Talk:Local government in New Jersey

Expert attention
Someone with a good knowledge of New Jersey geography and local government needs to attend to this page to turn it from a skeleton to a highly useful summary. Nyttend (talk) 14:15, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

A useful source
Cerra, Michael F. "Forms of Government", from the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, is a wonderful source summarizing the various forms and providing references to other primary sources. I've already referenced it regarding Loch Arbour as the only village form, but this can be used elsewhere. Alansohn (talk) 22:25, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Salmore, Barbara G. and Stephen A. New Jersey Politics and Government: The Suburbs Come of Age. Third Edition, Rivergate Books, 2008. is another great source.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.141.92.177 (talk) 21:22, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Unincorporated communities
I think this may be the best place to discuss what it means to be an unincorporated community in New Jersey. Perhaps we can base this on an old revision of Unincorporated community (New Jersey) (beware redirect). Or do people think that would be out-of-scope for this article, since it is specifically non-government? --ChrisRuvolo (t) 00:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not a type of local government, but certainly the idea of an area without its own local government would do well to be covered here. New York and Wisconsin both cover such communities in their local government articles.  Nyttend (talk) 13:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, I took a first stab at it with a new section, Communities without a distinct municipal government. I'm not sure if my wording and terminology is correct or optimal, so I would appreciate some proofreading and copyediting.  Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 21:08, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Chris, it seems to imply that there are areas without a municipal government at all, which is not true in NJ. In any other place, these are called neighborhoods. Before the moves and redirects, there was this version of the original article. Might be better than rewriting from scratch.  Jim Miller  See me 21:45, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry if it wasn't clear. Replaced. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 02:51, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've also changed the Unincorporated community (New Jersey) redirect to point here. If the section title is changed, please update the redirect. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 16:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Would one call Greenwich_Village an "unincorporated community"? No, indeed the Greenwich Village article on Wikipedia calls it "is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan, New York City". Hence, should not Colonia,_New_Jersey be referred to as a neighborhood in northwestern Woodbridge_Township,_New_Jersey? 160.93.7.5 (talk) 18:46, 9 January 2017 (UTC)NJ_Man

Broad powers
"New Jersey counties have powers that are intermediate between the broad powers of counties in Pennsylvania and the limited powers of counties in New York." Not questioning the idea that New Jersey's counties have powers between the powers of Pennsylvania and New York counties, but do Pennsylvania counties really have broad powers? From what I understand, they don't even have the authority to operate police departments, except for a sheriff's office that doesn't really have much of any police powers. Nyttend (talk) 17:12, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

County government in the United States
Hello, New Jersey! To defuse the edit war that has started at Category:County government in the United States, I'd appreciate some additional input on the topic of whether U.S. counties are (1) a level of local government or (2) an arm of state government. Discussion thus far is on my User talk page at User_talk:Orlady, but we could move it to a content-oriented talk page if desired. --Orlady (talk) 00:17, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello NJ. I am the other side of the edit war. My claim is that although county officials may be elected or appointed locally (i.e. not statewide), the actual county government itself is an arm of the state government. This is consistent with the powers they exercise (elections, law enforcement, etc.). If we could have some academically informed input, I would appreciate it, because the general impression and intuition that people have is that county government is "local government," but to those who actually study political science formally, the difference is known. The compromise that I propose is the persons should be categorized under "local politicians" while the offices should be categorized under "state government." Greg Bard (talk) 00:31, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

'''I have posted this issue to WikiProject United States, and WikiProject Politics. Please take your input to one or the other so I don't have to have 50 discussions.''' Greg Bard (talk) 01:31, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * User:Gregbard started discussion of this matter at User_talk:Orlady. Please don't start a whole new discussion at some WikiProject page. If there is a desire to move the discussion, let's copy the pre-existing discussion to the new location. --Orlady (talk) 02:30, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Type vs. form
What is the difference, and what criteria are used to determine type?ZFT (talk) 05:40, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

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Problems
The article in its second paragraph is super explicit about the different between "type" and "form,"...yet the box directly to the right list the "typs" as "traditional forms" when it should probably simply read "types." More than that it mentions the five types but then talks of 12 forms...but later in the article it mentions the six standard forms (most common), and the "special charter" form for a total of seven "regular" types. The box on the right breaks up the six standard forms into "modern" and "Faulkner Act" forms. I guess what I'm saying is that whoever did this needs to streamline this and keep some kind of consistency. Sure, there are exceptional forms, and there may very well be 12 forms in all, but the uncommon forms probably should be listed in a catch-all seperate section. --Criticalthinker (talk) 10:42, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, I understand a little better, now. The infobox is only showing the forms, but then that should be clearly marked as such for the title of the infobox, as it currently just says "New Jersey municipal government" with no respect to whether it's type or forms but in the subheads.  Yes, the five types have five corresponding base/default forms of the same name, but this should be kept consistently clear everytime those forms with corresponding base/default types are mentioned.  I guess what I'm saying is that if you're going to mention "city" for instance, it should be made clear whether we're talking about form or type and that can be done simply by adding "type" and "form" after the word, or simply "adding" form with the assumption that the word by itself is talking about type.  Does this make sense? --Criticalthinker (talk) 08:57, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

General police powers
While the article makes clear the different types of municipalities and forms of government, it does not discuss what each type is responsible for (maintenance of roads, schools, water/sewer, police/fire, ect). Does the state regulate different types of municipalities differently? Do different classes have different powers devolved to them? Thanks! –Zfish118⋉talk 18:12, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The five types are all equivalent in terms of powers under state law. Wasn't always that way (hence the differing terms for the types) but as it's evolved all municipaloties are municipalities regardless of type. Form of gevernment is more to do with how the municipal government is structured in terms of the relationship between the mayor, council, manager (if applicable), and voters. oknazevad (talk) 22:21, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Faulkner Act form question
I've read both the pages for Faulkner Act (mayor–council–administrator) and Faulkner Act (council–manager), and can't quite tell the difference. So, council-manager is quite common all around the country, and is easily understood. The mayor is part of the council and ceremonial head, but with no power to choose department heads, veto, etc. But how does "mayor-council-administrator" differ? It also appears to be a "weak mayor" form. Is the only difference that the mayor may be elected at-large as opposed to being required to be chosen amongst council members in a council-manager system? Or are there other differences, too? In a mayor-council-administrator form, can the mayor make appointments, vote, veto...? --Criticalthinker (talk) 10:17, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Nevermind. I was able to find the answers to my questions from the New Jersey League of Municipalities.  It seems that the mayor-council-administrator form is actually your typical "strong mayor" form with the only real difference being that it includes the addition of a municipal administrator as one of the required department heads appointed by the mayor.  But, yeah, the mayor has appointment and veto power in this form. --Criticalthinker (talk) 10:58, 28 January 2020 (UTC)