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30-415: Its capital city was Płock , and it was further divided onto 10 powiats . In 1815 it was transformed into Płock Voivodeship . 52°33′00″N 19°42′00″E  /  52.550000°N 19.700000°E  / 52.550000; 19.700000 This Poland location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Powiat A powiat ( [ˈpɔvjat] ; pl.   powiaty )

60-526: A Superior Court and Sheriff (as an officer of the court ), both located in a designated "shire town". Bennington County, Vermont has two shire towns; the court for "North Shire" is in the shire town Manchester , and the Sheriff for the county and court for "South Shire" are in the shire town Bennington. In 2024, Connecticut , which had not defined their counties for anything but statistical, historical and weather warning purposes since 1960, along with ending

90-569: A hrabia ( count ) is also literally translated as "county". A powiat is part of a larger unit, the voivodeship ( Polish województwo ) or province . A powiat is usually subdivided into gminas (in English, often referred to as " communes " or " municipalities "). Major towns and cities, however, function as separate counties in their own right, without subdivision into gmina s. They are termed " city counties " ( powiaty grodzkie or, more formally, miasta na prawach powiatu ) and have roughly

120-410: A county seat may be an independent city surrounded by, but not part of, the county of which it is the administrative center; for example, Fairfax City is both the county seat of Fairfax County, Virginia and completely surrounded by Fairfax County, but the city is politically independent of the county. When the county seat is in the independent city, government offices such as the courthouse may be in

150-429: A powiat is vested in an elected council ( rada powiatu ), while local executive power is vested in an executive board ( zarząd powiatu ) headed by the starosta , elected by the council. The administrative offices headed by the starosta are called the starostwo . However, in city counties these institutions do not exist separately – their powers and functions are exercised by the city council ( rada miasta ),

180-586: Is an administrative center, seat of government , or capital city of a county or civil parish . The term is in use in five countries: Canada , China , Hungary , Romania , and the United States . An equivalent term, shire town , is used in the U.S. state of Vermont and in several other English-speaking jurisdictions, such as Venezuela . In Canada , the provinces of Ontario , Quebec , New Brunswick , Prince Edward Island , and Nova Scotia have counties as an administrative division of government below

210-409: Is known as the seat of its county. Generally, the county legislature, county courthouse, sheriff's department headquarters, hall of records, jail and correctional facility are located in the county seat, though some functions (such as highway maintenance, which usually requires a large garage for vehicles, along with asphalt and salt storage facilities) may also be located or conducted in other parts of

240-511: Is the second-level unit of local government and administration in Poland , equivalent to a county , district or prefecture ( LAU-1 [formerly NUTS-4 ]) in other countries. The term " powiat " is most often translated into English as "county" or "district" (sometimes "poviat"). In historical contexts, this may be confusing because the Polish term hrabstwo (an administrative unit administered/owned by

270-464: Is to translate the names as "(something County)", as in the examples above. (This system is the standard used in Misplaced Pages.) Thus in most cases, the English name for a powiat consists of the name of the city or town which is its seat, followed by the word County . Different counties sometimes have the same name in Polish, since the names of different towns may have the same derived adjective. For example,

300-524: The German-governed Grand Duchy of Poznań , as the Polish equivalent of the German Kreis . After Poland regained independence in 1918 , the powiats were again the second-level territorial units. Powiats were abolished in 1975 in favour of a larger number of voivodeships but were reintroduced on 1 January 1999. This reform also created 16 larger voivodeships. Legislative power within

330-935: The United States, followed by Towson , the county seat of Baltimore County, Maryland . Likewise, some county seats may not be incorporated in their own right, but are located within incorporated municipalities. For example, Cape May Court House, New Jersey , though unincorporated, is a section of Middle Township , an incorporated municipality. In some states, often those that were among the original Thirteen Colonies , county seats include or formerly included "Court House" as part of their name, such as Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia . Most counties have only one county seat. However, some counties in Alabama , Arkansas , Georgia , Iowa , Kentucky , Massachusetts , Mississippi , Missouri , New Hampshire , New York , and Vermont have two or more county seats, usually located on opposite sides of

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360-517: The counties after his unification, there were about 1,000. Under the Eastern Han dynasty , the number of counties increased to above 1,000. About 1400 existed when the Sui dynasty abolished the commandery level (郡 jùn), which was the level just above counties, and demoted some commanderies to counties. In Imperial China, the county was a significant administrative unit because it marked the lowest level of

390-452: The counties with their seats at Grodzisk Wielkopolski and Grodzisk Mazowiecki are both called powiat grodziski , and those with seats at Brzeg and Brzesko are both called powiat brzeski . In English, this ambiguity either does not occur ( Brzeg County and Brzesko County ) or can be avoided by using the complete name of the seat ( Grodzisk Wielkopolski County and Grodzisk Mazowiecki County ). County seat A county seat

420-418: The county, especially if it is geographically large. A county seat is usually an incorporated municipality . The exceptions include the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as Arlington County, Virginia , where the county seat is the entire county. Ellicott City , the county seat of Howard County, Maryland , is the largest unincorporated county seat in

450-420: The county. Examples include Harrison County, Mississippi , which has both Biloxi and Gulfport as county seats, and Hinds County, Mississippi , which has both Raymond and the state capital of Jackson . The practice of multiple county seat towns dates from the days when travel was difficult. There have been few efforts to eliminate the two-seat arrangement, since a county seat is a source of civic pride for

