Indianapolis has nine townships that don’t do a lot. They provide some help to low-income residents, support small claims courts, shell out millions of taxpayer dollars to employees and a few still support a fire department and ambulance services.
Most services, though, are handled by city-county government. It’s more efficient and less costly for residents.
If state or local officials are looking for an easy way to lower taxes without much impact on service quality, they should eliminate or merge townships in Marion County.
Eliminating townships makes government more efficient
Eliminating township fire departments, for example, could save more than $18 per person every year, by my estimate using a 2009 Ball State University study from Dagney Faulk and Michael Hicks, adjusted for inflation. It would allow more residents to share the high cost of fire department equipment without significantly increasing the cost of service per resident…