Should Virginia Abolish their Independent Cities?

[CountyTy90]

The Constitution of Virginia was amended to grant independent status to cities in the commonwealth. This means that even if the entire city is surrounded by a county, it is still independent from it. City residents don't pay county taxes, have a road and school system maintained by the city not the county. The independent city (which is not part of the county remember) can even be the county's county seat. Smart huh? Usually, in the smaller cities, the county takes care of court matters, jails, etc. Only the larger cities have their own court system.

Some cities have decided to revert to town status due to economic troubles. South Boston in 1995, Clifton Forge in 2001, and most recently, Bedford in 2013.

By reverting back to town status, the "new" towns get help from the county in the above mentioned areas like education and roads. It really is a win-win; the towns now get county help and the county gets a new tax base.

I think it's out of date that cities are independent now and should just revert back to being part of a county.

Here's an article that goes into detail about Bedford's transition from a city to a town:

http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/article_5dcbc886-e1e9-11e2-a412-001a4bcf6878.html

I made some maps to show you what it looks like now and what it would look like if cities returned back to counties.

Currently:



And if cities became part of counties:

[Gass3268]

I would say yes, with a couple of exceptions. Alexandria, Chesapeake, Hampton, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Richmond, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach should remain their own counties.

Also did you split Richmond and Petersburg in half?   

[CountyTy90]

I would say yes, with a couple of exceptions. Alexandria, Chesapeake, Hampton, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Richmond, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach should remain their own counties.

Also did you split Richmond and Petersburg in half?   

Yeah I cut those two in half; I've been looking at maps and that seems to be how it was done when they were just towns or when cities were still a part of a county legally.

I understand keeping some of the bigger cities independent, like Richmond and Norfolk. But in the case of Virginia Beach, I think that should go back to Princess Anne County because there are actually a lot of rural areas which I think would benefit from being part of a county as opposed to being in a city. Plus, like I said, it would be a benefit to become a county. Sure, taxes would go up, but then you'd get better quality services.

[Vega]

I don't really get it, so yes.

No other state is set up like that, and they are all fine.

[Indy Texas]

Is there some quirky historical reason they did this?

In other parts of the country, you see cities merging with counties and ceasing to be separate entities altogether (Louisville, Miami, etc). This is the opposite of it and I don't understand what the benefit would be.

[CountyTy90]

Is there some quirky historical reason they did this?

In other parts of the country, you see cities merging with counties and ceasing to be separate entities altogether (Louisville, Miami, etc). This is the opposite of it and I don't understand what the benefit would be.

I can't really find a concrete reason as to why they're independent.

And to your last point, I'm not sure why those large cities are consolidating with their county. Miami is different I think, as the city limits of Miami are not contiguous with Miami-Dade County as Louiville and Jefferson County's are or Indianapolis and Marion County's are. Not sure if that makes a difference or not?

[justfollowingtheelections]

I don't really have a problem with it, but I see no reason for a city surrounded by a county to be independent.

[DC Al Fine]

No. My province amalgamated several cities with their counties and its caused strain on the political system in term of equalizing services, tax load etc.

[traininthedistance]

I understand keeping some of the bigger cities independent, like Richmond and Norfolk. But in the case of Virginia Beach, I think that should go back to Princess Anne County because there are actually a lot of rural areas which I think would benefit from being part of a county as opposed to being in a city. Plus, like I said, it would be a benefit to become a county. Sure, taxes would go up, but then you'd get better quality services.

In the case of VA Beach, absolutely nothing would change except the designation from "city" to "county".  It's one consolidated unit now, and your proposal would keep it that same consolidated unit.

And is there really all that much actual rural population there?  I don't think many folks live in the Great Dismal Swamp; whatever you call that political unit the vast majority of it is thoroughly suburban.

Is there some quirky historical reason they did this?

In other parts of the country, you see cities merging with counties and ceasing to be separate entities altogether (Louisville, Miami, etc). This is the opposite of it and I don't understand what the benefit would be.

I can't really find a concrete reason as to why they're independent.

And to your last point, I'm not sure why those large cities are consolidating with their county. Miami is different I think, as the city limits of Miami are not contiguous with Miami-Dade County as Louiville and Jefferson County's are or Indianapolis and Marion County's are. Not sure if that makes a difference or not?

Miami-Dade County is just branding; they didn't actually consolidate anything far as I know.

