Making Feudalism Work

Bill Schell the Director of the Martin Memorial Library in York likes to compare Pennsylvania's system of local government to Feudal Germany (Bill isnt the only person to make this comparison, but he does it the most articulately). Feudal Germany had at its peak was not 1 nation, but rather 365 petty prinicipalities each competing with eachother for scarce resources. Pennsylvania is similar in that we have a huge collection of municiaplities, townships, counties, school districts, etc all trying to govern a shrinking & aging population. Because of stagnant State Library Subsidies, public libraries across the state are begining to refocus their advocacy efforts on local government in the hopes of receiving greater local government support and in the process they are starting to become frustrated by these fragments of local government in their service areas, simply because the sheer number of entities makes advocacy and efforts to raise local government support for libraries a challenge at best.

To illustrate this, I have counted up the various local governments across the District. I only counted those entities that have elected representatives and those that have taxing authority. I did not count the various (100's) municiple authorities, agencies, commissions, and councils.

Jefferson County: Population 46,086
1 County Commission
23 Townships
11 Boroughs
3 School Districts
1 Education Agency


Clarion County: Population 41,651
1 County Commission
22 Townships
13 Boroughs
7 School Districts


Venango County: Population 57,562
1 County Commission
20 Townships
9 Boroughs
2 Cities
5 School Districts

It sort of makes you weary just thinking about all these potential audiences for our message, but if we want to improve funding for libraries and expand our services we must go out and gain the support of our local government entities. If anyone has any tips or success stories about local government advocacy, please share them.