480-521: The directly elected mayor ( burmistrz or prezydent ), and the city office/town hall ( urząd miasta ). Sometimes, a powiat has its seat outside its territory. For example, Poznań County ( powiat poznański ) has its offices in Poznań , although Poznań is itself a city county, and is therefore not part of Poznań County. Powiats have relatively limited powers since many local and regional matters are dealt with either at gmina or voivodeship level. Some of

510-424: The imperial bureaucratic structure; in other words, it was the lowest level that the government reached. Government below the county level was often undertaken through informal non-bureaucratic means, varying between dynasties. The head of a county was the magistrate , who oversaw both the day-to-day operations of the county as well as civil and criminal cases. The current number of counties mostly resembled that of

540-572: The increase of Han Chinese population in Taiwan, the number of counties also grew by time. By the end of Qing era, there were 11 counties in Taiwan. Protestant missionaries in China first romanized the term as hien . When Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, the hierarchy of divisions also incorporated into the Japanese system in the period when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. By September 1945, Taiwan

570-611: The independent city under an agreement, such as in Albemarle , or may in be enclaves of the county surrounded by the independent city, such as in Fairfax . Others, such as Prince William , have the courthouse in an enclave surrounded by the independent city and have the county government, the Board of Supervisors, in a different part of the county, far from the county seat. The following counties have their county seat in an independent city: Bedford

600-732: The later years of the Qing dynasty . Changes of location and names of counties in Chinese history have been a major field of research in Chinese historical geography, especially from the 1960s to the 1980s. There are 1,355 counties in Mainland China out of a total of 2,851 county-level divisions. In Taiwan , the first counties were first established in 1661 by the Kingdom of Tungning . The later ruler Qing empire inherited this type of administrative divisions. With

630-426: The main areas in which the powiat authorities have decision-making powers and competences include: The Polish the name of a county, in the administrative sense, consists of the word powiat followed by a masculine-gender adjective (because powiat is a masculine noun ). In most cases, this is the adjective formed from the name of the town or city where the county has its seat . Thus the county with its seat at

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660-433: The noun only ( powiat makowski ). There are also a few counties whose names are derived from the names of two towns (such as powiat czarnkowsko-trzcianecki , Czarnków-Trzcianka County ), from the name of a city and a geographical adjective ( powiat łódzki wschodni , Łódź East County ), or a mountain range ( powiat tatrzański , Tatra County ). There is more than one way to render such names into English . A common method

690-752: The provincial level, and thus county seats. In the provinces of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia the term "shire town" is used in place of county seat. County seats in China are the administrative centers of the counties in the People's Republic of China . Xian have existed since the Warring States period and were set up nationwide by the Qin dynasty . The number of counties in China proper gradually increased from dynasty to dynasty. As Qin Shi Huang reorganized

720-513: The same status as former county boroughs in the UK . The other type of powiat s are termed "land counties" ( powiaty ziemskie ). As of 2018, there were 380 powiat -level entities: 314 land counties, and 66 city counties. For a complete alphabetical listing, see " List of Polish counties ". For tables of counties by voivodeship, see the articles on the individual voivodeships (e.g., Greater Poland Voivodeship ). The history of Polish powiats goes back to

750-655: The second half of the 14th century. They remained the basic unit of territorial organization in Poland, then in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , until the latter's partitioning in 1795. In the 19th century, the powiats continued to function in the part of Poland that had been incorporated into the Russian Empire and in the confederated " Congress Kingdom of Poland "—the equivalent of the Russian uyezd –and, in

780-764: The state's area, has no borough government or borough seat. One borough, the Lake and Peninsula Borough , has its borough seat located in another borough, namely King Salmon in Bristol Bay Borough . In Louisiana , which is divided into parishes rather than counties, county seats are referred to as "parish seats". In New England , counties have served mainly as dividing lines for the states' judicial systems. Rhode Island has no county level of government and thus no county seats, and Massachusetts has dissolved many but not all of its county governments. In Vermont , Massachusetts , and Maine county government consists only of

810-511: The town of Kutno is named powiat kutnowski ( Kutno County ). (In modern Polish both parts of the name are written in lower case ; however, names of powiats in the Grand Duchy of Poznań were written in upper case .) Suppose the name of the seat comprises a noun followed by an adjective, as in Maków Mazowiecki (" Mazovian Maków"). In that case, the adjective will generally be formed from

840-416: The towns involved, along with providing employment opportunities. There are 33 counties with multiple county seats in 11 states: Alaska is divided into boroughs rather than counties; the county seat in these case is referred to as the "borough seat"; this includes six consolidated city-borough governments (one of which is styled as a "municipality"). The Unorganized Borough, Alaska , which covers 49% of

870-607: The use of county seats in particular, will fully transition with the permission of the United States Census Bureau to a system of councils of government for the purposes of boundary definition and as county equivalents. Two counties in South Dakota , Oglala Lakota and Todd , have their county seat and government services centered in a neighboring county. Their county-level services are provided by Fall River County and Tripp County , respectively. In Virginia ,

900-568: Was divided into 8 prefectures ( 州 and 廳 ), which remained after the Republic of China took over. There are 13 county seats in Taiwan, which function as county-administered cities , urban townships , or rural townships . In most of the United States , a county is an administrative or political subdivision of a state that consists of a geographic area with specific boundaries and usually some level of governmental authority. The city, town, or populated place that houses county government

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