Pennsylvania Mayor, 23, Dies Hours After Resigning

Las Vegas Review-Journal ^ | November 10, 2017

[EvilCapitalist]

Maybe he was a friend of Seth Rich.

[Angels27]

Did he have dirt on the Clintons???

[fieldmarshaldj]

We need Quincy on the case.

[Redwood71]

All humor aside, has anyone found out why he resigned and if he was in the cross hairs for anyone? Nothing ever came up about that that I know of. Must have been a reason which could lead to if it was a pro doing it and who.

rwood

[IncPen]

A fellow at my old company retired at 65 and died of a heart attack TWO DAYS later. He spent the whole day on his feet cutting film and making print plates for books. No notice that he was so lose to death before.

A friend who works as a carpenter says that "19 paychecks after retirement" is considered some kind of magic number. If you beat that, you're good to go. Superstitious lot, I guess...

[fieldmarshaldj]

Who knows ? I mean Mount Carbon is a municipality of all of NINETY-ONE residents (well, 90 now) that once had 4 times as much. I could understand if this were a much bigger locale, but it’s so tiny. Could be shady, could be a legit accident. RIP to the poor young man.

[Redwood71]

Probably will never know. After all, they still are hiding Marilyn’s death. Kennedy’s, too. And Ron Brown, and who knows who else for political purposes. Sometimes you just got to say WTF.

rwood

[RegulatorCountry]

Why would a town with so few residents even remain incorporated? It’s not as if 90 residents are going to be able to pay the freight for a municipal government of any kind. Depopulating rural towns here in North Carolina are “unincorporating” with police devolving to the county, and water/sewer going to private contractors if they even have those utilities.

[Garth Tater]

"Why would a town with so few residents even remain incorporated? "

Jobs. Each and every one filled by a member of one of the "connected" local families. At least that's the way it's done here in WVa. Nepotism, ain't it grand!

From the article:

"Barnes was appointed mayor of Mount Carbon in February 2016. He followed his mother and grandmother into public service. His grandmother was the first woman to be mayor of Mount Carbon, and his mother served on the council."

[RegulatorCountry]

Well, if there’s not enough of a tax base to pay for a few salaries, what benefit would anyone derive from being appointed to such a position, since it would be unpaid or severely underpaid? Do they have some sort of large industrial complex to tax or something? If they did, they wouldn’t be depopulating to such an extent.

[Garth Tater]

Grants from the State pay some of the overhead. And when everybody is poor and there are very few "good" jobs whatever jobs can be funded out of even a tiny tax base are "good" jobs.

And then there's the baksheesh. Kickbacks. La mordita. The little bit of benefit you can scrounge out of being the one that gets to decide whatever is left to be decided in these poverty stricken neighborhoods is more than everyone else is getting.

The positions you really want your family to have control of are in the local schools. BIG bucks from the State there!

[RegulatorCountry]

I don’t believe small municipalities are state subsidized here. They are, as I mentioned, unincorporating with all municipal services and utilities being placed elsewhere. County for police, volunteer for fire, private contractor for water and sewer, Aqua America seems to be winning a lot of that business.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Mount Carbon’s technical status is “borough” under PA state law. It occupies 0.07 of a square mile (or just 45 acres). Apparently, they took a vote to merge with adjacent Pottsville (the county seat), but they turned it down.

I started doing research on these “tiny towns” state by state, which is very time consuming. I did finish a complete survey of my adjacent state of Alabama. As of the 2010 census, they’ve got 16 incorporated towns of less than 100 population, with the smallest having 10 people (McMullen) and on top of that, the U.S. Census itself designated 9 new locales as “Census Designated Places” as having less than 100 persons, one of which has just 22 residents. How they decided any of those places were worthy of such a designation so tiny, I have no idea.

Leaving out those CDPs, a reason why those places still remain incorporated is that some are of a historic (or racial) nature, such as Mooresville, which has been in existence for 200 years and has just 53 residents, but is a historic attraction. Unless they specifically move to disincorporate or merge with a nearby community, they’ll usually stay in existence until they hit zero. One did in 2000, a place called Gantt’s Quarry, so it just simply ceased to exist.

The most notable example was Cahaba (or Cahawba), which once was the state capital and Dallas County Seat, near the famed Selma, which once had a few thousand residents (large for pre-1860). It was along a bottomland on the Alabama River, prone to flooding and the yellow fever (an astonishingly stupid place to put an important town). Throw in the Civil War and competitor, nearby Selma (which was built on higher ground) and Cahaba went to pieces and was effectively abandoned. The census folks stopped counting the residents within the city limits in 1890 (though there were still some there for awhile longer, abandoned mansions and whatnot, until those were all gone by the 1930s). The state discovered it was still an incorporated city as late as 1989 despite having a population of zero by then and not a single remaining building left, all reclaimed by woods, and they had to formally disincorporate it. It’s now a state historic site with some reconstructed buildings.

[Garth Tater]

Around here they have to be forced to unincorporate. The absolutely last thing these little wide spots on the road will close down is their police "department" - usually just a room in the same little bldg that serves as the townhall, mayors office, mayor's court and if they're really lucky they might get some rent from an ambulance service. Once the PD goes the revenue stream from traffic tickets is gone and that pretty much kills off the village (they're not really big enough to be called towns.)

If you ever want to have some fun, try to contest a traffic ticket in one of these little Mayberry towns. You'll be in Mayors Court where the mayor is the cop's uncle and they are both relying on your fine to pay for some tires for their only cruiser so it can get back out on the road and make some more money so their paychecks don't bounce on Friday. LOL

I live on the outskirts of a village (population ~200) that is desperately trying to hold on to its charter. About 150 of the residents are hoping they fold up soon and the other 50 are all from one of the two families that has been running the "town" for the last hundred years. There's going to be a big BBQ when it finally goes under. Probably going to be cooking hotdogs over the smoldering embers of what's left of the townhall!