Boroughitis

Boroughitis (also borough fever or borough mania) was the creation in the 1890s, usually by referendum, of large numbers of small boroughs in the U.S. state of New Jersey, particularly in Bergen County. Attempts by the New Jersey Legislature to reform local government and school systems led to the breakup of most of Bergen County's townships into small boroughs, which still balkanize the state's political map. This occurred following the development of commuter suburbs in New Jersey, residents of which wanted more government services, whereas the long-time rural population feared the increases in taxation that would result.

In the late 19th century, much of New Jersey was divided into large townships. In Bergen County, several of these townships contained multiple commuter suburbs, often formed around railroad stations. Political disputes arose between the growing number of commuters, who wanted more government services for the new developments near railroad lines, and long-time residents such as farmers, who understood this to come with higher taxes. A previously little-used law permitted small segments of existing townships to vote by referendum to form independent boroughs. In late 1893, Republicans, backed by commuters, captured control of the legislature; the following year, they passed legislation allowing boroughs that were formed from parts of two or more townships to elect a representative to the county Board of Chosen Freeholders. This 1894 act, in combination with a second one the same year that consolidated school districts into one per municipality, made it easy and attractive for dissatisfied communities to break away and become boroughs, in order to gain a seat on the county board or to keep control of the local school.

Forty new boroughs were formed in 1894 and 1895, with the bulk in Bergen County, where most townships were broken up or greatly reduced in size; there are few there today. The state legislature scuttled the right to elect a freeholder in 1895, and ended the formation of boroughs by referendum the following year. Municipalities continued to be created by the legislature into the 20th century, and although there have been efforts at consolidation in recent years to lower the high cost of government, they have not been particularly effective.

Background

At the time of the union of East Jersey and West Jersey into the Province of New Jersey in 1702, there were about 24 townships; more were added under British government by letters patent, court decrees, or legislative action. Following the American Revolutionary War, the New Jersey Legislature confirmed all municipal charters, and granted new ones; by 1798, the state had 104 townships. Increased economic activity in Essex, Morris and Sussex counties, and the formation of Warren County, raised the number to 125 by 1834.

Most of the townships had low taxes and little government; the roads (mostly of dirt) were maintained by farmers in lieu of taxes. Township meetings occurred each February; the citizens would discuss concerns, voluntarily seek solutions, and collectively appoint agents to carry out their will. Voters in each township elected members of the county governing body, the Board of Chosen Freeholders.

The railroad brought major changes to New Jersey beginning in the mid-19th century. The state was mostly agricultural, and the new lines made it easier for farmers to get their crops to market. But they also made it easier for those employed in New York City or Philadelphia to live outside the urban core and yet commute to work each day. Even before the Civil War, the Brick Church station, in Orange, Essex County, about from New York City, became the center of the nation's first commuter suburb. New Jersey's townships acquired a new type of population, consisting of commuters, who formed communities near railroad stations, and who wanted good streets and roads, better funded schools, and a larger stake in the government. They were fiercely opposed on each issue by the existing rural, agricultural population, who understood that their taxes would need to be raised in order to pay for the services that they did not want.

Schools and school districts caused angry debate between commuters and long-time residents. School district lines were independent of those of townships, for every school formed its own school district. Accordingly, townships could contain a number of school districts: Bergen County's Franklin Township in the early 1890s contained eleven school districts serving 774 students. Of the 94 schools in Bergen County in 1893, 31 were one-room schoolhouses, though this was a decrease from 44 in 1880. Bergen County was sparsely populated when the railroad lines went through in the 1850s, making for a different pattern of development than other suburban counties, such as Union and Camden, which saw more planned development around railroad stations. Bergen's pattern of development was unique in New Jersey, with, until 1894, several commuter suburbs in a single township, something rare elsewhere in the state.

The town-meeting style of government then prescribed for townships proved ill-suited to those changing times. The New Jersey Constitution gave the state government in Trenton relatively weak powers over the townships, but from time to time the legislature attempted reform. The townships were divided into road districts, with residents appointed to see that maintenance was done; in 1859, the state allowed residents of each district to elect a road commissioner, who saw to it their road taxes were spent effectively. Many of these districts later became individual municipalities, with the road commissioner often the first mayor.

