What are townships and how are they different from towns?

29 comments

1. In my area Townships are grouping of smaller villages that share things like municipal services, fire, ambulance and police.

   Curious if that applies everywhere though.

2. They are like subunits of counties. They have limited responsibilities where I live, mostly road maintenance, and don’t exist in the big cities. They are primarily in rural parts of the state.

3. In Maine the whole state is divided into cities and towns but there are townships that are unincorporated. Some have names and others have just a number. They have no local government and are administered by the state directly because they are extremely low population or uninhabited.

   Out west of the Appalachians townships are a subdivision of counties mostly relating to land ownership. Sometimes school boards, fire service, and a few other services are set up by township. Some city and town borders just use the townships but the townships themselves are survey units of land.

   This is because of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), which is the formal system the US used to survey and divide up plots of land newly acquired. [Wikipedia has a decent overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System).

   The land was divided into sections, sections into ranges, and ranges into townships [see here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Systemic_numbering_in_the_Public_Land_Survey_System.gif)

   It is all on a grid

4. It varies by state. Michigan’s variant on Townships is apparently only found in Michigan and has an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to explaining it. For reference, a large percentage of Michigan “cities” are actually Townships. And they have varying levels of services and taxes and local laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_township

5. In my state, townships and towns are one in the same from a government/legal perspective and are somewhat similarly sized squares of land excluding any incorporated area like a city or a village. So practically speaking, everyone lives in a town, city, or village. Each one has it’s own governing body and the services provided and how vary widely.

6. I grew up in a township in Wisconsin. Probably 100-200 people. Unincorporated.

   Went to school in the larger surrounding town that had a 7k population.

   The township had 3-4 bars and a City hall with a recycling center. Maybe a plow or two. No fire, police, school anything like that

7. When I lived in Illinois, townships were subdivisions of counties, the offered some more localized services for those who lived outside a village, town, or city. (A town in Illinois is an incorporated municipality like a village or a city).

   In Wisconsin here, towns are similar to Illinois’ townships, but offer the majority of rural services (instead of the county) if you don’t live in a village or a city.

8. In Indiana, the entire state is divided into several townships. They lie within counties but they are not subservient to county government. They are their own political entity with an elected advisory board, an elected township trustee, and may have other elected offices such as judges or constables.

   Their mandatory duties are only a few. One is poverty relief. This is not meant to be ongoing welfare but rather to help pay a specific bill in a month that might’ve been hard for a resident. Unfortunately there’s very little guidelines and almost no oversite. Some trustees pay out nearly nothing, and others make it a long and bureaucratic process. Some have said it would be easier to just give $50 to everyone who walked in the door then to spend the time on staffing and applications. Some township trustees have gone to prison for abuse of public funds.

   Small claims courts are also a common function of township government.

   Some townships are active beyond their obligations. Some run parks systems, libraries, and fire services. Others may collect a tax for this service but will piggyback off of a nearby town/city/county’s similar service.

   There was a efficiency report issued by a bi-partisan commission 10+ years ago that suggested eliminating township government and rolling the services into town, city, or county government. Noting that many services are duplicated, there’s very little accountability, and most people don’t even know what a township even is.

9. That depends on the state. Townships in, say, Ohio, are subdivisions of a county. In NJ a township is its own municipality like a city or borough. Speaking of city in certain states a city is a type of municipality over x population. In Texas, for example, you can have a population of like 150 and still be classed as a city

10. Here in NJ, townships are a type of municipality (we have very weak counties here as well)

    Municipalities can be lumped into two groups: Urban and Rural

    Towns, Boroughs, and Cities are Urban. They (especially the former two) are small, dense and have a strong downtown. (Example: Town of Dover, NJ)

    Villages and Townships are more rural/suburban (depending on what part of the state) and have very few businesses, but are typically adjacent to a Town or Borough (Randolph Township, NJ) .

    Many of these pairs used to be part of one larger municipality, but split in the 1900s (due to classism, as townships were farms and wealthy enclaves whilst towns were more industrial in nature).

11. Varies by state

12. *”In New England we don’t really have counties…”*

    Maine has 16 counties, New Hampshire has 10, Vermont has 14 as does Massachusetts. Connecticut has 8 and even Rhode Island has 5 counties.

    ¯\_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)_/¯

13. I just want to clarify your “we [New England] don’t really have counties”…we do have them, but the scope of their functions would be unfamiliar elsewhere. That scope is even different from county to county within the same state, like how some Massachusetts counties have an executive/county commissioners and others don’t.

14. In Pennsylvania it’s just a type of municipality. They’re usually larger rural areas. Government is a board of 3 supervisors instead of a mayor and a city council or whatever. You’ve got 3 options for local government, city, borough, township

15. Connecticut definitely has counties, so you must mean somewhere further north

16. In some states, mostly Midwest, “townships” are an additional level of government between the county and municipal level (in NY they have this too, but they just call it a “town” instead of a “township”). In NJ a township is just another type of municipality like a city, town, borough, or village.

17. I don’t know but wonder if your towns are similar to Long Island’s.

    Long Island has two counties: Nassau and Suffolk. Those counties are broken up into thirteen towns: Hempstead, North Hempstead, Oyster Boy, Babylon, Huntington, Islip, Smithtown, Brookhaven, Southhampton, Riverhead, East Hampton, Shelter Island, and Southhold. Each of those towns has several hamlets, villages, etc. *Colloquially* if you ask someone from Long Island what town they’re from they’d generally answer with their hamlet or village. So, if you asked my sister what town she was from she would say Lloyd Harbor which is a village in the Town of Huntington. I use her as an example simply because my town and village have the same name.

