the average we need but it would be good progress.

It’s not important that the Mayor and his team adopt these exact goal values, but it is important that they express some measurable goals to the citizens of Trenton.  Maybe the Mayor thinks graduation rates could be 85% or only 75%.  What matters is there is a number goal.   I strongly suggest that these measures are used as they are publicly available, well understood and published by reputable 3^rd party sources.

If we don’t see goals published by the Mayor and agreed to by City Council, then reasonable citizens should question the dedication and ability of the new government to turn the city around?