Only a single municipality, the Village of Pingree Grove in Illinois, has signed a contract so far with the U.S. Census Bureau to have the agency conduct a repeat head count following the 2020 census
Officials in the city of Lebanon worried that the amount of state money distributed from Tennessee agencies based on 2020 census figures wasn’t keeping pace with their explosive growth. So they reached out to the U.S. Census Bureau to ask about conducting another head count, or “special census,” for the city on the edge of metro Nashville.
But Lebanon officials balked at the $880,000 price tag and decided to do it themselves.
“We think we can do it cheaper,” said Paul Corder, planning director for Lebanon, which has a population of 44,000 residents.
Their census is rolling out later this summer. Officials hope to spend less than half the federal quote for a count that accurately captures Lebanon’s rapid growth, with a goal of bringing in just under $1 million extra each year in state funding through the end of the decade.
The bureau’s special head counts don’t change political maps, unlike the federal census every decade, but they can lead to more state and federal funding. Communities that request them, or conduct their own, have to decide whether the cost they’ll pay outweighs possible revenue gains, said Tim Kuhn, director of the Tennessee State Data Center.
