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United states in divided in counties (they are called Parishes in Lousiana and Boroughs in Alaska). Counties are the smallest governmental authority. (got it from wiki)
But according to Wikipedia: " New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which is a state county."
So my question is: how come a single city has different parts belonging to different counties? Is not this a bit confusing?
It is sort of confusing but yes, but each of the boroughs is a county -- and all five together make up New York City, making NYC the only place I"ve heard of where the counties (boroughs) are inside the city limits rather than the other way around. (I don't know. What's the difference between LA and LA county?)
But unlike seperate counties in the rest of NY state, the boroughs can't set their own different tax rates, hire different police forces, run separate school systems, and the like. All that is handled through the central NYC governmen, where councilmen elected from each borough make the decisions as a whole. And the boroughs are representd in the state legislature by districts within them.
Back in the day, borough presidents (the equivalent of county executives) had much more political power in that each had one vote on what was know as the Board of Estimate, which made most big policy decisions for NYC. But the B of E was declared unconstitutional anhd now we have a city council and the borough presidents are largely figureheads.
I suspect the whole borough/county set up is really just a vestige from the days before NYC's five boroughs were united into a single city in 1898.
The counties date from colonial times (no one would have named them "Kings" or "Queens" after the Revolution). New York is full of historical anachronisms because it's old (by American standards) and grew far beyond its original political boundaries.
The counties date from colonial times (no one would have named them "Kings" or "Queens" after the Revolution). New York is full of historical anachronisms because it's old (by American standards) and grew far beyond its original political boundaries.
Do you think originally it was "Queen's County" and they dropped off the apostrophe at some point to make things easier? After all, they were only naming it after one Queen.
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Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
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