TRENTON — Mayor Ryan Perry told Trenton City Council on Thursday, Oct. 15, that he will resign on Jan. 1, 2027, ending his time leading this Butler County city a year before his term was set to expire, after months of turmoil over proposed data centers.
Perry made the announcement in the final minutes of Thursday’s council meeting. He was first elected to council 15 years ago, and in Trenton the seven elected council members choose the mayor and vice mayor from among themselves, with most members also holding full-time jobs outside city government.
Perry, who also works full time at GE Aerospace, said the job has outgrown what he can give it. When he started on council, he said, the work took about four or five hours a week; it now takes 35 to 40 hours, on top of a changing workload at his day job. He said he has returned every phone call from residents but has not answered everyone who wrote to him by email, and that falling short of his own standard for responding to citizens is, in his words, irresponsible of him.
The resignation follows months of escalating debate in Trenton over two proposed data centers in the area, including one for Amazon Web Services. The fight has become one of the most divisive issues in the city’s recent history.
Trenton voters will decide this November whether to ban large data centers from the city. The ballot issue exists because the Ohio Supreme Court found that council disregarded the law when it failed to certify a resident-led petition on the question in August, forcing the measure forward despite council’s resistance. The city also tried to annex land from two neighboring rural townships to assemble a site for an 18-building Amazon data center; after pushback from residents and the townships, it withdrew the annexation petition shortly before the Butler County Board of Commissioners was set to hear it.
Tensions peaked at council’s Oct. 1 meeting, when members introduced a package of financial benefits that would only have taken effect if voters rejected the data center ban in November. Public comment erupted into a yelling match, and at least one audience member was escorted from the room.
On Thursday the council voted unanimously to withdraw those resolutions. A staff report called the measures a mistake and said the city recognizes the importance of staying neutral on matters that are before the voters.
Perry’s departure on Jan. 1 will leave council to choose a new mayor from its ranks at the start of 2027, with the November vote on the large data center ban — the issue that consumed his final year in the role — still to be decided by Trenton residents at the ballot box.
