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I'm not clear on this idea of incorporated counties. You mention Calaveras as an unincorporated county, but from a quick glance at its website, it looks like it

I'm not clear on this idea of incorporated counties. You mention Calaveras as an unincorporated county, but from a quick glance at its website, it looks like it provides many of the services that counties in most states provide, and with a county government in the form of the board of supervisors, etc. So what would be different if they were to incorporate? Most states have counties, possibly coinciding with a city (and in those cases, there might be a merged city/county government, or might be separate ones that just have the same bounds). States will vary as to whether all land is within counties. A few states allow for certain cities to not be in counties at all (which is distinct from having a county that covers the same areas as a city), but the most common setup is for all land to be in counties. Most states do leave incorporating municipalities (cities/towns/villages) up the the residents, so you can potentially get large unincorporated developments with no municipality. In most states counties provide fairly limited set of services, like election related services, building permitting for areas not in incorporated municipalities, sheriff, county courts, possibly some parks, animal control services, and perhaps a handful of other services that can vary by state or even county within a state. Generally, the only services (besides state-level services) available outside of incorporated municipalities are the county services, and services from various districts (school, fire, water, etc) that the land in question happens to be in. Some districts might be mandatory to have (often school districts), but others are often optional.

gumby 4y ago
> I'm not clear on this idea of incorporated counties. You mention Calaveras as an unincorporated county, but from a quick glance at its website, it looks like it provides many of the services that counties in most states provide, and with a county government in the form of the board of supervisors, etc. So what would be different if they were to incorporate? There's a section of the California constitution that specifies how counties shall be run unless they incorporate and make their own rules. For sparsely settled regions it's just not worth doing anything beyond the default. When you have a lot of people (and interests) it's useful to set up rules for cities, districts, etc and the relationships between complex services (asisstance for the poor, say) and the various suborganizations that spring up. When you have only a few people and few services, the baseline is adequate.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ianburrell 4y ago
  Do you have some proof of the difference? I have only seen incorporated to mean cities and unincorporated to mean the parts of counties outside of cities. The status of the county doesn’t make any difference. You might be seeing a difference since California doesn’t have many unincorporated suburbs like other states do. I think the reason is that it is easy for cities to annex adjacent areas, and for areas that don’t want to annexed to incorporate. The result is medium towns, especially in urban areas, end up incorporated.
  - gumby 4y ago
    > Do you have some proof of the difference? I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. The status of a county and a city are orthogonal in this regard (I gave an example of that in fact). As far as counties go, I just gave the bigger picture (country structure) to point out that that "default" governance is, well, the default for most of the land of the state (though not the situation most people live under). The original commenter to whom I was responding didn't understand what "unincorporated land" might actually mean. And if you don't live in the west, but rather say in Massachusetts or England or Germany the idea of a piece of land that isn't under some formally organized government is rather odd, so the original commenter's question wasn't unreasonable. Outside of the densely settled counties (e.g. San Mateo, San Diego, and so on) unincorporated suburbs are pretty common as well in California.

gumby 4y ago

> I'm not clear on this idea of incorporated counties. You mention Calaveras as an unincorporated county, but from a quick glance at its website, it looks like it provides many of the services that counties in most states provide, and with a county government in the form of the board of supervisors, etc. So what would be different if they were to incorporate? There's a section of the California constitution that specifies how counties shall be run unless they incorporate and make their own rules. For sparsely settled regions it's just not worth doing anything beyond the default. When you have a lot of people (and interests) it's useful to set up rules for cities, districts, etc and the relationships between complex services (asisstance for the poor, say) and the various suborganizations that spring up. When you have only a few people and few services, the baseline is adequate.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ianburrell 4y ago
Do you have some proof of the difference? I have only seen incorporated to mean cities and unincorporated to mean the parts of counties outside of cities. The status of the county doesn’t make any difference. You might be seeing a difference since California doesn’t have many unincorporated suburbs like other states do. I think the reason is that it is easy for cities to annex adjacent areas, and for areas that don’t want to annexed to incorporate. The result is medium towns, especially in urban areas, end up incorporated.
- gumby 4y ago
  > Do you have some proof of the difference? I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. The status of a county and a city are orthogonal in this regard (I gave an example of that in fact). As far as counties go, I just gave the bigger picture (country structure) to point out that that "default" governance is, well, the default for most of the land of the state (though not the situation most people live under). The original commenter to whom I was responding didn't understand what "unincorporated land" might actually mean. And if you don't live in the west, but rather say in Massachusetts or England or Germany the idea of a piece of land that isn't under some formally organized government is rather odd, so the original commenter's question wasn't unreasonable. Outside of the densely settled counties (e.g. San Mateo, San Diego, and so on) unincorporated suburbs are pretty common as well in California.