City-county consolidations are generally a good thing, and there is a long history of it dating back to Philadelphia's consolidation in the 1850s. You can have sensible regional planning; tax-base and service sharing; you don't have things like the pull-up-the-drawbridges class warfare of places like the Grosse Pointes, or in the South and West unincorporated patches that don't get any municipal services whatsoever for no good reason (I think one of our CA posters had a question about that awhile ago?), or closer to home the less-obviously-harmful but still crazy and wasteful phenomenon of boroughitis which leads to all sorts of inefficiencies and regulatory arbitrage and all that bad stuff.  In general, city governance should be at the metropolitan level as much as practicable, since that's the unit that really counts, and city-county consolidations are a step in that correct direction.

I understand that this can be a difficult thing to do in the real world; people have emotive attachments to their towns and there are real costs in switching over to anything new.  And I'm willing to believe that said switchover can be screwed up; perhaps that's what happened in Canada since many of our friends up north seem to be bitter about it.  Though, perhaps what happened in Canada could also have been BS cultural resentment (EWWW I don't wanna have to get along with those icky suburbs/urbs) or, worse, suburbs that benefitted by pretending to be separate from the core where convenient (while of course conveniently forgetting that they wouldn't exist without the core).  Anyway.  Obviously the details are tricky, but there are real and important benefits to consolidation.

[Sol]

In an ideal world, yes, because cities would annex their entire metro.

In a more realistic sense, I think getting rid of independent cities seems a little counterproductive. I think what would be instead preferable would be consolidating some of the cities in the Hampton Roads area--all the small municipal units are generally detrimental to the region's profile as a major US metro area-- the urban and inner suburban parts should be merged into one unit. The fact that Virginia Beach is considered the center of the metro is kind of bizarre, IMO.

As for the rest of the state, I'd retain most of the independent cities, along with liberalizing annexation laws.

[traininthedistance]

In an ideal world, yes, because cities would annex their entire metro.

In a more realistic sense, I think getting rid of independent cities seems a little counterproductive. I think what would be instead preferable would be consolidating some of the cities in the Hampton Roads area--all the small municipal units are generally detrimental to the region's profile as a major US metro area-- the urban and inner suburban parts should be merged into one unit. The fact that Virginia Beach is considered the center of the metro is kind of bizarre, IMO.

As for the rest of the state, I'd retain most of the independent cities, along with liberalizing annexation laws.

It's no more bizarre than San Jose getting top billing over San Francisco in the combined statistical area.  Which is to say, yeah it's a little bizarre.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Voted yes, to make Atlas' maps more readable.


See, before joining I never knew Virginia did this. I noticed when I saw these very dark blue areas where Romney had won with little red dots in the middle, and I couldn't get my cursor over the cities to see what happened in them (and I still can't for the smallest ones).

I can get keeping some cities like Richmond, Alexandria, or VB separate, but those little ones are just random and weird and make the Atlas maps of Virginia a tab bit harder to use.

[Mr. Smith]

I live in one of those "Independent Cities" some of the year, and let me tell you that it would be just excellent to merge back into the county, given that county seems to have its roads in order...while my city doesn't even own their city hall.

On the other hand, Alexandria and Virginia Beach are probably better off alone, and I fear some gerrymandering would happen to punish those "blue dots" (such as W&L, VMI's town of Lexington)

[Indy Texas]

City-county consolidations are generally a good thing, and there is a long history of it dating back to Philadelphia's consolidation in the 1850s. You can have sensible regional planning; tax-base and service sharing; you don't have things like the pull-up-the-drawbridges class warfare of places like the Grosse Pointes, or in the South and West unincorporated patches that don't get any municipal services whatsoever for no good reason (I think one of our CA posters had a question about that awhile ago?), or closer to home the less-obviously-harmful but still crazy and wasteful phenomenon of boroughitis which leads to all sorts of inefficiencies and regulatory arbitrage and all that bad stuff.  In general, city governance should be at the metropolitan level as much as practicable, since that's the unit that really counts, and city-county consolidations are a step in that correct direction.

I understand that this can be a difficult thing to do in the real world; people have emotive attachments to their towns and there are real costs in switching over to anything new.  And I'm willing to believe that said switchover can be screwed up; perhaps that's what happened in Canada since many of our friends up north seem to be bitter about it.  Though, perhaps what happened in Canada could also have been BS cultural resentment (EWWW I don't wanna have to get along with those icky suburbs/urbs) or, worse, suburbs that benefitted by pretending to be separate from the core where convenient (while of course conveniently forgetting that they wouldn't exist without the core).  Anyway.  Obviously the details are tricky, but there are real and important benefits to consolidation.

