How to Incorporate a Community
To incorporate a community as a general law municipality usually begins with collection of a minimum number of signatures, as established by state or local statutes or ordinances. The registrar of voters for the county in which the incorporation is to occur must then verify that the minimum number of valid voter signatures has been collected. Once that occurs, an election must be conducted, either when the next general election is held, or sooner as a special election. Voters decide whether to incorporate a community. It often takes several elections before incorporation is approved.
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Things You'll Need
- Attorney (recommended)
- Filing fees
- Petition to incorporate
- Campaign fund-raising reports
Instructions
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Set a date, time and place for an organizational meeting of people who want to be involved in the incorporation petition process. If you don't already have such a group or committee, post notices or distribute fliers informing the community of the meeting.
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Conduct an organizational meeting. Decide on a spokesperson and establish roles in which each person will serve on the committee. Put one person in charge of collecting petition signatures, another in charge of dealing with the media. Select someone to be responsible for complying with all campaign and fund-raising laws.
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Research applicable state and local election laws and obtain all of the forms and instructions you need to comply. You'll need blank petitions from the local elections office, and registration forms to comply with campaign fund-raising reporting requirements.
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Hire a professional petition signature collection firm, if you can afford to do so. They usually charge between 75 cents and $2 per valid signature collected, and many of them have high success rates.This is especially helpful for large communities considering incorporation.
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File your signed and internally verified petition with the elections office within the required time period.
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File any required fund-raising paperwork with state and local election offices. Fund-raising is very important to the success of most municipal incorporation efforts, because the money raised provides a means of informing the public of the incorporation campaign and the issues involved.
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Raise the funds. Local businesses often support incorporation drives financially because incorporation usually helps promote and increase local business revenue, and can entice more people to move to the community.
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Promote your incorporation campaign. Hold public meetings at which community members may ask questions. Send direct-mail promotional mailings encouraging people to vote for incorporation. Newspaper advertising can also help.
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Prepare a proponent statement for inclusion in ballot information the elections office may send to voters. These mailings may include statements from both proponents and opponents. The elections office may charge a fee.
Await election results. If the measure fails, consider trying again a few years later.
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Tips & Warnings
Collect at least 20 percent more signatures than the minimum required by statute or ordinance, because some of the signatures may be declared invalid.
References
- Photo Credit directional vote sign image by Pix by Marti from Fotolia.com
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