New England Town - Characteristics of The New England Town System

Characteristics of The New England Town System

• Towns are laid out so that all land within the boundaries of a state is allocated to a town or other corporate municipality. Except in some very sparsely populated areas of the three northern New England states (primarily in the interior of Maine), the concept of unincorporated territory, even in rural areas, is unknown. With the exception of those very sparsely populated areas, all land in New England is within the boundaries of a town or other incorporated municipality.
• Towns are municipal corporations, with their powers defined by a corporate charter, state statutes and the state constitution. Although they are technically creatures of the state, the laws regarding their authority have historically been very broadly construed. Thus, in practice, towns have significant autonomy in managing their own affairs, with nearly all the powers that cities in most other states would typically have.
• Traditionally, a town's legislative body is the open town meeting, which is a form of direct democratic rule, with a board of selectmen possessing executive authority. Only two small Swiss Landsgemeinde remain as similarly democratic as the small New England town.
• A town almost always contains a built-up populated place (the "town center") with the same name as the town. Additional built-up places with different names are often found within towns, along with a mixture of extraneous urban and rural territory. There is no unincorporated territory between the towns; leaving a town means entering another town or other municipality. In most parts of New England, towns are irregular in shape and size and are not laid out on any type of grid (the leading exception is that much of the interior of Maine was originally laid out as surveyed townships). The town center often contains a town common, often used today as a small park.
• Since virtually all residents live within the boundaries of an incorporated municipality, residents receive most local services at the municipal level, and county government tends to be very weak. Differences among states do exist in the level of services provided at the municipal and county level, but generally most functions normally handled by county-level government in the rest of the United States are handled by town-level government in New England. In Connecticut, Rhode Island, and parts of Massachusetts, county government has been completely abolished. In other areas, some counties provide judicial and other limited administrative services.
• Residents usually identify with their town for purposes of civic identity, thinking of the town in its entirety as a single, coherent community. There are some cases where residents identify more strongly with villages or sections of a town than with the town itself, but this is the exception, not the rule.
• More than 90% of the municipalities in the six New England states are towns. Other forms of municipalities that exist—most notably, cities—are generally based on the town concept as well. Most New England cities are towns that have grown too large for a town meeting to be an effective legislative body, leading the residents to adopt a city form with a mayor and council. Municipality forms based on the concept of a compact populated place, such as a village or borough, are uncommon. In areas of New England where such forms do exist, they remain part of the parent town and do not have all of the corporate powers and authority of an independent municipality.