I've believed for a long time that the City of Houston and Harris County should merge. A combination of a tax-hungry city government and NIMBY conservatives in the unincorporated suburbs means our city limits are bizarre and basically designed to contain as much commercial/industrial real estate as possible (to collect property and sales taxes from) while avoiding as many residential neighborhoods as possible. It makes infrastructure planning harder and because city policy often impacts everyone in the county since so many of us work in the city, we end up with no taxation and no representation.

Example: I grew up in what was technically unincorporated Harris County. But, if I walked down the street to the next street over, I was suddenly in the City of Houston. Just the street itself - none of the houses on the street. Why? So that the country club would be in the Houston city limits and all of their membership dues and food and beverage sales would be subject to city taxes.

[DC Al Fine]

And I'm willing to believe that said switchover can be screwed up; perhaps that's what happened in Canada since many of our friends up north seem to be bitter about it.  Though, perhaps what happened in Canada could also have been BS cultural resentment

Our amalgamations covered WAY too much distance, which is what caused most of the problems.

E.g. I live in Halifax, which is an amalgamation of three cities in the Halifax metro, and Halifax County. The problem is that Halifax County is 100 miles from end to end. Other amalgamations were similar. This wasn't amalgamating the five boroughs so much as it was amalgamating Buffalo and Rochester or San Antonio and Austin!

Now I freely admit that amalgamation of the three cities/the built up part of the county was necessary, but our amalgamation took all the rural areas as well. Previously the legislature would pass a bill to expand the boundaries of one of the cities when the suburbs in the county got too big. However, the government at the time was trying to cut costs and mandated the bigger amalgamation as a cost cutting measure.

This resulted in outlying rural areas that had very little to do with the city having to pay much higher property taxes, and wanting services to match those taxes, which in turn puts strain on the system as  the city attempts to provide city-level services to outlying rural areas. (E.g. Bus service).

I believe Hatman had a similar experience in Ottawa. I'm all for making suburbs join their mother cities, but when I (or most other) Canadians hear the word amalgamation, we think of forcing cities and the boonies to merge together.

[traininthedistance]

And I'm willing to believe that said switchover can be screwed up; perhaps that's what happened in Canada since many of our friends up north seem to be bitter about it.  Though, perhaps what happened in Canada could also have been BS cultural resentment

Our amalgamations covered WAY too much distance, which is what caused most of the problems.

E.g. I live in Halifax, which is an amalgamation of three cities in the Halifax metro, and Halifax County. The problem is that Halifax County is 100 miles from end to end. Other amalgamations were similar. This wasn't amalgamating the five boroughs so much as it was amalgamating Buffalo and Rochester or San Antonio and Austin!

Now I freely admit that amalgamation of the three cities/the built up part of the county was necessary, but our amalgamation took all the rural areas as well. Previously the legislature would pass a bill to expand the boundaries of one of the cities when the suburbs in the county got too big. However, the government at the time was trying to cut costs and mandated the bigger amalgamation as a cost cutting measure.

This resulted in outlying rural areas that had very little to do with the city having to pay much higher property taxes, and wanting services to match those taxes, which in turn puts strain on the system as  the city attempts to provide city-level services to outlying rural areas. (E.g. Bus service).

I believe Hatman had a similar experience in Ottawa. I'm all for making suburbs join their mother cities, but when I (or most other) Canadians hear the word amalgamation, we think of forcing cities and the boonies to merge together.

Ah, yeah, that does indeed make sense.  Amalgamation should, ideally, be tied to urban growth boundaries and encompass the built up areas and whatever small, contiguous tracts are earmarked for future development– and shouldn't include legitimately rural areas that would be at danger of becoming resentful or paved over in sprawl.  I do have plenty of sympathy for farmers who shouldn't have to necessarily pay city taxes for city services; I have less sympathy for suburbanites who don't want to have to share anything with the "inner city".

In the sclerotic American context, obviously sometimes city-county consolidations would take in some rural tracts, which is unfortunate- but not 100 miles unfortunate (unless you're making the City and County of San Bernardino or something, which would in fact be A Mistake), and a lesser evil than the worst balkanizations we have here.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

I don't know about Virginia, but I truly think Kentucky should allow independent cities - provided it's a bona fide city and not just a nebulous blob of suburbia.

Take Newport, Bellevue, and Dayton, for instance. These are cities in Campbell County that vote against the county in almost every single election. (An exception is the recent Kentucky Supreme Court race, in which the Tea Party candidate got trounced pretty much everywhere.) Obama won all 3 cities in 2012, while losing the county by 20 points. More importantly, these cities are paying most of the county taxes but getting none of the benefits. After the recent "election", there are no remaining top county officials who live in these cities - even though these cities have a significant proportion of the county's population.

