City feels cheated by count, may lose funds

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, March 14, 2001 | 11:32 a.m.

Henderson may have lost its bragging rights as the second largest city in Nevada, but after the release Tuesday of 2000 Census population figures, that was the least of city officials' concerns.

Because of what appears to be a significant undercount of residents, demographer Scott Woodbury said the figures for Henderson could be short by as many as 18,000 people.

Census takers counted 175,381 people in Henderson in April and 180,480 people in Reno.

But those numbers are in stark contrast to a population snapshot taken by state demographers three months later. Using adjusted numbers based in part on local housing units and building permits issued, the state estimated a population of 198,691 for Henderson. At the time, state officials declared that Henderson had surpassed Reno to become the second largest city in Nevada.

As of Tuesday the picture looked different.

The difference could cost federally assisted programs and services in Henderson as much as $64 million over the next 10 years, Woodbury said.

Woodbury said he is investigating an appeal of the federal numbers. Such a lawsuit could put Henderson in the company of several cities nationwide charging that raw numbers authorized by the Census Bureau have significantly undercounted large segments of the population.

Aid for federal programs that provide local housing assistance, school-lunch subsidies and other social services for the needy are based on Census Bureau population figures, which are compiled once every 10 years. The bureau estimates that it spends $355 per person annually on such programs.

Federal funding for parks and local transportation needs, such as new roads, are also based largely on U.S. population numbers.

"It's too early to know, but we really do need to get to the bottom of this," Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson said. "We will be giving this considerable attention in the next couple of days." Woodbury was less circumspect.

"I believe the U.S. numbers are off. I believe they're low for the city of Henderson, mainly because of the high growth," he said. "They potentially could have missed many of the newer homes."

Gibson and Woodbury are both waiting to review the neighborhood block count compiled by census takers, which should arrive on a CD-ROM disk today.

Woodbury needs that detailed breakdown of the city's population count to determine exactly where the U.S numbers and the state numbers part ways.

He said he expects to find the discrepancy in areas where new streets and homes were built between January and April last year.

"If you look at the official maps given to census takers, they don't show many of the streets that existed in Henderson as of April 1, 2000," Woodbury said. So even if census takers were aware of existing neighborhoods, they could not be counted if they didn't show up on official maps.

Seeing the potential for a significant undercount, Woodbury delivered up-to-date maps to a temporary Census Bureau storefront in March 2000. But officials with the federal bureau never confirmed whether the new maps could legally be used, and the storefront has since been vacated, making it more difficult to determine whether maps were used, he said.

Statewide, federal numbers differed from state counts by 3 percent. The Henderson count could be off by as much as 10 percent.

Census officials also allowed Henderson only limited participation in its new construction program, which allowed additional census forms to be mailed to new ZIP codes in urban areas.

Woodbury petitioned federal officials to include six new ZIP code areas, but they included only 89104, or Green Valley. The other five were termed rural and didn't qualify.

In 1990, the last time the bureau counted the population, Green Valley was the fastest-growing area, Gibson said. But in 2000 it was the least explosive of the other five areas, he said.

If Henderson officials decide to appeal, they could be joining what is being called "the civil rights issue of the decade."

The Associated Press

contributed to this report.