A municipality is a city, town, or village that has its own local government. When a community becomes a municipality, it gains the right to manage its own affairs: collecting taxes, maintaining roads, running schools, providing police and fire services, and making local laws.

Think of it this way: your state government handles big issues that affect everyone in the state, but your municipality handles the things that matter most to daily life in your specific community. The mayor and city council of a municipality decide whether to build a new park, fix potholes on Main Street, or change the hours at the public library.

Municipalities come in different sizes. New York City is a huge municipality with millions of people, while some municipalities are small towns with just a few hundred residents. But whether large or small, each municipality has its own government, even though it still has to follow state and national laws.

When people talk about municipal services, they mean things like water supply, trash collection, and street maintenance. A municipal building is one owned by the local government, like city hall or a public library.