What Do Trojans Think?
Vol. III, No. 127 - Looking at September's Community Survey Results for Troy
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For over two years, this publication has conducted reader surveys every other month; these results present a nuanced picture of civic engagement, awareness, and optimism within our community. Our survey, administered last month, continues to show trends that show that residents in Troy are somewhat pessimistic about the future of the community.
Where are we headed?
Participation in this survey stood at 87 respondents in the City of Troy, which is the largest number of participants this survey has ever had, 55% more respondents than our survey back in July.
In terms of the data, 31% of our readers believe the nation is on the right track, which is 16 percent lower than the number acheived in July. In addition, 51% of respondents felt the nation is headed in the wrong direction, which, is 13 percent higher than July. Residents also have a dimmer outlook when it comes to the State of Ohio; 18% think the state is heading in the right direction, while 46% believe the state is headed in the wrong direction; 36% are unsure.
When it comes to the City of Troy, the picture is a little brighter, but still not great. Our current survey shows that 54% of respondents believe our community is headed in the wrong direction, a three percent reduction since July. 23% of respondents believed that the community is headed in the right direction, which is a marked improvement of over 12% in July. Of note, 23% of respondents were unsure of the community’s direction. The chart below shows how these numbers have changed over the last two years.
Civic Awareness and Hope for the Future
Awareness levels about civic issues show a strong majority of residents who keep aware of civic issues. 21% of respondents are extremely aware and 37% are aware, 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 a largely nuanced outlook. 35% of respondents were do not expect to see any changes over the next year. 33% of respondents are either not confident or somewhat not confident that things will improve. 32% of respondents are confident or somewhat confident that things will improve, this number is lower than the 25% 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. 58% of respondents love their community, and another 33% of respondents like their community and 3% expressed no emotional attachment to the community.
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 September survey, with the 87 respondents that participated, this survey has a 10% 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:
Nearly two-thirds (66%) of our respondents were over age 65. Nearly one in four (26%) were between 45-64. One respondent was under age 35 responded to our survey.
For those that answered, most of our respondents were female (58%).
74% of our respondents are long time residents, stating they have lived in Troy for more than 20 years. Another 10% of respondents have lived in Troy for 10–20 years. 16% of respondents reported living in town less than 10 years.
A Quick Note on Piqua
For this survey, we also received dozens responses from Piqua and those figures will be the feature of a future newsletter later this month!
Endorsements Welcome!
As election season ramps up, you may be inclined to support a candidate for public office here locally and you can talk about that support here at Civic Capacity. With no limits on word counts, if you want to write an endorsement for a candidate in this November’s election, this publication will publish it. Send your endorsement to pinnaclestrategiesltd@gmail.com.
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A New Handbook to grow Civic Capacity!
Recently, we created a new digital handbook, “The Citizen’s Guide to Public Records”. This handbook is designed to help residents have a better understanding of public meetings and meeting records. It’s filled with templates, ideas and other information that will open a new world of public affairs.
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Want to Learn More About Troy’s Businesses?
Our publication has recently released our September 2025 Economic Abstract, the most comprehensive and up-to-date report on the businesses and industries in the City of Troy. For those that want to understand our community’s business and industries, this is a must-have report.
Thank you to our New Media Partners!
Recently, many of our stories has been showing up on the local news website, www.mymiamicounty.com. We are grateful for the good folks for sharing our work with their audience and we would encourage our readers to check them out at their website!
Our publication would also like to recognize the good work being done at www.piquanewsnow.com. Piqua News Now is a new web-based news and information site for the Miami County area, with a specific focus on Piqua!
In addition, the good folks at Piqua News Now have started a new, 24-hour streaming YouTube channel. This channel is awesome with continuous weather updates and more importanly, it provides a 24-hour audio feed from county wide dispatch. Check it out here!
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