Friday, October 7, 2011

What Is A Borough, Anyway?

We live in a town, don't we?
No, we live in a Borough. 
What in the world is a borough (no donkey jokes)?

A borough is a form of government that rose out of the late industrial era in New Jersey. I presume this new form of government was instituted to roll with the times, increasing populations, and who gets the taxes.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, this part of New Jersey was mostly wide open farmland in the valleys, and large tracts of mining property in the northern hills. Population density was low, and because of the amount of property involved with farming and mining, towns and townships were much larger than they are today.

Pompton Township was one such example. The township included Riverdale, Bloomingdale, Haskell, Wanaque, Midvale, Ringwood and part of West Milford (as Bloomingdale).

Being a crossroads for rail and road, it was also a junction for the rivers which provided access to the Morris Canal, a bit downstream. Mills began quickly springing up on the flat river banks in the Pompton-Butler area. It might have been natural for our immediate area to develop as the hub of the relatively gigantic township.

The New Jersey Borough Act of 1878 allowed for any township with a land area of no more than four square miles and a population not exceeding 5,000 to establish itself as an independent borough.  Boroughs would be governed by a mayor serving for one year and six council members in staggered three year terms.

An 1895 New York Times article announced that Pompton Lakes, was to become Passaic County's first borough in what was being called "borough fever" at that time.  Why we became a borough is a bit mysterious, and I'll get to that in another article.


The year before, in 1894, it had become law that a borough had to have its own school system. Butler High School was the only high school in the area at that time. There must have been some kind of school in the new Pompton Lakes.


What eludes this writer is that the remaining towns of Bloomingdale, Ringwood and Wanaque put the date of their incorporations at 1918.  Riverdale was part of Pompton Lakes until 1923 (as the architecture of the elementary school shows).  I can't account for the govenmental standing of those villages for that 13 year gap since parting with Pompton.


But I was supposed to tell you what a borough is, not where it came from. Remembering that a borough is a form of government and not map jargon, it goes like this:

The power is in the borough council. Six of them. They have staggered terms of three years. You can elect only two of them at a time. They are members of committees that involve most every day processes of municipal services. Council members are also liaisons to external town agencies, like the Board of Education, for example.

They are presided over by a mayor with no vote at council meetings, except in a tie.

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