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I thank everyone who has made this such a rich article.
I think though, that it has become such a hodgepodge that it needs restructuring and forking rather badly. Stuff and information all over the place.
My first idea is to break off a new article "Vermont town." The information would remain here to avoid disrupting editors tranquility. I could link this new article from every Vermont town which are in the hundreds. I can't really so that to here now, because they'd be getting a lot more than they bargained for. But from this new article, I would link "New England town" into it.
In the best of all possible worlds, the other 5 would fork as well, including taking their unique properties with them, such as "plantation," "borough", neither of which apply to Vermont. And what might be left here is a high level discussion of what pertains to all six states.
It's just an interesting junk pile now. It needs to be reorganized and split up. Maybe plantation should be split out to it's own article, for example. And others. Student7 ( talk) 12:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I have started on my separate article. The problem for those who don't understand that there is one: there are 8 in-line footnotes and 16 pages of information. The info mostly sounds WP:OR "observations." Not totally inaccurate or anything, just with no academic perspective. It mostly sounds top-of-the head and non-encyclopedic.
The article should be split up drastically. There should be "New England Municipality", and (maybe) New England Town. But the state articles should all be broken out. "Massachusetts city," "New Hampshire plantation", etc. each under their own state. There is nothing wrong with a high level article kind of like this one, showing similarities.
But this is such a jumble. No one is going to wade through it. It is very obvious a committee wrote it - it can't stick to a topic for two sentences. It starts talking about towns, winds up with cities, unincorporated villages, gores, blah, blah. On and on and on. It is truly awful.
For those that contributed - thanks. Time to move on. Stuff needs footnoting badly if you choose to stay. Maybe some genius can reorganize it "in place" without starting a bunch of articles. But this seems to invite mergers and slop-over which this article has in spades. Jimminy. Try reading it, as I just did, from beginning to end. Whoosh! And try to put yourself in the position of some poor reader coming here for a reason and trying to get something out of it! Student7 ( talk) 02:02, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
This talk page has an image request template, but I don't see what image could be taken to improve this article. Can someone suggest more detail or should the request be removed? RJFJR ( talk) 04:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
This statement: "Put into terms that are equivalent to the other New England states, 20 are cities/boroughs and 149 are towns. (As discussed in the Cities section of Other types of municipalities in New England above, the relationship between towns and cities in Connecticut is different from the other New England states: is not supported by a source. The Census Bureau source cited at the end of the sentence says nothing about the distinction between Connecticut towns and towns in other New England states. What it does say is: "In Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, the towns are different from the incorporated places called towns in most other States." Please clarify the convoluted wording in this paragraph and find a reliable source for it. 71.139.157.205 ( talk) 18:39, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
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cite web}}
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help)
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cite web}}
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help)
Could it be fruitful to have a section, perhaps linking to a "complete article", on the matter of the contrasts and comparisons between the New England town and the
Northwest Ordinance township? IIRC, the major concern was to give a pre-structured framework for the making of homesteading land grants, perhaps in a way that would also support emergence of local governments with less of the tendency to grow "
like Topsy", (at the expense of neighboring areas turning into satellites rather than equals), that might then develop as legally subordinate to earlier-settled ones. (Or have i not just looked carefully enuf at what we already have?)
--
Jerzy•
t 04:56 &
09:55, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
Here's the deal on the confusion about towns and cities in Massachusetts. There is a clear statutory understanding about what a city form of government is, and there is actually no confusion about that, within the state government. A number of municipalities, despite a city form of government under Massachusetts General Laws, sometimes elect to call themselves using the style "The Town of ___", sometimes termed by the Secretary of the Commonwealth as "Cities known as The Town of ___".
There are two key aspects of how a city is actually distinguished from a town in Massachusetts.
1. Under Massachusetts statutes, cities can pass ordinances (the equivalent of bylaws for towns), without a review and approval by the Massachusetts Attorney General. Towns, in all cases, must have newly approved by town-meeting bylaws reviewed and approved by the AG. Yes, bylaws do get rejected by the AG. See the citation below.
