TROY, Ohio—“Chickens get thirsty. Agriculture is the priority around here.” The presiding trustee of our township was breaking some hard news to the handsome young couple in front of him.
“Drill a new well. What’s next?”
Dressed in matchy-match nylon athleisure, they were too astonished to respond. This was not the conversation they’d imagined 12 hours before when they’d awoken to find the taps and showers in their brand-new home dry yet again. Or when they’d driven to the township hall, parked their Subaru Ascent among a gaggle of ragged and rusty pickups, picked their way down rickety stairs into a basement dug shortly after the Civil War, and demanded action! The couple had spent seven figures to build a home on a previously vacant farm lot, but the long barns on the next property contained a fully functional egg farm. Shortly after moving in, their new—and shallow—well ran dry. They wanted the egg farm shut down.
Instead, they’d been dismissed out of hand, with no possibility of appeal, by a man with grease-stained hands and an embroidered work shirt who had just come from his day job as a diesel-truck mechanic.
What gave this mechanic the right? Well, Troy, Morrow County, Ohio, is a township, which means the entire government consists of four men in canvas work pants.
I was seated just a few folding chairs away—and had to stifle a laugh. I was born in New York City, but became a suburbanite at age 13. Then, in 2022, my wife and I moved to this corner of rural Ohio. We are both amateur car racers and wanted room to operate an eight-person, five-car team. But we were immediately fascinated by our new home’s streamlined form of government. We resolved never to miss a township trustee meeting.