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An incorporated town is a town that is a municipal corporation. [1]
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An incorporated town is a town that is a municipal corporation. [1]
Incorporated towns are a form of local government in Canada, which is a responsibility of provincial rather than federal government.
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| | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (March 2022) |
An incorporated town or city in the United States is a municipality that is incorporated under state law. An incorporated town will have elected officials, as differentiated from an unincorporated community, which exists only by tradition and does not have elected officials at the town level. In some states, civil townships may sometimes be called towns, but are generally not incorporated municipalities, but are administrative subdivisions and derive their authority from statute rather than from a charter. In New York and Wisconsin, "towns" are more similar in concept to townships in other states than to incorporated towns in most states (see Administrative divisions of New York, Political subdivisions of Wisconsin). In some other states, the term "town" is not used for municipalities. There are also different types of town/city governments (incorporated or chartered) that affect the organization administrative powers such as council-manager government that is the most popular form, townships, Villages, town meeting, etc.
Under California's Government Code Sections 34500-34504, the terms "city" and "town" are explicitly interchangeable, i.e. there is no legal distinction between an incorporated city and an incorporated town. California has 22 incorporated municipalities that are styled "Town of (Name)" instead of "City of (Name)".
In Illinois, an incorporated town is one of three types of incorporated municipalities. Incorporated towns were incorporated by special acts of the Illinois General Assembly prior to the creation of the Illinois Municipal Code. [2] Illinois's standard law on municipalities came into effect on July 1, 1872, and does not provide for the incorporation of municipal towns. Since the Municipal Code provides a standard way for citizens to incorporate a new city or village, but not a town, incorporated towns are far less common than city and village municipalities in Illinois.
Although civil townships and incorporated towns are sometimes both called towns, they are completely separate types of government in Illinois: Unlike incorporated towns, townships are subdivisions of a county and are not incorporated municipalities. [3]
The oldest existing municipal town in Illinois is Astoria in Fulton County, incorporated on January 24, 1839; the newest existing town is La Prairie in Adams County, incorporated on April 15, 1869. [4]
There are 19 incorporated towns in Illinois, none of which are county seats [4]
Municipalities in Maryland can be cities, towns, or villages.
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In all six New England states (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine), towns are the main units of local government. Towns cover most or all land area in all six states, including rural areas. New England towns are notable for their town meeting form of government.
A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
A town is a type of a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
A township is a form of human settlement or administrative subdivision. Its exact definition varies among countries.
An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. There are many unincorporated communities and areas in the United States and Canada. Most other countries have very few or no unincorporated areas.
A minor civil division (MCD) is a term used by the United States Census Bureau for primary governmental and/or administrative divisions of a county or county-equivalent, typically a municipal government such as a city, town, or civil township. MCDs are used for statistical purposes by the Census Bureau, and do not necessarily represent the primary form of local government. They range from non-governing geographical survey areas to municipalities with weak or strong powers of self-government. Some states with large unincorporated areas give substantial powers to counties; others have smaller or larger incorporated entities with governmental powers that are smaller than the MCD level chosen by the Census.
A civil township is a widely used unit of local government in the United States that is subordinate to a county, most often in the northern and midwestern parts of the country. The term town is used in New England, New York, as well as Wisconsin to refer to the equivalent of the civil township in these states; Minnesota uses "town" officially but often uses it and "township" interchangeably. Specific responsibilities and the degree of autonomy vary in each state. Civil townships are distinct from survey townships, but in states that have both, the boundaries often coincide and may completely geographically subdivide a county. The U.S. Census Bureau classifies civil townships as minor civil divisions. Currently, there are 20 states with civil townships.
The administrative divisions of New York are the various units of government that provide local services in the U.S. State of New York. The state is divided into boroughs, counties, cities, towns, and villages. They are municipal corporations, chartered (created) by the New York State Legislature, as under the New York State Constitution the only body that can create governmental units is the state. All of them have their own governments, sometimes with no paid employees, that provide local services. Centers of population that are not incorporated and have no government or local services are designated hamlets. Whether a municipality is defined as a borough, city, town, or village is determined not by population or land area, but rather on the form of government selected by the residents and approved by the New York State Legislature. Each type of local government is granted specific home rule powers by the New York State Constitution. There are still occasional changes as a village becomes a city, or a village dissolves, each of which requires legislative action. New York also has various corporate entities that provide local services and have their own administrative structures (governments), such as school and fire districts. These are not found in all counties.
A township in some states of the United States is a small geographic area.
Most U.S. states and territories have at least two tiers of local government: counties and municipalities. Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the U.S. Census Bureau terms county equivalents in those states. Civil townships or towns are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.
A borough in some U.S. states is a unit of local government or other administrative division below the level of the state. The term is currently used in six states:
The town is the basic unit of local government and local division of state authority in the six New England states. Most other U.S. states lack a direct counterpart to the New England town. New England towns overlay the entire area of a state, similar to civil townships in other states where they exist, but they are fully functioning municipal corporations, possessing powers similar to cities and counties in other states. New Jersey's system of equally powerful townships, boroughs, towns, and cities is the system which is most similar to that of New England. New England towns are often governed by a town meeting, an assembly of eligible town residents. The great majority of municipal corporations in New England are based on the town model; there, statutory forms based on the concept of a compact populated place are uncommon, though elsewhere in the U.S. they are prevalent. County government in New England states is typically weak at best, and in some states nonexistent. Connecticut, for example, has no county governments, nor does Rhode Island. Both of those states retain counties only as geographic subdivisions with no governmental authority, while Massachusetts has abolished eight of fourteen county governments so far. Counties serve mostly as dividing lines for the states' judicial systems and some other state services in the southern New England states, while providing varying services in the more sparsely populated three northern New England states.
The administrative divisions of Wisconsin include counties, cities, villages and towns. In Wisconsin, all of these are units of general-purpose local government. There are also a number of special-purpose districts formed to handle regional concerns, such as school districts.
In the United States, the meaning of village varies by geographic area and legal jurisdiction. In many areas, "village" is a term, sometimes informal, for a type of administrative division at the local government level. Since the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government from legislating on local government, the states are free to have political subdivisions called "villages" or not to and to define the word in many ways. Typically, a village is a type of municipality, although it can also be a special district or an unincorporated area. It may or may not be recognized for governmental purposes.
The state of Michigan is largely divided in the same way as many other U.S. states, but is distinct in its usage of charter townships. Michigan ranks 13th among the fifty states in terms of the number of local governmental entities.
Local government in New Jersey is composed of counties and municipalities. Local jurisdictions in New Jersey differ from those in some other states because every square foot of the state is part of exactly one municipality; each of the 564 municipalities is in exactly one county; and each of the 21 counties has more than one municipality. New Jersey has no independent cities, or consolidated city-counties.
Local government in Pennsylvania is government below the state level in Pennsylvania. There are six types of local governments listed in the Pennsylvania Constitution: county, township, borough, town, city, and school district. All of Pennsylvania is included in one of the state's 67 counties, which are in total subdivided into 2,560 municipalities. There are currently no independent cities or unincorporated territories within Pennsylvania. There is only one incorporated town in Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg.
The administrative divisions of Illinois are counties, townships, precincts, cities, towns, villages, and special-purpose districts. The basic subdivisions of Illinois are the 102 counties. Illinois has more units of local government than any other state—over 8,000 in all. The Constitution of 1970 created, for the first time in Illinois, a type of "home rule", which allows localities to govern themselves to a certain extent. Illinois also has several types of school districts and additional units of government that oversee many other functions.
The administrative divisions of Ohio are counties, municipalities, townships, special districts, and school districts.
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