2. Cities do not have town meeting, they have a legislative body of a very limited number of members, typically called "city council", or "board of alderman". The Town legislative body is the town meeting, or the representative town meeting wherein each neighborhood district might elect say five to fifteen representatives (as indicated in the town bylaws or town charter) to the town meeting.
A general reference, in mass media. Mass General Laws citations and other reference works to eventually follow.
-- Yellowdesk ( talk) 20:50, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
I'm curious--why are the unincorporated townships of northern Piscataquis County not shown on the map, when the unincorporated townships elsewhere are? The big blank area looks misleading to me. (See http://www.maine.gov/revenue/propertytax/unorganizedterritory/map.jpeg for comparison.) 206.208.105.129 ( talk) 13:32, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
I find the overall tone of this article extremely distasteful and disrespectful of the institution it describes. The overall vibe is that New England is the 'weird' part of the country for a) not calling every podunk, one-stoplight municipality a 'city', b) having the audacity to let citizens of small towns govern themselves, rather than hosting a ludicrous farce of an 'election' for 'representatives' of the aforementioned sort of podunk burgh, c) not leaving vast swathes of territory in the ludicrous category of 'unincorporated space' to be administered by the stupid, pointless, redundant, and altogether hokey-sounding 'county government'. I assure you, it is the rest of the country, all of which has VASTLY less history of Anglo-American settlement, that is 'weird', and this article's tone should reflect that. New England is normal, New England is the standard by which America should be measured. The other 44 upstart states are the problem. Trilobright ( talk) 19:46, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
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Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 00:59, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
Is there any example of this to support this claim? House numbers are usually highest at the edges of town, and lowest in the center of town, so they do not "reset to zero" at a town line. And the number "zero" is very rare in New England house numbers. This whole sentence in the article isis, basically, worthless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.68.134.1 ( talk) 21:23, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
On January 1, Framingham was incorporated as a city. I think the most populous town in New England is now West Hartford, CT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.0.36.96 ( talk) 20:15, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
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I thank everyone who has made this such a rich article.
I think though, that it has become such a hodgepodge that it needs restructuring and forking rather badly. Stuff and information all over the place.
My first idea is to break off a new article "Vermont town." The information would remain here to avoid disrupting editors tranquility. I could link this new article from every Vermont town which are in the hundreds. I can't really so that to here now, because they'd be getting a lot more than they bargained for. But from this new article, I would link "New England town" into it.
In the best of all possible worlds, the other 5 would fork as well, including taking their unique properties with them, such as "plantation," "borough", neither of which apply to Vermont. And what might be left here is a high level discussion of what pertains to all six states.
It's just an interesting junk pile now. It needs to be reorganized and split up. Maybe plantation should be split out to it's own article, for example. And others. Student7 ( talk) 12:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I have started on my separate article. The problem for those who don't understand that there is one: there are 8 in-line footnotes and 16 pages of information. The info mostly sounds WP:OR "observations." Not totally inaccurate or anything, just with no academic perspective. It mostly sounds top-of-the head and non-encyclopedic.
The article should be split up drastically. There should be "New England Municipality", and (maybe) New England Town. But the state articles should all be broken out. "Massachusetts city," "New Hampshire plantation", etc. each under their own state. There is nothing wrong with a high level article kind of like this one, showing similarities.
But this is such a jumble. No one is going to wade through it. It is very obvious a committee wrote it - it can't stick to a topic for two sentences. It starts talking about towns, winds up with cities, unincorporated villages, gores, blah, blah. On and on and on. It is truly awful.
