What exactly is a township? (Pittsburgh, Johnstown: houses, safe area, school districts)

[eastcoast3]

Our family may be relocating to PA, due to job reclocation. I have been researching different areas and have gotten a lot of feedback about Cranberry Township. I am interested in a suburban area (we are currently from a town of about 10,000 people in MA) I currently can travel 5-15 minutes to reach shopping center, hospitals, restaurants etc. So we want something similiar...

I am looking for a town with good schools, community sports teams for children and a safe area.

I am confused if Cranberry Township is a town? I saw that there are also something called boroughs?? Are those towns within a township?? It's difficult for me to research schools if I don't know which towns I'm looking at inside Cranberry Township ( I could have all of this completly confused)

Would someone be able to expain to me how the towns are set up within a county.

My husband will be working in Pittsburgh....so the commute will be a consideration also.

Thanks for any help!

[North Beach Person]

Townships are areas in a county outside an incorporated municipality. Most counties have several. Towns in PA can be called villages, boroughs or cities. It depends on size, cities and counties also are broken into classes according to population. School systems are usually based on a municipality (Brookville Area School District, Pittsburgh City Schools, Carlisle Area School District, etc.) although some of the smaller counties are a whole county system. Jefferson County for example has all or parts of Brookville, Brockway, Dubois, Punxsutawney, Redbank Valley and Clarion-Limestone school systems. If you're coming from the south with the county school systems it can be confusing as are the taxes rates expressed in mills.

[BevoInPA]

There are only two true towns in Pennsylvania: Bloomsburg and McCandless. Town is more of a term used in New England community organization. Cities, boroughs and townships are the norm here. Cities were the 'highest form of organization', boroughs were smaller, and townships WERE rural areas with limited services.

This does not describe the definitions in Pennsylvania anymore since there are some cities that have lost a lot of population and are smaller than boroughs or townships. Some townships are organized like boroughs with public water/sewer, extensive parks, etc.

A long time ago the school districts were consolidated along these municipal boundaries. So if you want a particular school district then you need to know the municipality then you know the school dictrict. The townships often use the mailing address of the adjacent borough or city, so don't get confused. Just ask for the municipality and do your school district research with someone besides your realtor.

[CHIP72]

Cranberry Township will definitely fit what you are looking for, though the commute into Pittsburgh will be a little long.

[Dawne]

Townships also have elected officials that run the government in that township. For instance, my mailing address is Selinsgrove, which is a borough with a borough council, a police department and a mayor. However, I don't live in the borough. I live in Jackson Township, which is governed by township supervisors (like a borough or city council). We don't have a police department so when we need something we call the state police. We don't have a mayor. Most houses in a township will probably be rural, with much acreage. However, in Jackson Township is the village of Kratzerville which is where my house is actually located. But Kratzerville does not have any elected officials, police, mayor or post office. We are governed by the Jacksown Township supervisors, call the state police, and get our mail delivered to a rural box along the road.

Hope that helps some more.

[mattjd]

Originally Posted by eastcoast3

Our family may be relocating to PA, due to job reclocation. I have been researching different areas and have gotten a lot of feedback about Cranberry Township. I am interested in a suburban area (we are currently from a town of about 10,000 people in MA) I currently can travel 5-15 minutes to reach shopping center, hospitals, restaurants etc. So we want something similiar...

I am looking for a town with good schools, community sports teams for children and a safe area.

I am confused if Cranberry Township is a town? I saw that there are also something called boroughs?? Are those towns within a township?? It's difficult for me to research schools if I don't know which towns I'm looking at inside Cranberry Township ( I could have all of this completly confused)

Would someone be able to expain to me how the towns are set up within a county.

My husband will be working in Pittsburgh....so the commute will be a consideration also.

Thanks for any help!

A township is just a form of government for previously very rural areas. Many of these places, like Cranberry, are now much more populated. Back in the day, farming communities and rural residences simply joined together in government and it was called a township. Since townships were originally used mainly in rural communities, most of them are fairly large size-wise. In Allegheny County, a few townships are O'Hara, Moon, Upper St. Clair, Pine, Richland, Collier, Indiana, and Hampton. These are typically pretty new communities, pretty wealthy, and most homes are pretty big and fairly new....basically, your typical suburb.


