Townships verses Towns are they really the same?

[roadman65]

I was noticing that New Jersey has townships and towns, and it seems to be the type of government that runs them over the area even though townships are larger in size usually.  However there is the Township of Winfield Park in New Jersey that is smaller than some large estates are and sits within a bend in the Rahway River in Union County.

Yet, in New York you do not see townships, but towns.  And in most cases the rural areas between cities and villages are often incorporated that way where in the Garden State its usually the townships between large settlements the way towns are inside the Empire State.

Then you have this one according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange,_New_Jersey that just blows my head off as its named The Township of the City of Orange.  Wait, what?  How could a city be a township if they have totally different types of governments.  Then we cannot forget that we have boroughs and in NJ they mean totally different definitions as compare Staten Island to Carteret on both sides of the Arthur Kill which are both incorporated boroughs.

I will try to ask this as best as I can, as words are not my strong suit by far.  Is the type of government defined by state laws, or is it the same in government in general.  Yes, I know that cause Florida, Delaware, and Kansas only have city governments with in between areas wards of the counties.  No boroughs, no villages (that I am aware of), and most of all no townships exist in these along with many states as those are only three of many.  Than NJ and PA have a wide array of descriptors to define the municipality, but NY and CT only have cities and towns with villages in NY being part of a town, but with its own government within it.

Is a town in NY the same as a township in NJ?  Is a borough in NJ basically a small city by size?   I was always wondering why some states make things more complicated then it needs to be.  After living in Florida which has only city and county governments it seems so simple compared to the northeast which has each state with many different names as discriptors and of course on unincorporated land in some of the northeast states.

[Brandon]

Depends on where one is.  In Illinois, there is a legal definition of an incorporated town, and there's only 19 of them.  The last ones were incorporated in 1869, and they are governmentally like cities or villages (there is a governmental distinction - cities have council districts, villages elect trustees at-large).  Then we have civil townships which usually handle property assessments (even inside municipalities) and maintain streets and roads in unincorporated areas within the civil township (those that are not IDOT highways or county highways).

[Avalanchez71]

Townships in FL are there but they are not units of government.  They were used for survey purposes.  Townships and towns may vary in scope and practice.  WI uses the word town but the town in WI functions more as a township.  PA uses the word township but they function more like a town.

A town would be more of an independent body of government that would more or less be more involved in the daily lives of a person.  A township is more of a special taxing district that would have only those types of functions to perform that are established by statute.  Now towns are the same way but they can more usually more or less have liberal construction of statute versus strict construction unless it operates under home rule.

A township is more like a subdivision of a county than it is a corporate municipality.  However, most townships serve as some sort of body politic and can be a corporate municipality.  A town more or less has more functions to perform.  Generally speaking a township in most Midwestern and Western states is considered an unincorporated area.  They may be formed maybe for the collective for the building of additional roads, schools, or very specified purposes.  Towns generally are charted as a municipal cooperation to perform what most would consider city type services.  Townships in Arkansas only exist as lines on a map and for the election and services of Constables.  However, notwithstanding my previous, each state may choose what to call it's subdivisions and how they may function.

[Avalanchez71]

I was noticing that New Jersey has townships and towns, and it seems to be the type of government that runs them over the area even though townships are larger in size usually.  However there is the Township of Winfield Park in New Jersey that is smaller than some large estates are and sits within a bend in the Rahway River in Union County.

Yet, in New York you do not see townships, but towns.  And in most cases the rural areas between cities and villages are often incorporated that way where in the Garden State its usually the townships between large settlements the way towns are inside the Empire State.

Then you have this one according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange,_New_Jersey that just blows my head off as its named The Township of the City of Orange.  Wait, what?  How could a city be a township if they have totally different types of governments.  Then we cannot forget that we have boroughs and in NJ they mean totally different definitions as compare Staten Island to Carteret on both sides of the Arthur Kill which are both incorporated boroughs.