This is an issue of taxation without representation. I think a court may have grounds to order the cities to be split from the county - unless the county gets its act together.

You can say the same about Covington in Kenton County.

Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati are an area where consolidated city-county government will not work. Period.

[Mr. Reactionary]

No. I live in Danville, we are surrounded by Pittsylvania County. Other than location, there aren't many similarities. The county is rural, white, and agricultural. The city is urban, black, and more service and manufacturing oriented (even more so before NAFTA ran off our textile mill). The city has higher taxes in exchange for trash collection, water, and buses. The county provides none of those services (except token water provision in a few of the townships. Weather affects the safety of transporting school children differently. Fireworks, hunting, and shooting guns are legal in the county, not in the city. It makes no sense to politically merge political management of rural and urban areas just because there are fewer numbers of entities

[muon2]

The states have been called the laboratory of democracy, and this seems to me a classic example. A few states have done city-county consolidations, some have allowed cities to go independent of their townships, but none have gone as far as VA in allowing cities large and small to depart from their counties (and then in some cases taking them over). Not only have cities in VA gone independent, but just last year one realized it wasn't working and went back into its county. That's a good lab at work. Maybe Bandit's right and other states will try their version of ICs.

[solarstorm]

Yes, because my mouse cursor can't touch them on Dave's election maps.

[Hatman 🍁]

And I'm willing to believe that said switchover can be screwed up; perhaps that's what happened in Canada since many of our friends up north seem to be bitter about it.  Though, perhaps what happened in Canada could also have been BS cultural resentment

Our amalgamations covered WAY too much distance, which is what caused most of the problems.

E.g. I live in Halifax, which is an amalgamation of three cities in the Halifax metro, and Halifax County. The problem is that Halifax County is 100 miles from end to end. Other amalgamations were similar. This wasn't amalgamating the five boroughs so much as it was amalgamating Buffalo and Rochester or San Antonio and Austin!

Now I freely admit that amalgamation of the three cities/the built up part of the county was necessary, but our amalgamation took all the rural areas as well. Previously the legislature would pass a bill to expand the boundaries of one of the cities when the suburbs in the county got too big. However, the government at the time was trying to cut costs and mandated the bigger amalgamation as a cost cutting measure.

This resulted in outlying rural areas that had very little to do with the city having to pay much higher property taxes, and wanting services to match those taxes, which in turn puts strain on the system as  the city attempts to provide city-level services to outlying rural areas. (E.g. Bus service).

I believe Hatman had a similar experience in Ottawa. I'm all for making suburbs join their mother cities, but when I (or most other) Canadians hear the word amalgamation, we think of forcing cities and the boonies to merge together.

Yes, I've made it quite clear how much I hate amalgamation. Do you really want your city to turnout like Jacksonville?

I support strong county governments with several weak municipal governments at the neighbourhood level, myself.

Virginia's independent cities are a lot like what we do in Ontario. Typically on maps we don't show the independent cities (called "single tier municipalities") as separate from the counties, but they are separate for all intents and purposes. Statistics Canada doesn't treat them separately either.

[muon2]

Yes, because my mouse cursor can't touch them on Dave's election maps.

I'd be surprised if you can't some of them with your mouse. I'm sure you get Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Suffolk that took over their large counties. Alexandria, Lynchburg, Norfolk, Newport News, Hampton and Richmond cities should show up when mousing. I get Petersburg and Manassas, too. The rest have too small an area and they don't happen to line up with mouse coordinates.

[muon2]

Since independent cities is an issue for some of you, let me pose the following questions.

If independent cities were abolished what would you do with those that absorbed their whole county: Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Virginia Beach.

What would you do with those cities that are independent, but have no county to return to since it was absorbed by another city: Norfolk, Portsmouth?

What would you do with those cities that have land from more than one county: Alexandria, Galax, Petersburg, Richmond, Williamsburg?

Are independent cities in other states an issue: Baltimore, St Louis, Carson City?

[traininthedistance]

Yes, I've made it quite clear how much I hate amalgamation. Do you really want your city to turnout like Jacksonville?

Do you want your city to turn out like Camden?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I think part of the issue is that many of these cities are really too small to handle all services on their own. Technically, San Francisco is an independent city (it is the only municipality in its county), and the city has done very well for itself. It's also quite large and an economic base in the area, allowing for more than sufficient investment.

     Overall, I do not think that the independent cities should be abolished, but the smaller ones that cannot adequately handle their own affairs should definitely consider joining with a county.