Legislation

Until 1875, municipalities had been created or modified only by special acts of the legislature, but a state constitutional amendment that year abolished special laws for individual municipalities. Thereafter, lawmakers passed general laws regarding municipalities, and left incorporation of new ones to referendums in areas wanting redress, and to the courts. In 1878, the legislature passed the Borough Act, allowing landowners in an area less than and with fewer than 1,000 people to seek a referendum on secession from the township to become a new borough. This referendum could take place on petition of the owners of 10 percent of the land, as measured by value, in the area in question, and 10 days notice of the vote was required. In 1882, the legislature expanded this measure to allow areas of less than to become borough commissions with some autonomy within the township. Another impetus towards more municipalities developed in the 1870s, with the New Jersey public soured on the railroads because of the Panic of 1873. The newly Democratic legislature passed laws that ended tax exemptions on railroad-owned lands. Much of the land, generally near stations, was sold off, and was transformed into communities that in the following years would secede from the township in which they lay, creating some of the "doughnut holes", with boroughs surrounded by the townships they were formerly part of, that mark the New Jersey municipal landscape today.

In the 1893 elections, Republicans recaptured control of the New Jersey Legislature. This was due in part to another economic depression, the Panic of 1893, which had occurred with Democrat Grover Cleveland in the White House, and in part because some Democrats, like Republicans before them, had proven corrupt. The increasing commuter population also played a role; Bergen County contained (and still does) many commuter communities because of its proximity to New York City. These new residents were strongly Republican, as contrasted with the Democratic farmers. According to Bergen County historian Kevin Wright, "Having gained sufficient numbers by 1893 to challenge Punkin Dusters at the polls, the Commuters of Bergen County led a political revolution in Home Rule that finally toppled the ancien régime." Legal disputes about control of the New Jersey Senate and the Republican desire to undo many Democratic policies occupied the legislature in the early part of its 1894 session. Nevertheless, interest groups such as local landowners pushed the legislature for permissive policies on municipal incorporation, hoping to gain power in the new governments.

As the legislature sat, the townships of Bergen County fractured. The provision of the Borough Act allowing separation had been little used prior to 1893, and in 1893, Bergen County had only three boroughs. A year-long legal battle in Palisades Township, along the Hudson River, led to a referendum that saw Tenafly break away in January 1894. Some communities seceded in early 1894 because of disputes about how to pay for macadamized roads, which were first paved through much of Bergen County in the first half of the 1890s. The Hackensack ''Republican'' reported on March 1, "the chief reason why Delford Oradell.html"_;"title="Oradell,_New_Jersey.html"_;"title="ater_Oradell,_New_Jersey">Oradell">Oradell,_New_Jersey.html"_;"title="ater_Oradell,_New_Jersey">Oradell_ Oradell.html"_;"title="Oradell,_New_Jersey.html"_;"title="ater_Oradell,_New_Jersey">Oradell">Oradell,_New_Jersey.html"_;"title="ater_Oradell,_New_Jersey">Oradell_Westwood,_New_Jersey">Westwood,_ Oradell.html"_;"title="Oradell,_New_Jersey.html"_;"title="ater_Oradell,_New_Jersey">Oradell">Oradell,_New_Jersey.html"_;"title="ater_Oradell,_New_Jersey">Oradell_Westwood,_New_Jersey">Westwood,_Hillsdale,_New_Jersey">Hillsdale_and_Park_Ridge,_New_Jersey.html" ;"title="Hillsdale,_New_Jersey.html" ;"title="Westwood,_New_Jersey.html" ;"title="Oradell,_New_Jersey">Oradell.html" ;"title="Oradell,_New_Jersey.html" ;"title="ater Oradell, New Jersey">Oradell">Oradell,_New_Jersey.html" ;"title="ater Oradell, New Jersey">Oradell Westwood, New Jersey">Westwood, Hillsdale, New Jersey">Hillsdale and Park Ridge, New Jersey">Park Ridge want to become boroughs is that they may avoid what is feared will be heavy macadam tax". The proposed borough of Delford would take land from multiple townships, uniting communities on both sides of the Hackensack River that shared a school, but incorporation was put on hold because of legal uncertainty as to whether a borough could be formed from parts of more than one township.

