West Valley City holds off on disputing census estimate
The city's own estimates place its January 2006 population at about 124,000, said spokesman Aaron Crim. But unlike many other Utah cities disputing the accuracy of the federal population estimates, for now, West Valley City isn't planning an official challenge.
"It's just a kind of status thing," Crim said. "We're really not that interested."
One city that is challenging its census estimates stands to surpass West Valley as the state's second-largest city. Provo has submitted a challenge to the Census Bureau, claiming its population is roughly 115,000 — about 1,500 more people than the original census estimate, and enough to pass West Valley if accepted.
Crim said city officials are confident that even if West Valley is surpassed in size estimates, the official 2010 Census will reveal that in reality it remains the state's second-largest city.
Officials with the U.S. Census Bureau didn't return phone calls for comment Wednesday, but Shawn Eliot, transportation planner for the Mountainland Association of Governments, said the census has already accepted challenges that boosted the estimated populations of American Fork, Mapleton, Salem and Elk Ridge.
Other cities, including West Valley, could still opt to challenge their counts. The deadline for submitting a challenge to the official 2005 estimates is Oct. 1.
The census estimates for cities released last month are produced by using the change in housing units to distribute a county's population. Counties' populations are estimated by updating the latest census with data on births, deaths and internal and international migration.
The methodology often undercounts areas with large college populations and those that are rapidly growing, said Robert Spendlove, manager of demographic and economic analysis for the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget.
Provo is among several cities that also successfully challenged their estimates last year.
"Utah County cities have perpetually had problems with the estimates," he said.
An accurate estimate is important because a city's share of the state's population is connected to its share of sales tax revenue and road fund distribution, Spendlove said. However, cities must weigh whether the time and cost of challenging are worth the population share they'll gain by challenging, he said.
Syracuse City Treasurer LaMar Holt said his city believes its 2005 population was closer to 22,000 than the 17,938 the census estimated.
And South Jordan is moving forward with challenging its census count for a second straight year. Last year's challenge brought the census estimate very close to the city's.
This year, the city believes its population is 40,758, or 549 people more than the census estimate, said Greg Schindler, a city planner.
"Five hundred in and of itself isn't that much," Schindler said, but during the decade between censuses, "500 every year becomes 5,000. That can become very critical when you look at revenue sharing based on population."
E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com
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