Our Community Survey: Troy Residents Still See City Headed in Wrong Direction
Since last September, a majority of respondents have indicated that the city is headed in the wrong direction
For nearly a year, this publication has conducted reader surveys at different intervals; these results present a nuanced picture of civic engagement, awareness, and optimism within our community. Our survey, administered last month, continue to show trends that show that residents aren’t necessarily overly optimistic or pessimistic and tend to believe that our community is headed in the wrong direction.
Where are we headed?
As of this survey, an albeit small (edit), but growing number of residents believe the nation is on the right track, with 28% expressing positive sentiments, up from 16% two months ago. Like the nation, a stronger minority of residents think the state is heading in the right direction. That number showed improvement from 23% to 33% over the same period. Participants who felt the country was headed in the wrong direction stood at 57% and the state figure stood at 43%.
The percentage of individuals that are not optimistic about our community’s direction, continues to be a majority of respondents. In our May survey, 57% of respondents believe our community is headed in the wrong direction, down from 63% in January; a majority of participants have felt the city has been heading in the wrong direction since last September. Of note, 22% of respondents were unsure of the community’s direction, whereas only 21% of respondents felt our community was headed in the right direction.
Civic Awareness and Hope for the Future
Awareness levels about civic issues show a strong minority of residents who are extremely aware, currently standing at 26%, suggesting there is still work to be done to have more civic engagement, which happens to be the overriding goal of this publication.
Confidence in positive changes within the hometown shows nearly a balanced picture. 29% of respondents were do not expect to see any changes. 40% of respondents are either not confident or somewhat not confident that things will improve; an increase from 34% at our last survey. 31% of respondents are confident or somewhat confident that things will improve, this number is lower than the 36% that was reported two months ago.
The survey also asked about the respondents’ emotional connection to the community, and the answers continue to a strong emotional attachment to the community. 67% of respondents love their community (the highest number recorded over the survey), and another 24% of respondents like their community. 5% expressed no emotional attachment to the community and 4% show dislike towards the hometown.
Open Ended Questions and Answers
The survey also asked residents to provide answers to open-ended questions on what they believed to be the most positive attributes in the community and some of the biggest challenges facing the community. The responses were pooled into word clouds which shows the relative strength of the answers provided.
Attributes
Challenges
For the May survey, 58 respondents participated, and the survey has a 13% margin of error at a 95% confidence level.
A Note on Demographics
As part of this survey, we asked demographic questions of our those that were wiling to answer those questions. Here are some demographic highlights of those that completed this survey:
Over half of our respondents (53%) were over age 65. Nearly one in four respondents (24%) were aged 55-64. Only 13% of our respondents were under age 44.
For those that answered, most of our respondents were female (52%).
85% of our respondents are long time residents, stating they have lived in Troy for more than 20 years. Another 9% of respondents have lived in Troy for 10–20 years.
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As usual, good article Bill! I think most cities need to seriously consider the ROI (Return on Investment) to the community before considering any public project. ROI can contain Intrinsic and Economic values where the budgeted amount needs to be sensible.
Do we know what we want to be? I always ask the question- do we want to be like Huber Heights with all the housing developments? Or do we want to be like Tipp City?