To answer some questions about Cranberry: No, it is not a town. It is a township. The school district for all of Cranberry twp is Seneca Valley. If you were to move just east into Adams Twp, it would be Mars school district. Seneca Valley is a very good school district, and a pretty big one. I don't think the size is a big issue though because they divided it up a lot to avoid overpopulation. k-4 goes to elem. school, thn 5-6 goes to one of the 2 middle schools, then 7-8 goes to to a different middle school, then 9-10 goes to high school, then *finally* 11-12 go to senior high school. So, from k-12 your kid would be going to 5 different schools, which is a lot...but the 7-8 middle school and 9-10 high school both have about 1,200 kids and those are the biggest schools in the district, so that's not too bad. The senior hs has around 1,100 kids. I don't care for changing schools that much, but that's the way they do it in Cranberry and I guess it keeps the kids from going to a hs with well over 2,000 kids and growing.

As I mentioned, all kids inside Cranberry Twp go to Seneca Valley, but there are boroughs within Cranberry Twp too, like Seven Fields, Fox Run, etc. One thing I disagree with is that another poster made a comment about the commute into Pittsburgh being difficult. I've driven from Pittsburgh to Cranberry and back several times and the Parkway North/79 is the easiest commute of all the suburbs...way better than the parkway west and east. I'd say you could easily get into the city within 45 mins...probably much closer to 30-40 mins though. This is a new, still fairly rural, area so there really isn't much traffic to fight until you get within a few miles of downtown. Most of the homes in Cranberry would probably have been built after 2000, so it's a growing area and I'm not sure how the traffic might be in 15 years, but as of now it's not bad at all. Here are some links to help you find out about the schools and townships in butler county. The township's website will also give you a lot of info about their sports leagues, pools, Good luck.

File:Map of Butler County Pennsylvania With Municipal and Township Labels.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

File:Map of Butler County Pennsylvania School Districts.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cranberry Township - Official Website

homepage — Seneca Valley School District

[mattjd]

Also, if you ask some specific questions about Cranberry in the Pittsburgh forum I'm sure you'd get a ton of better answers than anything I've given you. I don't live there, but I've seen it mentioned several times on the Pittsburgh forum, so they'd be able to help you out much better than the Pennsylvania forum.

[eastcoast3]

Thanks to all of you who posted answers to my questions! You were all very helpful and I appreciate the time you took to help our family out!
Thanks again!

[mams1559]

I'll use Cambria County, PA as an example, as it's smaller than Allegheny County and has examples of each type of incorporated area you inquired about.

Johnstown is a city (pop. ~ 24,000) It's pictured in white.

Geistown is a borough (boro)
Nanty Glo, Ebensburg (the county seat) and Hastings are also examples of a boro. All boros are pictured in white

Richland, Adams, Chest, Dean are all examples of townships and all townships are pictured in green.

In this county, the townships have a board of supervisors, ranging in size from 3 members to 5, who govern the twp. Some twps have police depts., public works, etc, just like a city. Some of the smaller population twps dont.

Boroughs operate pretty much the same as a city, they're just smaller in size and population.

Mailing addresses and school districts can confuse the situation.

Mail Example: when you address mail to Johnstown, PA it could be directed to the city, any number of the smaller boros that surround the city (not pictured for clarity) or the following townships: Richland, Upper/Lower Yoder, Stonycreek, Conemaugh and any of the East/Middle/West Taylors.

School District example: Gr. Johnstown SD = city, Stonycreek, Lower Yoder and many of the unpictured surrounding boros.

Richland SD = Richland Twp and Geistown Borough
Westmont SD = Westmont boro, Southmont boro (both not pictured) and Upper Yoder.

So, be careful when you're selecting the area you wish to live because it's school district may be different than it's mailing address

Hope this visual gives you a better understanding, along with all the great information the other posters provided. You can get a similar map for many of the counties in PA that may help decipher our unique designations.

[KingMouse]

Watch out for townships in boroughs clothes. Such as Sugercreek "Borough" in Venango County which should be labled a township not a borough. The borough has a total area of 37 square miles and a population of 5,331 as of the year 2000. The last time I really checked into it, it was the largest borough in the commonwealth as far as land area.