![]() We’re trusting our local school boards,” he said of the wave of mask requirements adopted by local administrators, which now cover more than 40% of the state’s public school students. “We’re taking the same tack we did last year. “My message to folks is do your due diligence,” Kemp said this past week in an appearance on Fox News, adding that he firmly opposes a “top-down federal policy” to direct Georgia’s response. He’s also ruled out lotteries to encourage vaccinations and blamed President Joe Biden’s administration for mistrust over mandates. The governor says he is looking at a variety of options, including incentives for those who have not yet received their jabs, though he hasn’t outlined plans to do so yet. “He’s just throwing up his hands like he has no power to save lives.” No deep community outreach or incentives to get vaccinated,” Groh-Wargo said. No Medicaid expansion to shore up hospitals and cover the uninsured in a pandemic. ![]() ![]() Both sources of revenue are tied to the population of Chester, which spends about $350,000 per year on its operations but is scrambling to adjust to the lower-than-expected number even as it seeks an adjustment.“No mask mandates. Without a large property tax base or much business taxes, Chester relies on a state-run program in which counties share sales taxes with cities as well as a tax on insurance premiums. The 2019 American Community Survey pegged the majority-Black town's population at 2,102 residents, and city officials believe it has a minimum of 1,500 inhabitants.Ĭhester officials believe the head count missed not only inmates at the Dodge State Prison but also residents in the town's homes. In the case of Chester, about halfway between Atlanta and Savannah, the 2020 census said it had only 525 people, which would mark a 67% decline in the population over the decade if it were true. Other communities have signaled they plan to challenge their census numbers, including several college towns and the cities of Boston and Detroit. The census challenges won’t change the number of congressional seats each state gets or the numbers used for redrawing political districts. Revisions to population and housing totals were made to about 1% of the nation’s 39,000 governments after the 2010 census. The scope of appeals allowed by the Census Bureau is narrow - mistakes in recording boundaries or housing skipped during data processing. “Unlike the metro areas where population is dense, door-to-door census counters may not have gone to harder to reach areas of rural counties." “Unlike many areas of the country, Georgia was seeing extremely high cases of COVID-19," Feldman said in an email. You had to take into account we had COVID and people weren’t allowed in or out,” Stan Dansby, Glennville’s city manager, said of the prison.Ī combination of the pandemic and a lack of reliable broadband for filling out the census questionnaire online may have led to discrepancies in the counts in rural Georgia, said Heather Feldman, executive director of the Georgia Mountains Regional Commission. The 2019 estimates said there were 5,066 people, and Glennville officials say the 2020 number should be more than 5,300 residents because they believe the 1,500 or so inmates at Smith State Prison weren't counted. In Glennville, where more than a third of the population is Black, the 2020 census counted 3,834 people. The local officials in Georgia aren't waiting around. About a dozen other states are planning to count prisoners at their home addresses when it comes to drawing political districts.īecause of the challenges pandemic lockdowns posed to these “group quarters" counts, the Census Bureau has proposed creating a separate program to accept challenges for dorms, military barracks, nursing homes and prisons. In Georgia, inmates are supposed to be counted where they are imprisoned. Students were sent home from campuses, and prisons and nursing homes went into lockdowns when those residents were supposed to be counted. during crucial weeks for the census in the spring of 2020. “We are concerned about long-term impacts, not qualifying for grants, not getting as many dollars as we need for our schools, those kinds of opportunities that come when the census count is used," said John Sell, director of White County’s community and economic development.īoth Glennville and Chester are home to state prisons, which became among the most difficult places to count - along with college dorms, nursing homes and military barracks - as the coronavirus spread throughout the U.S. Although the 2020 census put the number of homes at 13,535, it should have been 15,286, according to the analysis. An analysis by the Georgia Mountains Regional Commission, a nonprofit agency that provides planning help to communities in the region, said half of the county's census blocks had incorrect housing counts.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |