Talk:Township (Pennsylvania)

Question

Do PA Townships have mayors?

• No, they usually have supervisors who are elected (usually a panel of three). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:55, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Are PA townships considered incorporated municipalities? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.149.203.252 (talk) 04:46, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes. See the new ref I put in the article or here: ""Pennsylvania Local Government"" (PDF). Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Retrieved 2007-10-08. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

This page does not stand well on its own

You really need to read it in the context of Civil townships and maybe even Townships. That is unfortunate -- it seems to me that if it exists as a separate page, it needs more clarity. jhawkinson (talk) 19:55, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Municipal types

This article as previously modified is subtantially misleading. It is not helpful to ignore the great impact that home rule has had on local government in Pennsylvania, or to insist that the only forms of local government are townships, boroughs and cities. Please discuss these matters here. Lou Sander (talk) 21:18, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

There's a big difference between ignoring home rule status and claiming that HRMs are a separate type of municipality. Would you please read pages 6-5 and 6-6 (that's pages 5 and 6 of the sixth section) of the Pennsylvania Manual and explain why HRMs aren't classified as a separate type, and why HRMs aren't mentioned except to remark about some cities and some boroughs and some townships having home rule status? Or please consult pages 6-10 and 6-11 and then explain why HRMs don't get their own column? Yes, this doesn't have a separate column for Bloomsburg, but the footnote on 6-10 makes it clear that they're not forgetting about it (there just wouldn't be a point to having a whole section on 6-6 for one municipality), while if HRMs are a different kind of municipality, they've completely forgotten about it. Finally, please consult page 6-5 on city classifications; Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Scranton are clearly specified as being cities, even though pages 6-7 and 6-8 list them as being HRMs. Nyttend (talk) 03:00, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Nyttend in this case. HRM does not describe a distinct "type" of municipality in the same way that cities, boroughs and townships are types of municipalities. HRM is an approach to local governance that applies to all of these types of municipalities (as well as to counties). older ≠ wiser 11:53, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I am asking editors to achieve some sort of consensus here, and to improve a misleading article. I am pointing out the unhelpfulness of ignoring home rule. You are asking me to read part of a large publication and to explain why its authors do what they do (and you give no help on navigating to the pages you cite). Why do you do that, instead of explaining why home rule isn't a more important part of the article? The situation is far more complex than the article lets on, or than its editors seem to understand. Maybe we can have a discussion about how home rule intersects with the "types" of municipality. Maybe the article can be improved to include some sort of explanation of that. As it is written right now, it does a really bad job of describing township government in Pennsylvania. Lou Sander (talk) 13:44, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

The writing in this article is embarrassingly bad and needs overhauled. How could any rational adult think that's a job well done? 96.235.39.146 (talk) 20:52, 6 December 2019 (UTC)