Over his long and distinguished career with the New Castle County Division of Police – where he is now a Senior Lieutenant – and his time on Newark City Council, Travis McDermott has made his mark as a public official. On April 17, he took on his largest role yet as Newark’s newest mayor. Recently, Newark Life met with Travis to discuss what he sees as the City’s top priorities, his long-term vision for Newark and his very unique dinner party guest list.  

Newark Life: You served on Newark City Council for five years, were Deputy Mayor since 2021, and on April 17, you were sworn in as the Mayor of Newark for a three-year term, so you are more than qualified to answer the following question: In your opinion, what is the top priority for the City of Newark moving forward?

McDermott: There are multiple priorities - shorter priorities that need to be taken care of in the immediate future and then there are longer term priorities - but for 2026, our top priority will be the review of our comprehensive development plan. When we talk about things within the city  - housing, property taxes, revenue – they all relate to each other, so the comprehensive development plan which will allow us to determine what our city will look like for the next ten years, and determine how we want to develop, what type of housing we want to develop, where we want to develop,  and determine what that will do for affordable housing and workforce housing. 

Our comprehensive development plan will be our roadmap to how we want to get to where we want to be on each of those issues over the next ten years. Throughout 2026, we will get the public input and find out what our residents truly want. We hear from a lot of lobbyists. We hear from Dover or hear from interest groups about what they want to see, but what do the residents want? To me, that is most important as we move forward with our comprehensive development plan.

Among the many responsibilities that come with being a mayor, the one that consistently appears on the pile is in creating long-term financial stability. What measures are being taken to ensure that the financial picture of Newark is a sound one?

Essentially, the City of Newark is a utility company, so we make the vast majority of our revenue through the sale of water and electricity, so if we have a hot summer, we do okay and if we have a mild summer, we have a budget problem. So how do we stabilize that? Balancing a budget on a revenue that is fluctuating is difficult. We have implemented customer charges - a fixed rate that everyone pays. I made it my point over the last two years on Council to lobby and push to get a University of Delaware student tax through, but none of these initiatives are the silver bullet for our budget.

When we try to project out for the next five years, a key part of that will be determining how we manage our electric and water rates over the next five years to make sure that we don’t get to a point where we are so behind the curve on infrastructure and behind the curve on what it costs. We hired a consultant to develop an electric rate report to help us determine how much we should be spending on our infrastructure, what we should be charging and what our rate increase should look like over the next five years. We plan to implement the recommendations of tht report, so that we have an outline. 

We also rely on parking as a way to generate revenue. I don’t think its beneficial for businesses, but it’s a reality and we make about $4.5 million every year on a $124 million annual budget. So how do we get away from that? A long-term strategy would be to change our parking focus to parking management and not revenue, and that is where we truly should be at.

The University of Delaware currently enjoys a tax-exempt status, which results in a loss of approximately $6.5 million annually in property taxes for Newark. How are you addressing this shortfall? Have you found a new revenue stream for the city?

When they first implemented this, the University wasn’t even in Newark. When I first joined Council, I started looking at budgets and year after year, I was told, ‘You don’t want to make the University mad.’ But year after year, I said that the University is using a credit card to pay for utilities, but I kept being told that the City of Newark and the University have to work well together. I said that we can work well together, but there has to be a benefit to both parties, not just a one-sided benefit where the University gets $165 million from the state, which is more than our entire budget.

I said that I am not trying to fight the University but simply highlighting the facts – that we are losing more than $6.5 million in lost property taxes. In the first year I got zero traction, but eventually, it became hard to fight the facts, and finally, the University acquiesced, and we moved forward with the student tax, which generates about $2.4 million for the City of Newark. 

How would you assess the relationship between the University of Delaware and the residents of Newark?

There is always a lot of talk that points to a contentious relationship between the University and the City, but I don’t find that. Are there issues that we don’t agree on? Yes, but 99 percent of the functions that the University and the City do together run flawlessly. Our police departments and out public works departments work great together. There are no issues between the City’s government and the governing body of the University. Do we agree on everything? Absolutely not. Is student sprawl a real thing and is it encroaching on our traditional residential neighborhoods? One hundred percent. Should we take measures to try and stop that? Absolutely.

I don’t think that the University is opposed to these issues. 

What first inspired you to enter public service? Was there a crystallizing moment or has this been marinating over a long period of time?

As a police officer, I have been in public service for my entire life. I have always liked government. I was a political science major at the University of Delaware, but as a police officer, I found that there are limited public offices that one can hold. You can’t be a state representative, a state senator and you can’t be in the legislative body and the executive body at the same time. I spoke with former mayor Jerry Clifton, who told me to consider running for City Council, and I thought that this could be a possibility to be a part of the City’s government. 