For those that contributed - thanks. Time to move on. Stuff needs footnoting badly if you choose to stay. Maybe some genius can reorganize it "in place" without starting a bunch of articles. But this seems to invite mergers and slop-over which this article has in spades. Jimminy. Try reading it, as I just did, from beginning to end. Whoosh! And try to put yourself in the position of some poor reader coming here for a reason and trying to get something out of it! Student7 ( talk) 02:02, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
This talk page has an image request template, but I don't see what image could be taken to improve this article. Can someone suggest more detail or should the request be removed? RJFJR ( talk) 04:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
This statement: "Put into terms that are equivalent to the other New England states, 20 are cities/boroughs and 149 are towns. (As discussed in the Cities section of Other types of municipalities in New England above, the relationship between towns and cities in Connecticut is different from the other New England states: is not supported by a source. The Census Bureau source cited at the end of the sentence says nothing about the distinction between Connecticut towns and towns in other New England states. What it does say is: "In Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, the towns are different from the incorporated places called towns in most other States." Please clarify the convoluted wording in this paragraph and find a reliable source for it. 71.139.157.205 ( talk) 18:39, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
References
{{
cite web}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(
help)
{{
cite web}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(
help)
Could it be fruitful to have a section, perhaps linking to a "complete article", on the matter of the contrasts and comparisons between the New England town and the
Northwest Ordinance township? IIRC, the major concern was to give a pre-structured framework for the making of homesteading land grants, perhaps in a way that would also support emergence of local governments with less of the tendency to grow "
like Topsy", (at the expense of neighboring areas turning into satellites rather than equals), that might then develop as legally subordinate to earlier-settled ones. (Or have i not just looked carefully enuf at what we already have?)
--
Jerzy•
t 04:56 &
09:55, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
Here's the deal on the confusion about towns and cities in Massachusetts. There is a clear statutory understanding about what a city form of government is, and there is actually no confusion about that, within the state government. A number of municipalities, despite a city form of government under Massachusetts General Laws, sometimes elect to call themselves using the style "The Town of ___", sometimes termed by the Secretary of the Commonwealth as "Cities known as The Town of ___".
There are two key aspects of how a city is actually distinguished from a town in Massachusetts.
1. Under Massachusetts statutes, cities can pass ordinances (the equivalent of bylaws for towns), without a review and approval by the Massachusetts Attorney General. Towns, in all cases, must have newly approved by town-meeting bylaws reviewed and approved by the AG. Yes, bylaws do get rejected by the AG. See the citation below.
2. Cities do not have town meeting, they have a legislative body of a very limited number of members, typically called "city council", or "board of alderman". The Town legislative body is the town meeting, or the representative town meeting wherein each neighborhood district might elect say five to fifteen representatives (as indicated in the town bylaws or town charter) to the town meeting.
A general reference, in mass media. Mass General Laws citations and other reference works to eventually follow.
-- Yellowdesk ( talk) 20:50, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
I'm curious--why are the unincorporated townships of northern Piscataquis County not shown on the map, when the unincorporated townships elsewhere are? The big blank area looks misleading to me. (See http://www.maine.gov/revenue/propertytax/unorganizedterritory/map.jpeg for comparison.) 206.208.105.129 ( talk) 13:32, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
I find the overall tone of this article extremely distasteful and disrespectful of the institution it describes. The overall vibe is that New England is the 'weird' part of the country for a) not calling every podunk, one-stoplight municipality a 'city', b) having the audacity to let citizens of small towns govern themselves, rather than hosting a ludicrous farce of an 'election' for 'representatives' of the aforementioned sort of podunk burgh, c) not leaving vast swathes of territory in the ludicrous category of 'unincorporated space' to be administered by the stupid, pointless, redundant, and altogether hokey-sounding 'county government'. I assure you, it is the rest of the country, all of which has VASTLY less history of Anglo-American settlement, that is 'weird', and this article's tone should reflect that. New England is normal, New England is the standard by which America should be measured. The other 44 upstart states are the problem. Trilobright ( talk) 19:46, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
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Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 00:59, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
Is there any example of this to support this claim? House numbers are usually highest at the edges of town, and lowest in the center of town, so they do not "reset to zero" at a town line. And the number "zero" is very rare in New England house numbers. This whole sentence in the article isis, basically, worthless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.68.134.1 ( talk) 21:23, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
On January 1, Framingham was incorporated as a city. I think the most populous town in New England is now West Hartford, CT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.0.36.96 ( talk) 20:15, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 00:12, 17 February 2018 (UTC)