Template talk:Seneca County, New York

Seneca County is unique as having two county seats. They are the villages of Ovid and Waterloo. Why is there only one county seat shown on the template page? How does one put two separate county seats on the template page? hello (talk) 16:28, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The official source says that there's only one county seat. Moreover, Seneca County wouldn't be unique if this were true: Bennington County, Vermont has two shire towns (shire town = county seat), and several counties in Iowa and the Southeast have multiple county seats. Nyttend (talk) 17:19, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Legally, there are two county seats (see [1]) but in practice, only the Waterloo county offices are involved in day to day operations. --Polaron | Talk 18:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I mentioned this because:

the page for Seneca County says there are two county seats, and names them

the page for the town of Ovid says that Ovid (the village) is one of two county seats

the page for the village of Waterloo says that Waterloo is the county seat

the template page for Seneca County lists only one county seat

These are unnecessary discprepancies. I dislike discrepancies of any kind. Can someone truly confirm if Ovid and Waterloo are current county seats? Or if only one of them is a county seat (which one?). Also, please fix this discrepancy either by adding a second county seat to the template page (and mentioning that Ovid is a county seat on the village page), or by removing a county seat from the county page (and from either the Waterloo village page or the Ovid town page). hello (talk) 19:39, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seneca continues to be a two-shire system as noted by historical records on file through the Town of Ovid, Office of Seneca County Historian and the Seneca County Government. Although Waterloo and Ovid are both considered county seats, an administrative center no longer exists at Ovid. When the Seneca County Board of Supervisors voted to end the use of two courts and jury districts in 1895, the courthouse in Ovid no longer served any considerable purpose. In 1921, the board approved to abolish the two-shire system, moving any county administrative offices remaining in Ovid to Waterloo which became the sole county seat of Seneca County. Two years later, the board voted to reinstate the two-shire system. In honor, the Seneca County Board of Supervisors meets at least once a year at the old courthouse in Ovid. Due to the fact that the majority of county administrative offices are in Waterloo, that village continues to be the primary county seat of Seneca County. It is one of the main reasons that Waterloo is listed as the only county seat in most political sources. There are a couple county administrative departments which are in or near Ovid, including the Seneca County Sheriff's Office and the Office for the Aging (with locations in both Waterloo and Ovid). Mld74 (talk) 19:25, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]