“Mayor Gavin Newsom said the U.S. census has somehow overlooked 100,000 San Francisco residents and the city is failing to collect millions of dollars in federal funding as a result.
The city will officially contest the Census Bureau’s 2007 population estimate of 764,000, the mayor said. A formal announcement of the challenge is expected today.
A population study commissioned by the city said there are actually about 864,000 residents in San Francisco. The study was performed by Social Compact, a Washington-based public interest group that promotes inner-city investment.”
[Editor’s Note: We’d avoid comparing the Social Compact count to any others’ for the purposes of proving population growth (or decline).]
∙ Newsom says U.S. census missed 100,000 [SFGate]
” The study was performed by Social Compact, a Washington-based public interest group that promotes inner-city investment.”
Oh, that’s an unbiased group with no dog in this hunt.
Riiiiight.
How about a bit of waste cutting out of that $6B budget, greasehead?
im not sure who is worse, our local govt, mayor and board of stupidvisors or our federal govt, including bush, cheney and cronies?
who do i belivve? they are both completely dishonest and incompetent. based on my own anecdotal data, the population seems to have decreased in the past few years. Traffic is lighter on my commute to peninsula (at least 10 min shorter), restaurant waits are shorter, the gym seems less packed and there are way more rental vacancies
Our city government has basically devolved into a jobs program. Laughable. At least other jobs programs in history have built infrastructure and done something productive. This one is full of impotent plutocrats who conceal their obsolescence by prolonging the city’s problems. What happens now that SF doesn’t get this money? We can’t hire another Global Warming Czar for $160K/year?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/02/20/MNMMUT8U5.DTL&type=printable
There is a fixed size pot. In terms of getting more money, which is what this is about, It’s not a question of the overall population, but of the consistency of errors.
Do people really believe San Francisco has a higher undercount rate than New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, Miami, Dallas or Boston?
Why are people so pissed off here?
Spencer, it is quite possible that SF has 860K and has decreasing population – for example, if SF had 900K in 2000 but now 860K.
That number does not say anything about population trend. If Census undercount the population based on their methodology, they would have consistantly undercounted it.
Dude, we all know how wasteful the government is. That doesn’t mean the city shouldn’t ask for the money if the population is undercounted. At least, you have a LOCAL job creation program, which gets pumped into local economy (even the Global Warming Czar needs to buy groceries and gas) instead of somewhere in DC.
The discussion should be about whether SF really has so many people, instead of why Newson asks for the money.
I think it’s appropriate for SF residents to vent in every available forum about the wastefulness of our gov’t. The city’s spending is completely out of control. In addition to Newsom’s bloated staff, the recent Chronicle data showed how widespread the porkbarrel spending is. $120K per year for an apprentice welder, $180K in OT for a park ranger, etc, etc. Dude made an excellent point about the city devolving into a jobs program. We are all paying for this – we have a right and a duty to speak up.
Government job programs are just about the most inefficient method of allocating resources, because government is a monopoly — and an unconstrained one at that.
People cry about big business here in SF. Well, guess why, the City and County of SF is THE BIG BUSINESS sucking money out of your wallet every day and giving it to some person making more than you, without you seeing any benefit.
Stop crying about big oil or financial services firms. At least you can fill your tank or get a loan. With the money going into city staffers, you get nothin’….
Rental vacancies are due to the vast amount of dense residential buildings that have sprung up in the last few years, a trend that is not stopping any time soon. Many of us said that SF has to be larger than 764K the last time this came up. Thank you Gavin Newsom.