City of Troy Looks Back at 2025 and Ahead to 2026
Vol. III, No. 271 - The City gives a goals and progress report to the Miami Valley Today
Every year, the Miami Valley Today runs a feature giving local organizations — including the City of Troy — a chance to reflect on the past year and share their priorities for the year ahead. It is a worthwhile tradition. It also creates something useful that rarely gets used: a public record of what city leadership said it would do, sitting right next to a public record of what it actually did.
Last year, Troy’s city administration outlined a specific list of goals for 2025. Now that 2025 is behind us, it is worth asking honestly: how did the city do?
The answer is mixed — and that is not a criticism. It is just the plain truth in black and white.
On infrastructure, Troy delivered. Phase 2 of the West Main Street Improvement Project was completed - though the black light poles took longer than liked. Nearly 13 lane miles of local roads were repaved. A $2.2 million upgrade at the Water Treatment Plant was finished. The 12-hour shift trial for patrol officers and sergeants — a cost-neutral initiative designed to improve recruitment and work-life balance — worked well enough to become permanent. These are real accomplishments that affect daily life in Troy in measurable ways.
On planning and development, the picture is different. The Unified Development Code — an update to the city’s zoning regulations that was originally to be completed in 2025 — is now a 2026 goal. The Parks and Recreation Master Plan, also targeted for 2025 completion, has moved to 2026 as well, though final adoption seems to be fairly soon. The roundabout at Adams and Staunton/Riverside, announced as a 2025 construction project, is now just underway and scheduled to be finished in August 2026. Each of these slippages is individually explainable. Together they suggest that timelines are consistently harder for the city to meet.
That pattern matters because planning documents are not administrative paperwork. The Unified Development Code will shape what gets built in Troy for the next decade — what goes where, how dense, how tall, how compatible with the neighborhoods around it. Every month it is delayed is a month the city operates on zoning rules written for a different era. The same is true for the Parks Master Plan, which guides where the city invests in green space, athletic fields, and recreational infrastructure.
None of this means Troy is falling behind. The city’s financial position is strong, its infrastructure investment is consistent, and its economic development pipeline — Komyo Logistics, the Conmeq partnership, the Spinnaker site redevelopment — reflects genuine momentum. A general fund that grew by more than $15 million in 2024 is not a city in trouble.
But a fair reading of this year’s feature alongside last year’s goals reveals something worth watching. Troy executes well when the task is concrete — pour the concrete, pave the road, complete the phase. It appears to struggle more when the task is collaborative and process-driven — finish the plan, adopt the code, meet the timeline.
That is not unusual for a city government. It is worth knowing anyway.
The 2026 goals are ambitious. The UDC, the school building reuse plans, the downtown streetscape project, the trade mission to Europe, and the river trail extension are all significant commitments. Residents who want to hold the city accountable to those goals now have a clear baseline to measure against.
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