Census Bureau says no to recount

Jeffrey Libby

Friday, March 16, 2001 | 11:51 a.m.

The U.S. Census Bureau will not recount the population of Henderson, a bureau spokesman said Thursday.

Despite the 18,000-person discrepancy between state and federal population snapshots for Henderson as of April 2000, and despite the likely appeal by city officials here, the Census Bureau will send out no workers to attempt another count, administrator Edison Gore said.

They will consider comparing records to search for processing errors, Gore said, but the costs of sending out workers are too much.

Even if workers were sent out, the task would be nearly impossible, Clark County demographer Don Matson said.

"Since April 1 (when the census count concluded), 70,000 to 80,000 people have moved here. You'd have to look back in time to see which homes were occupied then," Matson said.

Nevertheless, a successful appeal by the city remains a possibility. Much hinges on the number of housing units U.S. Census takers counted as they knocked on doors throughout Henderson.

Demographer Scott Woodbury said he worries census takers using incomplete maps may have missed many of the newer streets in fast-growing areas such as Lake Las Vegas, Palm Hills, Anthem Del Webb and Sunridge at MacDonald Ranch.

A similar oversight occurred in 1990.

Back then, when Henderson's growth was fastest in Green Valley, the Bluffs, Hillsborough and Whitney Ranch, census takers missed 2,095 dwelling units in those areas.

After Henderson officials filed an appeal similar to the one being considered now, the U.S. Census Bureau recognized an additional 4,534 residents, boosting the population total from the original count of 60,408 to 64,942.

But the federal housing unit numbers for 2000 won't be released until May at the earliest. So, Henderson officials will have to take a wait-and-see attitude.

Dolly Blake, a long-time Henderson resident won't.

"I don't believe those numbers," Blake said, referring to Henderson's demotion this week to the third-largest city behind Reno just eight months after the state declared that Henderson had breezed past the northern city. "We're still No. 2 as far as I'm concerned," Blake said.