I will try to ask this as best as I can, as words are not my strong suit by far.  Is the type of government defined by state laws, or is it the same in government in general.  Yes, I know that cause Florida, Delaware, and Kansas only have city governments with in between areas wards of the counties.  No boroughs, no villages (that I am aware of), and most of all no townships exist in these along with many states as those are only three of many.  Than NJ and PA have a wide array of descriptors to define the municipality, but NY and CT only have cities and towns with villages in NY being part of a town, but with its own government within it.

Is a town in NY the same as a township in NJ?  Is a borough in NJ basically a small city by size?   I was always wondering why some states make things more complicated then it needs to be.  After living in Florida which has only city and county governments it seems so simple compared to the northeast which has each state with many different names as discriptors and of course on unincorporated land in some of the northeast states.

Florida does use the term village.  However, the use is the same as town or city.  If I recall there is really no distinction in the administration of government between a city, town or village in Florida.  It is more of an incorporating term.  There may have been a difference some time in the past. 

[empirestate]

I think we already have a pretty thorough thread somewhere about various municipality types in general, but to answer the specific comparison between NY and NJ, a NY town is most closely analogous to a NJ township. In both states, counties are subdivided into smaller units called townships (NJ) or towns (NY), just the same way that states are subdivided into counties and the nation is subdivided into states. These are what the Census bureau calls "Minor Civil Divisions", meaning that they're more of a subdivision of territory than they are a populated place, but they still have a civil (governmental or jurisdictional) function.

Now, the thing with NJ is that, while at one time the state map would show a pretty obvious division of the state into townships, with various other kinds of settlements inside of or between them, the situation today is that the various municipalities differ in pretty arcane ways according to how legislation defines them (and with the adoption of home rule, those differences often become moot anyway). At this point, all types of municipalities in NJ are essentially equal in terms of being both subdivisions of the land and governmental units of populated areas.

Meanwhile, in NY you still see towns as clearly being land divisions, and the incorporated places inside of them are villages. This is probably a big reason for the difference between the two states: in NY, villages are dependent of towns: they are part of them in terms of both land and government. In NJ, all types of municipalities are independent of each other. Oddly, however, this is also true in PA, but PA shows a structure more closely resembling NY with its townships (towns) and boroughs (villages), which is probably because PA's townships are a generally weaker type of government than NY's towns or NJ's townships.

[briantroutman]

Is the type of government defined by state laws, or is it the same in government in general.

Yes. In the US, the state is the fundamental unit of government. Each state, through its state constitution, determines what units of county and municipal government will exist and what powers are reserved for those units. So it's impossible give a flat answer to this question across all 50 states–each state has different terms, definitions, and practices.

In Pennsylvania, for example, there is no "unincorporated territory"  within the state–all land is part of a city, town, borough, or township. As you can imagine, some suburban townships function like towns with their own fire departments, schools, and police forces, while others in very rural areas exist essentially in name only.

For the most part, the differences between townships, towns, villages, boroughs, and various types of cities come down to how they're governed, whether they have mayors or city/town councils, how those positions are elected, and so on.

I was always wondering why some states make things more complicated then it needs to be.

Part of the complicatedness is just inherited from centuries of outdated laws and obsolete practices. But there is a reason for some of it. Take the example of S.N.P.J., Pennsylvania–once the state's least populous borough with a population of 12. So why does a population barely in the double digits warrant borough status while much larger communities are content being lesser townships? S.N.P.J. is an acronym for a Slovak social society, and what was to become their borough was the site of their weekend retreat. And so to allow Sunday liquor sales (illegal in the surrounding township), they incorporated as a borough. I understand a similar situation led to the creation of the borough Tavistock, NJ (population 5) from neighboring Haddonfield.

[triplemultiplex]

In Wisconsin, town = township in the parlance of most states.  Referring to an incorporated community as a "town" is purely colloquial.  The term "township" tends to be primarily used in the context of discussing public land survey townships; the 6 mile by six mile survey grid we Americans put down over most of the country once we started expanding west after the Revolution.  This is particularly true in the northern part of the state where municipal towns frequently cover multiple survey townships.  Oddly enough, you will find signs around the state for municipal towns that refer to themselves as a "township", which is technically inaccurate.

