City Council's Community and Economic Development Committee to Meet on Wednesday, June 17
Vol IV, No. 24 - A Rare Mid-week Committee Meeting to Talk About A Gas Station is On The Agenda
On Wednesday, June 17, Troy City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee will meet in a rare mid-week session in the City Building starting at 4:00 p.m. The committee will be asked to make two very different choices about the same issue. One is whether to grant an exemption from the city’s moratorium on new gas stations for Mandeep Singh’s long‑planned project on South County Road 25A. The other is whether to extend that moratorium another 90 days, pushing its expiration from August 29 to November 27.
This publication has covered this story in-depth for a number of weeks.
On paper, both recommendations come from the same June 12 staff memo. In practice, they deserve very different answers. There is a respectable legal case for denying the exemption. There is no compelling public‑interest case for moving the goalposts on the moratorium yet again.
What staff is asking council to do
Development Director Tim Davis, with Law Director Grant Kerber’s concurrence, recommends two actions. First, that council decline the request raised at the June 1 meeting to exempt Mr. Singh from the moratorium adopted in Ordinance 0‑19‑2026. Second, that council extend that moratorium for another 90 days, from August 29 through November 27, to “ensure that there is time” for Planning Commission and council to complete their review of the city’s proposed Unified Development Code (UDC).
The memo lays out, in detail, why staff believes Singh does not qualify as an “applicant” under the zoning code and therefore should not receive special treatment. It then warns that carving out an exception could undermine the stated rationale for the moratorium, open the door to claims of unequal treatment from other developers, and increase litigation risk.
The legal argument on the exemption
On the exemption question, staff’s argument is straightforward. The zoning code says a zoning application must be submitted on a city‑provided form and accompanied by a fee. Those two steps never occurred for an automobile fuel dispensing station at 1511 S. Market Street.
Staff also notes that while Mr. Singh’s attorney, Rebecca Simpson cited the definition of “application” during her June 1 presentation, she did not cite the code’s definition of “applicant,” which ties that status directly to applying for a permit under the code’s procedures. In staff’s view, emails, meetings and informal submissions do not satisfy those written requirements, and references to “the applicant” in internal correspondence do not override the formal process the code sets out.
In short, if council wants a narrow legal reading, there is solid ground to say Mr. Singh was not an “applicant” under the moratorium’s language. That does not make the outcome fair, given nearly three years of documented back‑and‑forth between his team and city staff, but it does give council a fairly defensible reason to say no to a one‑off exemption.
Where the logic breaks down: extending the moratorium
The trouble starts when the memo shifts from legal analysis to policy recommendation. Staff now asks council to extend the moratorium another 90 days “to provide for the process of the comprehensive review and discussion” of the draft Unified Development Code by Planning Commission and council.
Here is the timeline the memo itself provides. On June 10, Planning Commission scheduled a June 18 work session to begin its review of the 332‑page draft UDC. On June 11, that draft was transmitted to both Planning Commission and council. Staff estimates Planning Commission will not be ready to send recommendations to council until the end of July, and that council will then need 60 to 90 days under the Ohio Revised Code to complete its own process.
Those are reasonable process estimates. But they sit awkwardly next to council’s most recent decision. When council last extended the moratorium in May, staff already knew the UDC was still in draft form and not even presented to the Planning Commission, let along City Council. Even so, the recommendation then was to extend the moratorium only through August 29.
Now that a full draft has finally been released and placed on Planning Commission’s agenda, staff is asking for more time — not less. The very progress that was used to justify an August end date a month ago is now being used to justify November. That is a hard argument to square.
What this means for one investor
For Mr. Singh, the difference between August 29 and November 27 is not academic. His project has already been delayed by the moratorium once. His state permit for underground storage tanks expires August 1. Council was told on June 3 that the new zoning code “will most likely not be approved” by the current August 29 moratorium expiration, but that timeline was known when the last extension was adopted.
Singh’s team went through rezoning in July 2023, secured county building and fire approvals, and worked through multiple rounds of engineering review with city staff. Internal emails referred to him as “the applicant,” and, according to his attorney, a city planner told him his “application” had expired after the moratorium passed.
Now, the same city that invited and accepted years of informal submissions is arguing that none of it counts for legal purposes — and that the only fair answer is to keep the moratorium in place even longer while the city finishes work on its own code rewrite. That may be technically defensible. It is hard to describe as predictable or investor‑friendly.
A reasonable split decision
Council does not have to accept both halves of staff’s recommendation as a package. On June 17, the committee can thoughtfully agree with staff on the exemption while firmly disagreeing on the extension.
On the exemption, council can say: under the current reading of the zoning code, the city will not create a special carve‑out for one project. That is a clean legal position, even if it is wholly unsatisfying given the process that led here.
On the moratorium, council can say: the ordinance will expire on August 29 as planned. Planning Commission will still begin its work on June 18. Council will still have its full say on the UDC and public comment on the new code will be full and robust. If the new code is not in place by the end of August, the city will manage any interim applications under the rules on the books at that time, as it has always done.
Predictability is not a favor Troy does for developers. It is part of the city’s own stated commitment “to enhance the predictability and profitability of private investments made in the City.” When the city repeatedly revises its own timelines, the cost is not just one stalled gas station. It is the next investor who hesitates when Troy leaders say, “Trust the process.”
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