Solution is available

This story in Courthouse News grabbed my compassion.

Hartman is a teensy town in the northeast corner of Colorado, not near much of anything. The population was 56 at the last census. Per Googlemap, it’s way off Highway 36, west of Syracuse, in a dry area with very few towns. It has a leftover grid of streets, about 20 inhabited houses, lots of burned-out house trailers and collapsed abandoned houses. The former downtown is two burned-out storefronts, clearly abandoned many decades ago. A former railroad grade is visible, also abandoned long ago.

More importantly it DOESN’T have a grain elevator or industrial ruins. Elevators last forever. If there was ever an elevator it would still be standing, vacant or not. In other words, Hartman never had a solid economic center.

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Hartman is in the news because it DID have a city government until very recently. The two city officials got in a fight earlier this year and gave up, leaving the electric bill for the water system unpaid. Now the Colo state government is moving to disincorporate Hartman and the citizens are objecting.

Rationally the state is correct. Counties have always handled small settlements easily. Counties also handle HUGE suburbs easily. Until the 2000s, half of the Spokane metro was outside of the city. Most of the KC suburbs are outside of city boundaries.

In natural terms, Hartman is well below the magic number of 150 that seems to be a critical ‘biomass’ threshold. Above 150 a community can sustain things like businesses and governments.

Despite all the economic and rational considerations, Hartman clearly WANTS to retain its brand and identity.

At a time when most people (including me) have stopped believing in “governance” and “elections” and “civic” “engagement”, these Hartman folks actually WANT to participate in their own government!

Maybe we should honor their unique preference. Maybe we should put them in charge of something bigger?

Those KC suburbs offer an alternative model. Near the state line there are a dozen named “cities”, treated by the post office as cities but without any separate police, fire or water systems.

Countryside is just a few streets in the middle of the sprawl, about the same physical size as Hartman, and it has been a named “city” for 70 years.