All land in the state that is not incorporated into a village or city is part of a town.  Unless there is an established boundary agreement between a town and a city or village, town land can be fairly easily annexed onto an adjoining city or village so long as that is what the property owner would like and the city or village agrees.

Some municipal towns have grown quite large in the state to the point where they pretty much function as incorporated villages with public utilities and first responders and so forth.  And thanks to boundary agreements with adjoining incorporated municipalities, they are in little danger of losing territory for the foreseeable future.  Usually, a town facing increasing annexation from a neighbor will incorporate to prevent that from happening, but in a few places, a boundary agreement is reached that stops additional annexation without forcing the town to incorporate.  The poster child of this type of "urban" town in Wisconsin is the Town of Grand Chute in Outagamie County.  MGK920 has posted extensively over the years about this peculiarity of a municipal entity, and I'm sure he'll chime in about that one a little.

Other examples include the would-be Wausau suburb of Rib Mountain and another Appleton area one where the Town of Menasha has managed to become quite urban.  In all of these cases, the primary annexation pressure comes from a single city, so if a boundary agreement can be reached with that city, then the pressure to incorporate is less.

[jeffandnicole]

In NJ, the type of government determines the classification of the municipality, which is different than how most other states determine their municipality classifications.  We have a City with under a thousand residents, and Villages well over 10,000 people.  (Actually, there are only 3 villages in NJ.  2 of them contain over 10,000 residents.)

A Town's government appears to operate more like how a City's government typically runs.  A Township's government is completely different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_(New_Jersey) is a good enough place to start to try to comprehend the various government styles in NJ. 

[cpzilliacus]

Most South Atlantic Coast states, starting with Maryland and further south, have no townships or boroughs of any kind. 

Maryland has cities, towns and at least a few villages, but they are all essentially the same, with the exception of Baltimore, which is a city that is not part of any county.  But no townships of any kind.  For most residents of the state, the county government is the local government.  There are also "special taxing districts"  where property owners pay a higher property tax rate for certain services or amenities that the county does not provide, but they are not municipalities in their own right.  For an excellent discussion of Maryland local government, see this document from the state's Department of Legislative Services.

Virginia has cities, which are always independent of nearby counties, as well as towns, which are municipalities that are always part of a county. As in Maryland, there are no townships. 

In some states (notably New York and Maine, and a few more), a town is effectively the same thing as a township.

[empirestate]

Another good primer from the Census bureau: http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/garm.html (Chapters 8 and 9 specifically deal with the types of municipal entities and their relationship to each other).

And this from NJ's league of municipalities: http://www.njslom.org/forms-of-government.html

[SP Cook]

Is the type of government defined by state laws, or is it the same in government in general.

Yes. In the US, the state is the fundamental unit of government. Each state, through its state constitution, determines what units of county and municipal government will exist and what powers are reserved for those units. So it’s impossible give a flat answer to this question across all 50 states —each state has different terms, definitions, and practices.

Excellent answer.

In WV, like most southern states, there are no townships.  Villages, towns and several classes of cities exist.  The distinctions are based on population with each step up having more autonomy than the previous.   All are defined geographic units and anything outside it is an "unincorporated area", with no government below the county level.  Villages, towns and cities are still a part of the county they are in.

[Scott5114]

In Oklahoma, there are no townships for governmental purposes, only survey purposes. Towns are the name given to the most common type of municipality. If a town meets certain population and other qualifications, it can be upgraded to a city.

[empirestate]

And, since this always arises, even the meaning of the term "incorporated" isn't the same from state to state. In New York, towns are not considered to be incorporated entities, even though they have established boundaries and organized, functioning governments. The term "incorporated" in New York is reserved for villages and cities only.

The Census bureau mirrors NY's use of the term throughout the U.S., although in some states, entities equivalent to NY's towns would typically be referred to as "incorporated".

[noelbotevera]

In Pennsylvania, I live in Chambersburg, a part of Hamilton Township. Taxes go to Hamilton Township, and not the town of Chambersburg. Towns are more or less for survey purposes.