In April, the Republican majority in Trenton let it be known they were working on a bill to solve Delford's problem by allowing boroughs to be formed from portions of two or more townships, and this became the Act of May 9, 1894. The act also granted such boroughs a seat on the county Board of Chosen Freeholders. According to Wright, "the consequences of casting special legislation under guise of a general law soon became patent". Since 1885, new boroughs had not gotten their own freeholder, with borough voters instead joining with those in the township they were formerly part of to elect one. Partisans saw the political possibilities of the 1894 law, and contested control of the Bergen County government through the formation of boroughs that would elect freeholders of their party.

The energetic legislators finally reached school reform with Chapter CCCXXXV of the Public Laws of 1894. That act, passed on May 25, provided that "the several school districts in each township shall be consolidated into one school district". The legislature's intent was to equalize funding between wealthier districts and poorer ones. This had the effect of eliminating more than 1,000 school districts statewide. Had the legislature done no more, according to former New Jersey General Assembly Speaker Alan Karcher, "New Jersey might have had fewer than 500 municipalities today". However, the legislature further enacted in the bill, "that each city, borough, and incorporated town, shall be a school district, separate and distinct from the township school district". Thus, if a community seceded from its township to form a borough, it would keep control of its school. The new township school districts would be responsible for the debts of their predecessors, meaning that some communities faced the prospect of paying off, in part, the debts of others, and seeing some of their tax dollars going to fund others' schools. Under the law, by becoming an incorporated borough, they could avoid these things.

The school legislation greatly fueled the borough craze in Bergen County. Wealthy communities that had had their own school districts now faced the prospect of sharing their school tax revenues with poorer areas, or of being divided up piecemeal in borough referendums. Allendale broke away, principally from Franklin Township, because of such fears. At 650 people, Allendale was one of the more populous boroughs formed in 1894. In commuter communities as Park Ridge, the new residents often led the borough drives against the opposition of the old inhabitants who feared the improvements would not benefit them and that the new borough would quickly incur debt through issuance of municipal bonds.

Another new borough created by the residents to keep local school control was Woodcliff, which was formed around the settlement of Pascack from parts of Harrington Township and Orvil Township, and which in 1910 became Woodcliff Lake. Rural Upper Saddle River broke away from Orvil Township and Hohokus Township, taking one of Orvil Township's six schoolhousesthe press noted that the nascent borough would most likely go Democratic as only 16 Republicans could be found. Ridgewood, then a township, avoided further depredations by Midland Park and Glen Rock by incorporating as a village. The borough of Wood-Ridge was formed after the boundary lines were carefully drawn with an eye to the referendum, to exclude the home of a family of prominent landowners who were opposed to the incorporationthough not excluding their farmland. Once Wood-Ridge was successfully established, the farmhouse was annexed by borough ordinance. The secession of Wood-Ridge from Bergen Township, together with that of Carlstadt, Moonachie and Wallington, left Bergen Township with only a patch of low-lying swampland and 61 voters; the legislature in 1902 annexed it to Lodi Township.

Of the 40 boroughs created in 1894 and 1895, 26 were in Bergen County. The ones elsewhere included Roselle and Mountainside, in Union County. In September 1894, state Senator Henry D. Winton warned that the legislature at its next session was likely to amend if not gut the Borough Act because of the craze in Bergen County. Nine new members had been added to the Board of Chosen Freeholders from the previous sixteen, Winton noted, with a proportionate increase in the cost of government, which would be further inflated by the multiplicity of boroughs. The signal that the law might change did not slow the incorporations: Wood-Ridge, Carlstadt, Edgewater, Old Tappan and other boroughs trace their geneses to late 1894. There were some fistfights and hard feelings over the borough formations, and Russell Jones, whose house was on the newly drawn line between Teaneck and Bogota, saw it burn down as firefighters argued about who had jurisdiction.

Aftermath and legacy

The wave of incorporations continued into 1895, with Cliffside Park