In 2020, there was a political shift against police across the country calling for the de-funding of the police, and I felt that these were unjust attacks against the profession, because the men and women I work with on a daily basis are good people. I felt that they were being vilified, and I didn’t want to see that happen here. I realized that if I have a chance to speak up and protect this profession, maybe I could do it on City Council.

After graduating from the University of Delaware, you began your career as a youth rehabilitation specialist at the Ferris School in Wilmington. What did that experience teach you about the realities that often surround incarcerated youth and the reasons they are placed there?

It was one of the greatest and worst experience of my entire life, all at the same time. I was 21 years old and graduated from the University and placed in the youth detention facility as a counselor and told to fix these kids. I gave it one hundred and twenty percent. They were just kids – 14 and 15 years old - and they were hardened and lacked social skills to navigate the world, and as they were placed in a structured environment, I began to see them change and grow. In my head, I thought that I had done my job. Years later, as I entered law enforcement, I kept track of them. I had a total of nine kids throughout my tenure, and today, all but one is either dead or in jail.

They all had hope in their eyes when they left Ferris, but when they were let out, they went back to the same environment they came from. 

One day, I was in uniform in Dover for training, and a guy came up to me and ask me, “Are you Mr. McDermott?” He told me his name and said that I was his counselor at Ferris, and that I was the one who saved his life, and that he now owns his own contracting business. 

You have had a long career as a member of the New Castle County Division of Police and are now a Senior Lieutenant, which again qualifies you to talk about a key issue of concern for many of your constituents. Under your direction, what initiatives are being undertaken to better ensure the safety of the residents of Newark?

In the short-term, Newark is making investments in technology and traffic safety, continuing to enact measures to keep our gun crime down, and continuing to conduct police community outreach.

For 2026, I have made it an issue that if the state can do one thing to assist the City of Newark in   saving lives, it will be tackling the issue of people fleeing from the police. Within the city limits over the last year, we have had two deaths. One student had his back broken from a vehicle fleeing the police. Two people in a vehicle struck the St. John’s Church, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. On Route 273, a mother and daughter were killed by someone fleeing the police. What is being done about this? I am working with State Rep. Cyndie Romer to see what we can do to strengthen laws related to fleeing police. There really needs to be a change in how we view this crime and the punishments that go along with it. 

There is not a mayor anywhere who does not have projects and initiatives that have a special and personal significance to him or her, and very often, those projects become lasting reminders of their legacy as mayor. What are yours?

When I look down Main Street, I see wholesale improvements that we can make there, starting with safety. We have made short-term measures to protect residents and students, but we cannot stop there. We need to transform Main Street into a destination, which will require a complete revamping of our parking strategy. I want to remove on-street parking and create centralized parking that will allow people to easily walk along Main Street. I want to remove the on-street parking spots and extend the width of the sidewalks into those parking spots to create a larger pedestrian walking area.

I would like to bury the power lines along Main Street and put up the barriers the pillars and planters to protect our pedestrians – to create a beautification of Main Street where people feel safe, and where restaurants will be able to expand to the sidewalks. That’s the long-term goal; if I can get the City on that trajectory, then I will have accomplished something.

What is your favorite place in Newark?

My favorite place is Redd Park, along the trails that back up to the reservoir. This is my Zen, where I can get clarity of thought. It’s where I do all of my thinking. It’s where I debate everything in my head as I run or walk there. Unless it’s absolutely freezing, I walk those trails every single day. 

Newark is beautiful. It’s not just the networks of trails where you can bike, walk or run, but it has Main Street. You can go to the movies. You can get ice cream at five different places. You can enjoy great food at a number of restaurants. This city is awesome. 

You organize a dinner party and can invite anyone you wish – famous or not, living or not. Who would you want to see around that table?

People can interpret this one way or another, but my first choice would be Genghis Khan. Taking away the millions of people whose deaths he was responsible for, he was a political strategist who was able to unite nomadic tribes, he implemented religious freedoms and created written laws for his empire. While I do not necessarily agree with everything he did, I would like to talk with him to get his perspective.

I would also like to invite Jimmy Buffet. Somebody whose life was not as easy as he portrayed it. There was no way he sat on the beach every day, but he was able to put this façade out that he sat on the beach all day drinking pina coladas. He portrayed the lifestyle that many of want to live, but he was a businessman, and no successful businessman sits on the beach all day long.

My third guest would be my maternal grandmother, who died when I was five years old. Hers was an American story. She was from West Virginia and married my grandfather, who was from Yugoslavia who was a coal miner. A lot of themes that occurred in her family are still common themes of the American experience today. I would like to get her perspective, because maybe it would be a perspective that I could apply to my life today. 

What item can always be found in your refrigerator?

Cheese. I throw a wine and cheese party every year. I make everyone bring wine and a cheese to pair with the wine, and there is always way more cheese remaining than wine at the end, and I get to keep the cheese. The cheese that I really love is Trader Joe’s blueberry goat cheese. I could eat this cheese every single day.