    I believe Westchester, NY is broken down similarly but I don’t think all of New York State is.

18. Born and raised in Connecticut and we absolutely have counties. I grew up in Hartford county. We then moved to New Haven county and were not able to use the old services we used to use as they did not serve New Haven county, just as an example

19. In Minnesota, townships encompass the space outside of each city limit. They can be organized or unorganized, (mostly unorganized) but are divided for surveying purposes.

    If they’re organized, they’ll have a township board and it operates kind of like a city would– they can vote to impose rules and regulations within their township. Nothing major, usually– mine just has specific rules for road maintenance and such. They set up the local voting procedures for the township, so when I vote, I go to the local township hall to do so.

20. Exact details vary a bit by state.

    You know how cities have their own local government? Like, a city has a mayor, and a city council, and city-specific laws, and a police department, and parks, and schools, and libraries, and road maintenance? And all of those things are run by the city?

    Places that aren’t cities have all those things too. But those local governments (and their boundaries) are defined as “Townships”.

21. In Wisconsin and Illinois at least, the whole state is covered by counties. They do the property tax, have a sheriff and sheriff department, run a jail and a county court, and do some things like have a health department that deals with infectious diseases, they also do child protective services. There are also county highways that they maintain and plow. The main roads that run between small towns are probably county highways. (State highways on the other hand are marked with signs that vary by state.)

    Local incorporated governments are either cities or villages. Those are the classic city governments you’re thinking of–property tax, run the fire department and police, do zoning, maintain the local streets in the city, run the sewer system, sometimes do other utilities like electric or gas, sometimes have parks (sometimes parks are their own separate thing). School districts are separate districts with boards and taxes and their own elected boards.

    The township is a sub-unit of the county. Most of the Midwest is laid out as a mile grid. It was surveyed up that way in the early 1800s to help with settling it efficiently. Townships are usually 6×6 mile squares. There are township roads which are just the basic roads on the mile grid and mostly run between farm fields. In my area the township does stuff like re-dig the ditches now and then and replace culverts. Townships also often fund and run the volunteer fire departments and maybe a volunteer ambulance.

    Illinois has some sort of weird situation where townships exist in parallel with cities and overlap them but don’t really actually do anything when a city is present (we have way too many local government units, districts, and boards in Illinois). In Wisconsin townships and municipalities are mutually exclusive so every property is either in a village/city or a township.

22. I’ve lived mostly in Texas and California, and I have never heard anyone use the term township.

23. Much of the Midwest was surveyed in a grid pattern. Commonly each 6×6 mile grid block was designated a towmship.

24. In California, townships are a grid-based designation of area within a county, but they have no power, no name, or representation. Essentially, they don’t exist.

    On the east coast, especially in the Northeast, all land belongs to a municipality and there’s no unincorporated land. Townships are the standard municipality for rural land, although a number of them can be very urban anyway. Montclair, NJ, for example, is a township.

    In the west, there is plenty of unincorporated land, land that’s part of no municipality. Services are provided by the county in these areas. In the Midwest, much of this unincorporated land is organized as townships, but have little power, but by the time you get to the west coast, they don’t even bother designating the township anymore and they have no meaning or de facto existence.

25. In Texas? Nothing. We don’t have townships, just counties and incorporated/unincorporated land.

26. It has to do with how the municipal government is structured, though i can’t give you much detail.

    I live in a township, and in the practical sense it’s a collection of small towns that come together to form one big town. The small towns within might have their own names, and even their own post offices, but strictly speaking they do not exist as a separate municipal entity.

    Usually it’s for historical reasons, and townships are formed as smaller municipalities consolidate their government. Or, sometimes to administer large areas with very low population.

    There are quite a few in NJ, since so many of the towns and boroughs have heavy suburban borders. It’s pretty dense over here.

27. In Pennsylvania, townships are just one type of municipality. The types of municipalities here are townships, boroughs, towns (there is only one – Bloomsburg), and cities (56 of those). There isn’t much difference between them in terms of authority, but they have different types of government – ex. townships have a board of supervisors, while cities have councils and mayors.

    PA does not have any unincorporated areas, every inch of the state is part of a municipality, so there are 2560 municipalities. In rural areas, these are usually townships. The least populous township has 11 residents in an area of 51 square miles.

28. In Pennsylvania, we have cities, boroughs, and townships. No unincorporated land at all. These three are distinct, so a borough or city can be in the middle of a township but is not part of it. The next largest subdivision would be the county.

    There are several classes of townships depending on size. Large township services are the same as a city or borough – road maintenance, garbage collection, public sewer, emergency services, permitting, etc. The truly rural townships don’t provide as much. Some areas have no sewer or garbage collection (you take it to the dump).

    Townships have a 5 person board of supervisors versus the mayor/council model of a borough or city.

29. In Missouri/Illinois, most Townships are cozy neighborhoods, often populated by upper-middle – upper class families, and have their own dedicated security offices around the border of the Township. A town is a suburban or rural complex quite some distance away from a metropolitan area (~20+ miles).