Change in Census rules would mean loss of funds

Tracy Moss
The News-Gazette
September 3, 2010

DANVILLE — The area around Danville could lose more than $1.2 million in federal transportation and community development funds each year if the U.S. Census Bureau follows through with changes that would no longer qualify Danville and nearby towns as an “urban area.”

Officials discussed the possible changes and their effects on funding at Thursday’s meeting of the Danville Area Transportation Study committee, a group of local government and transportation officials who oversee the planning for transportation projects in the local urbanized area that includes Danville, Tilton, Westville, Catlin and Georgetown.

According to the bureau, an urbanized area must have a population of more than 50,000. Danville doesn’t qualify on its own, but after the last census in 2000, Danville, Tilton, Westville, Catlin and Georgetown qualified collectively.

But that could change under new criteria proposed by the Census Bureau, according to Angie Stenson, the local Metropolitan Transportation Organization planner, who made a presentation on the issue at Thursday’s meeting.

Since 2000, Danville, Tilton, Catlin, Westville and Georgetown have qualified under the current criteria as an urban area with a collective population of more than 53,000. But the proposed changes would not allow Georgetown and Catlin’s populations to be counted, bringing the total below the 50,000 threshold.

The “urban” designation opens the door to additional federal dollars for transportation planning, grants for Danville mass transit operations, and makes available to Danville each year about $1 million in community development dollars.

“This urbanized area designation really has a financial impact on our area,” Stenson said.

Losing the designation and the funding would be a blow to the area and to current and future transportation initiatives.

“Our area has had some serious hits and this would be another serious hit,” said John Heckler, director of public development for Danville.

The $1 million in community development funds flow to the city’s public development department each year.

John Dreher, neighborhood development manager for the city, said that in 2000 when the urbanized area designation came about, it meant that the $1 million in community block grant money began flowing directly from the federal level to Dreher’s department, which then had a lot more latitude in how the money is spent, including housing, public infrastructure, sewers, roads, sidewalks, lighting, economic development and more.

Before 2000, the city had to apply for the money in a competitive grant process through the state, and if the city was lucky enough to get $1 million, it was much more limited in how the dollars could be spent.

Currently, about $200,000 of the $1 million covers administration costs, including all or parts of several salaries at the city. That would not be possible without the urban designation, and the city would either have to pick up those costs or eliminate the expense.

“We couldn’t make up that money,” Dreher said. “So we would lose versatility in spending (the money) and the substantial reimbursement that pays our way for us to do these jobs and carry out these projects.”

Local transportation and government officials plan to write letters and make clear their objections to the changes the Census bureau is proposing.

Adam Aull, Danville Area Transportation Study director, told the DATS committee Thursday that the deadline to submit comments to the bureau on the changes is Nov. 22. He said the new numbers expected from the 2010 Census likely wouldn’t affect the situation either way.

Stenson said the expectation is that the population numbers will show a slight decline.

The proposed change that would have the most effect is reducing the distance allowed between population blocks from 2.5 miles to 1.5 miles.

For example, Catlin is 2.4 miles from Tilton-area population blocks, so if the new criteria is 1.5 miles, Catlin could not be included in the overall population count of the urbanized area. The same applies to Georgetown, which is 1.6 miles from population blocks in Westville.

Without the 3,741 people in Georgetown and 2,202 in Catlin, then Danville, Tilton and Westville could not surpass the 50,000 threshold.

With the urbanized designation would go about $250,000 for operating the local metropolitan planning organization, which funds the work of Stenson and others.

The planning organization is a federally mandated and federally funded policy making group of local government and transportation officials and is required for every urbanized area over 50,000.

The local government and transportation officials who participate, including mayors of the five towns, continually work on a comprehensive transportation plan for the urbanized area to ensure that the federal funds that flow to the area are put toward transportation projects and programs that have been planned in a cooperative and comprehensive manner.

Doug Staske, Vermilion County’s highway engineer, said the local planning organization is the smallest in the state, and Aull said it’s the larger metro areas in the nation that have prompted the Census bureau to consider at least one of the changes.

Aull said the bureau is considering the change from 2.5 miles to 1.5 miles partly because officials in larger metropolitan areas have complained that 2.5 miles is too far and forces them to include in their transportation planning other communities that don’t really have direct ties to the core of the urbanized area.

Aull said the opposite is true in Vermilion County, where the core of the urbanized area is in Danville, but populations in Georgetown, Catlin, Westville and Tilton are directly tied to services and employment in Danville.