[roadman65]

In Pennsylvania, I live in Chambersburg, a part of Franklin Township. Taxes go to Franklin Township, and not the town of Chambersburg. Towns are more or less for survey purposes.

Wow, I thought Chambersburg was a city or borough and independent of anything other than county.

[noelbotevera]

In Pennsylvania, I live in Chambersburg, a part of Franklin Township. Taxes go to Franklin Township, and not the town of Chambersburg. Towns are more or less for survey purposes.

Wow, I thought Chambersburg was a city or borough and independent of anything other than county.

oops, I meant Hamilton Township

edit:fixed

[cpzilliacus]

And, since this always arises, even the meaning of the term "incorporated" isn't the same from state to state. In New York, towns are not considered to be incorporated entities, even though they have established boundaries and organized, functioning governments. The term "incorporated" in New York is reserved for villages and cities only.

In Maryland, if it is inside the corporate limits of a city, town or village, then it is "incorporated." 

Most of the state is unincorporated.

[Brandon]

In NJ, the type of government determines the classification of the municipality, which is different than how most other states determine their municipality classifications.  We have a City with under a thousand residents, and Villages well over 10,000 people.  (Actually, there are only 3 villages in NJ.  2 of them contain over 10,000 residents.)

Illinois is quite similar, but the villages can get very large.  Schaumburg, Bolingbrook, and Arlington Heights are all villages, not cities, and all north of 70,000 in population.  Arlington Heights is the largest municipality in the US to be classified as a village.

A city in Illinois can be council-mayor or council-manager style government, but is divided into districts (wards) for council members (aldermen).  Some my be elected at-large, but most have a district.  A village in Illinois can also be council-mayor or council-manager style government, but the trustees are all elected at-large.  The village is not subdivided into council districts.  There are far more villages in Illinois than cities (or even the 19 towns) as village incorporation is much easier.  Both do get home rule powers after passing 25,000 in population or by vote if smaller than 25,000 in population.

[empirestate]

In Pennsylvania, I live in Chambersburg, a part of Hamilton Township. Taxes go to Hamilton Township, and not the town of Chambersburg. Towns are more or less for survey purposes.

Chambersburg is a borough in Pennsylvania (it's the seat of Franklin County), and Hamilton Township is adjacent to it, but not part of it. It's probable, though, that many if not most residences in Hamilton Township have Chambersburg addresses. That means that, while they're not in Chambersburg, they're served by the post office called Chambersburg (or a branch of it).

And of course, Chambersburg isn't really a town: Pennsylvania famously has but one so-called "town" which is Bloomsburg. It's basically just like a borough. Townships in Pennsylvania, unlike the survey townships farther west, are the basic minor civil division into which the counties are broken up. But in Pennsylvania, boroughs and cities (yes, and towns) are separate from the townships, not part of them.

[GaryV]

Michigan townships are generally considered unincorporated.  They are based on the old Northwest Ordinance surveys, as are most county lines.  In a few places, like the between Monroe and Wayne county, a river serves as the boundary.  And in less populated areas, several survey townships are organized together as one township.

Villages are usually within a township, but can cross lines.  They have a higher level of taxation and services, but not much.

Cities are at the top of the heap, with full services and full taxation.

There are also Charter Townships, which are a kind of hybrid.  They evolved as "semi-incorporating" the township so that cities could not annex the land.  They are limited to the amount of tax millage they can levy, but most provide at least some city-like services such as having a police department.

When cities (and I presume other political divisions) fall into financial ruin, the state can appoint an emergency manager.  Detroit is the most well-known example, but other cities have emergency managers and school districts do as well.  Other than that, school districts are completely separate from civic government entities.  How the bankrupt Detroit Public Schools will end up being governed is a current topic of proposed legislation.

[bulldog1979]

Michigan townships are generally considered unincorporated.  They are based on the old Northwest Ordinance surveys, as are most county lines.  In a few places, like the between Monroe and Wayne county, a river serves as the boundary.  And in less populated areas, several survey townships are organized together as one township.

