The first time Joe Davis ran for mayor of Jeddo Borough, his campaign was pretty simple.

On Election Day, Davis wrote his name on the ballot and advertised his candidacy with a piece of paper tacked up on the door of the borough building. Scrawled in black marker, the sign was his one and only billboard.

Surprising even himself, Davis won the race easily. His closest challengers had two votes apiece. He had nine.

That's politics in Jeddo, an old coal town near Hazleton that now holds the distinction of being Northeastern Pennsylvania's smallest municipality.

Population: 98.

"It doesn't look like much," said Davis, 39, a veteran of the Iraq war, "but I wouldn't trade this for the world."

In a state with more than 2,500 municipalities, many Pennsylvanians could say the same about their own hometowns.

According to the 2010 census, nearly a third of Pennsylvania's municipalities have fewer than 1,000 residents. Lackawanna County's tiniest community, West Abington Twp., has a population of 250.

Almost half the state's population lives in cities, boroughs or townships with fewer than 10,000 people. And the smallest of them are becoming even smaller. Of the municipalities with 500 or fewer residents, 65 percent of them lost population between 2000 and 2010.

At a time when so many municipalities are grappling with rising costs, shrinking tax revenues and vanishing state support, these problems can seemingly not matter to the small communities that have minuscule budgets and offer few public services.

But they are not exactly immune, either.

"Each of these small towns is clearly part of a larger economic region, and for each of them to be struggling on their own to succeed isn't going to be a good strategy," said Jennifer Vey, a policy fellow with the Brookings Institution.

Vey, a native of York, was one of the authors behind a 2003 Brookings Institution report called "Back to Prosperity." Among other things, the study argued that Pennsylvania's "intense localism" and fragmented bureaucracy were partly responsible for holding back the state's economic growth.

Any conversation about the future of Pennsylvania's small towns needs to start with a regional dialogue, Vey said.

"The most important thing is for the state and the metropolitan areas to understand what the challenges and assets are of these small towns, and look for ways to invest in them," she said.

In the not-so-distant past, there was a conventional wisdom that Pennsylvania just had too many small governments that needed to be pared down, said Gerry Cross, executive director of the Pennsylvania Economy League's central division. But he said on the numbers alone, there is no reason a town cannot exist if it only has 500, 50 or five people.

The question is what services do a town's citizens expect? What can public officials afford to provide? The upkeep of roads and storm drains, police and fire protection, garbage collection - these things do not come cheaply.

"Pennsylvanians like their local government, but they also like their local government services, and there's a disconnect there," Cross said.

In Jeddo, this year's budget totals $11,495. There is one state road that runs through town, so the borough does not need to plow or pave it. If there is a fire, the budget includes $600 for firefighters from nearby Freeland. If there is a crime, Jeddo calls the state police.

About six years ago, Jeddo secured a $400,000 state grant for a sewer project. After the lines were installed, the system was promptly turned over to the sanitary authority in Hazle Twp., Councilman Danny Verbonitz said.

Based on the number of sewer hookups, Verbonitz believes the U.S. census actually undercounted Jeddo's population by maybe 20 or so. But there is no denying the place is tiny. From end to end, it is a five-minute walk, if that, along a row of homes that hearken back to the community's coal-mining days.

Lifetime residents said Jeddo takes its name from a Japanese port with which local coal executives did business. In its heyday, Jeddo had a casino and ballroom, a movie theater, school and shops. But Davis said when a vein of coal was discovered running through the middle of town, most of its buildings were razed or moved so the land could be strip-mined.

Residents like Melissa Mease, 38, said they are content with what remains. Her family moved here 15 years ago from Hazleton wanting more peace and quiet. On a recent afternoon, Mease watched from her front porch as her 6-year-old daughter, Kylie, zipped on a scooter down the block toward a friend's house. Mease said her teenage daughter often leaves Jeddo to hang out with her friends in Hazleton, while her teenage son rides his four-wheeler around the many trails through the surrounding woods and coal company property.

The biggest issue in Jeddo is truck traffic. And while Mease wishes her street were better plowed when it snows, she said that is the tradeoff of choosing to live here.

For many of Pennsylvania's small towns, any talk of consolidation is a dead end, but that should not preclude a conversation about sharing services and working regionally to develop jobs and economic opportunities, Cross and Vey said.

Verbonitz, 59, said he is proud of Jeddo's longevity and its identity.

"I don't want to see our independence lost," he said. "To me, it's just nice to say, 'Hey, we're one of the smallest boroughs in Pennsylvania.' We have control of our local taxes, and we keep them at the very minimum. Maybe we would get more municipal services out of a township, but I don't think so. Our taxes would probably go up."

"If one of the other municipalities absorbed us, why should I live here then?" said Davis, who returned to his hometown after living in Tulsa, Okla., and serving with the Army in Iraq.

Life will go on in Jeddo - even political life. In the May 17 primary, Davis won both the GOP and Democratic nominations in his bid for a second term as mayor.

He had no choice but to run as a write-in candidate because, as a Republican, he needed 10 signatures to get on the ballot, and there are only nine registered Republicans in town.

jburton@timesshamrock.com