News:

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on what errors you encountered from the forum database changes made in Fall 2023. Let us know if you discover anymore.

Main Menu

County seats that aren't town seats (?)

Started by empirestate, March 09, 2019, 12:33:04 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

MantyMadTown

Quote from: empirestate on March 12, 2019, 01:58:16 AM
Quote from: MantyMadTown on March 12, 2019, 01:19:18 AM
Quote from: empirestate on March 11, 2019, 10:49:38 AM
Menominee is interesting, as the town and county are also coterminous with the Indian reservation. I assume they're all governed as a single consolidated entity?

That's what I said.

The first sentence is, yes. Would you also say the second?

Yes, all of them are pretty much coterminous with each other. I know the town and the county are run as a single unit, but I'm not sure if the county/town is also run by the Menominee Tribe.

Quote from: empirestate on March 12, 2019, 01:58:16 AM
QuoteUsually it wouldn't make sense for a village or city to be the seat of town government, because they're separate from towns. I don't know of any examples where a village or city also contains the seat of its surrounding town's government.

No, not in Wisconsin; nor in Pennsylvania, for the same reason. So if there's an example in Wisconsin, it'll be an unincorporated place.

Yup.

Forget the I-41 haters


Avalanchez71

Quote from: SP Cook on March 12, 2019, 10:43:29 AM
In WV, there are two county subdivisions which are, weirdly, called the same thing, districts.  None really have a government.

The original districts, which never change, generally have names and are used today only for tax records and in deeds.  Until 1976, these districts elected a constable (totally untrained guy with full police powers, paid by %age of the fines) and a JP (totally untrained guy playing judge, paid by a %age of the fines and by a %age of the filing fees).  No actual government.  The JP/Constable system was abolished in 1976.

The County Commission and the Board of Education have geographic dispersal, meaning only one from each district, although elected country wide.  They used to use the same unchanging districts, but that was ruled unconstitutional because the populations were different, so now the county is divided into three districts which are just called 1 2 and 3, and redistricted after each Census.  They have no government, it is just to insure that the county commissioners and school board members are from each part of the county.  No government and certainly no "seat". 

Municipal corporations are divided into four classes based on population.  Classes I II and III are "cities" while IV is a "town" or a "village".  The powers of each class get less as you go down.  Of road interest is a Class IV is not allowed to use radar, but is not required to have trained policemen.  Most exist just to write speeding tickets with untrained cops using a stopwatch that make minimum wage.

Tennessee is very similar.  The county is divided into civil districts.  These districts are nothing more than division for deed purposes and property assessment, no government.  Just as similar as WV the districts were also used for electing constables and JPs as well.  However, to this day Tennessee still elects constables in counties in which they have not been abolished. JPs were gone by 1980 but the state removed most of the judicial powers long before that in most counties by private acts (local legislation.)

School districts can be either county wide or a special school districts can also be set up as well.  Municipalities can also form municipal school systems as well.

empirestate

Quote from: Avalanchez71 on March 13, 2019, 01:58:13 PM
Tennessee is very similar.  The county is divided into civil districts.  These districts are nothing more than division for deed purposes and property assessment, no government.  Just as similar as WV the districts were also used for electing constables and JPs as well.  However, to this day Tennessee still elects constables in counties in which they have not been abolished. JPs were gone by 1980 but the state removed most of the judicial powers long before that in most counties by private acts (local legislation.)

Yes, Tennessee's another one that probably won't have any examples.

We do of course have a thread on various municipality structures for those interested; meanwhile, has anybody come up with any more examples of the question?

tchafe1978

Quote from: empirestate on March 13, 2019, 11:38:55 PM
Quote from: Avalanchez71 on March 13, 2019, 01:58:13 PM
Tennessee is very similar.  The county is divided into civil districts.  These districts are nothing more than division for deed purposes and property assessment, no government.  Just as similar as WV the districts were also used for electing constables and JPs as well.  However, to this day Tennessee still elects constables in counties in which they have not been abolished. JPs were gone by 1980 but the state removed most of the judicial powers long before that in most counties by private acts (local legislation.)

Yes, Tennessee's another one that probably won't have any examples.

We do of course have a thread on various municipality structures for those interested; meanwhile, has anybody come up with any more examples of the question?

You probably won't find any more examples, especially since you yourself said you made up the concept.

empirestate

Quote from: tchafe1978 on March 14, 2019, 09:14:02 PM
You probably won't find any more examples, especially since you yourself said you made up the concept.

Why would that make a difference?

index

#55
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on March 10, 2019, 09:32:40 PM
Quote from: oscar on March 10, 2019, 06:41:50 PM
Quote from: US 89 on March 10, 2019, 04:33:57 PM
There are some low-population counties out west where the seat isn't in an incorporated place. For example: Esmeralda, Lincoln, and Nye County in Nevada all have a county seat that is simply an unincorporated community and also a CDP. So technically, there is no lower-order government seat located in the county seat.

(side note: Lincoln is fascinating because there is one incorporated city, but it's not the county seat!)

Not just the low-population counties. Hawaii has no local governments below the county level, so all its county seats are in unincorporated communities, even the City and County of Honolulu which has a population just under a million, which is about two-thirds of the state's population.

Alaska has several consolidated city-boroughs, including for high-population boroughs (Anchorage, Juneau) and very low-population boroughs (Yakutat, Skagway), which do not include any separately-incorporated communities. Lake and Peninsula Borough has several tiny cities, but its borough seat is not only unincorporated, but isn't even in its own borough. It's in neighboring Bristol Bay Borough, which has no incorporated communities, and its own borough seat (Naknek) is in a different unincorporated community than Lake and Peninsula's seat (King Salmon). Then there's the vast Unorganized Borough, which has no borough seat or government separate from the state government, but includes more than a dozen incorporated communities like Nome, Bethel, and Valdez, plus some native communities with their own local governments.
Hilo is not a city?


In the sense of being a location and a place, it is, but Hawaii, as mentioned in the original quote, doesn't have any local government beyond counties - the closest you'll get to that are CDPs. The only real similarity there is that they have borders, pretty much. Even Honolulu is technically an unincorporated community, which seems bizarre, but not too surprising. Other strange things exist in other states related to incorporation. Here in North Carolina the only difference between incorporations such as 'Village', 'Town', and 'City', are in name. There's no other difference.
I love my 2010 Ford Explorer.



Counties traveled

txstateends

The closest example in TX to the OP (almost) is in Bowie County.  While many might think of Texarkana as being the county seat, it is not.  The county seat is Boston.  But--the courthouse is just north, in New Boston.  I haven't looked into why, but the courthouse was set up in New Boston, without any move toward moving the official county seat placement from Boston to New Boston in the process.  All the other 253 counties have the courthouse in the city/town that is the county seat.  Most county seats in TX are incorporated as cities, but several are unincorporated, so you have a situation like in Guthrie (south of Childress, east of Lubbock) where there is county structure, but no city hall or municipal center at all.  What little operations there are for King County in Guthrie, is all there is for taking care of town or county business.

Thankfully there is no "township" layer of governmental/geographic activity in TX.  The city/town/community and county levels get complicated enough at times.
\/ \/ click for a bigger image \/ \/



Opinions expressed here on belong solely to the poster and do not represent or reflect the opinions or beliefs of AARoads, its creators and/or associates.