Villages are usually within a township, but can cross lines.  They have a higher level of taxation and services, but not much.

Cities are at the top of the heap, with full services and full taxation.

There are also Charter Townships, which are a kind of hybrid.  They evolved as "semi-incorporating" the township so that cities could not annex the land.  They are limited to the amount of tax millage they can levy, but most provide at least some city-like services such as having a police department.

When cities (and I presume other political divisions) fall into financial ruin, the state can appoint an emergency manager.  Detroit is the most well-known example, but other cities have emergency managers and school districts do as well.  Other than that, school districts are completely separate from civic government entities.  How the bankrupt Detroit Public Schools will end up being governed is a current topic of proposed legislation.

Cities and villages in Michigan can cross county lines. Villages can also cross township lines, while townships cannot cross county lines. The Village of Mackinaw City is located within Wawatam Township in Emmet County and Mackinaw Township in Cheboygan County. The City of Traverse City is located within Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties. School districts can also cross county lines and don't have to follow other municipal boundaries. The best example of this is the NICE Community School District. They formed in the 1970s from the merger of four other districts, leading to the acronym for their name. The former Ishpeming Township school district, and NICE post-merger, does not contain part of Ishpeming Township near Deer Lake, which is in the Ishpeming Public Schools. The former Champion school district, and now NICE, includes Spurr Township in Baraga County in addition to Champion and Humboldt townships in Marquette County.

Charter townships are required to provide policing. Marquette and Chocolay townships in Marquette County are both charter townships. Each individually contracts with the Marquette County Sheriff's Department to provide a a deputy dedicated to their township. In fact, the MCSD has two cars, one with "Charter Township of Marquette" and one with "Charter Township of Chocolay" on the rear fenders. Other deputies patrol the townships as well, but they do so in the same fashion as deputies may patrol the City of Marquette or any other township.

Emergency managers, and the emergency financial managers that preceded them, can be appointed for school districts, townships, villages, cities and counties. When first appointed by Gov. Engler (R) in the 1990s, the EFM was Mayor Coleman Young (D) from Detroit. EFMs only had limited powers related to a body's finances, and EMs were given more power to restructure and reform government. EMs can even propose the dissolution of a municipal or district government, as one did recently with a school district near Flint, putting the affected students into neighboring districts.

[slorydn1]

We actually do have Townships in NC, however to the average Joe they mean nothing. You won't find them on any roadmap, they only really exist for political divisions in the county government, and often times they are also the fire protection districts for the volunteer fire departments.

In my county the 2 largest municipalities New Bern and Havelock are cities and the rest of them are towns. They all have mayors and a council (New Bern calls their council members Aldermen and they represent wards within the city) and the rest all have council members elected at large (I think Havelock calls theirs commissioners, I could be wrong though).

[jwolfer]

We actually do have Townships in NC, however to the average Joe they mean nothing. You won't find them on any roadmap, they only really exist for political divisions in the county government, and often times they are also the fire protection districts for the volunteer fire departments.

In my county the 2 largest municipalities New Bern and Havelock are cities and the rest of them are towns. They all have mayors and a council (New Bern calls their council members Aldermen and they represent wards within the city) and the rest all have council members elected at large (I think Havelock calls theirs commissioners, I could be wrong though).

I would think that at one point all the original 13 colonies had something like towns/townships. 

From what I gather in NJ townships at one were divisions of mainly rural areas. Not really meant for governing large populations. As villages grew they became they seperated from the rural township into s borough or city.  The post office set up offices in the villages. That's how townships are known by the biggest village. ( i.e. Manahawkin is address for most of Stafford Township) also explains multiple townships with same name( Hamilton, Washington)

Modern suburban development overshadowed the villages and if one of the villages was not dominant. Newcomers did not identify with the villages, the identity was the township ( i.e. old timers were from Osbornville, Herbertsville, Metedeconk or Laurelton not Brick). Toms River was the biggest village and County seat in Dover Township.. So in 1997 the name change to Toms River Township