1534 Small Town Life

Sunday, November 4, 2007

I often refer to "the village". A little lesson in NY government: The state is divided into counties, and the county government maintains county roads, libraries, community colleges, and so on. Counties are divided into townships. A township (or just "town", like the Town of Poughkeepsie) maintains town roads, courts, garbage collection, fire departments, a smattering of other things. Towns have no connection to residential or business concentrations. Municipalities are hamlets, villages, or cities, depending on population, and maintain their own streets and services. Hamlets are often too small to bother with a government, and contract with the town for services. So in NY, it is not correct to use "town" to refer to a small city. It's either a city or a village. Town" can include farmland and woods.

I live in a town, outside "the village". There's only one village, and perhaps three hamlets in my township.

And this is how comfortable, yet strange, villages and towns can be: It's normal to leave your house to go to the deli or post office or bank, and leave the house unlocked. A few weeks ago, over the period of two or three weeks, there were 15 burglaries in the village and outside in the town. The town sheriff says they've caught the culprit, and the burglaries have stopped.

Ok, taken care of, right?

Nope. Here's where small town thinking kicks in. Local elections are coming up in a few days, and there's a campaign on to vote out the incumbent town board, regardless of party affiliation (more radical elements want to impeach them all), because they didn't send out an automated phone call to everyone in the town, telling them to lock their doors when they left their houses.
Duh?

The thinking is that it's an issue of incompetence and poor judgement in the face of a threat. "How will they handle a real emergency?"

Uh, this wasn't a real emergency.
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