By Tucker Mitchell
Published: April 17, 2011
When the results of the big 2000 census were announced, Florence city officials were crestfallen. The numbers said their bustling city had barely grown. City fathers tried to appeal, but census officials “wouldn’t accept anything,” Florence City Manager David Williams said.
“We were pretty frustrated with the U.S. Census Bureau,” Williams said.
Fast forward 10 years and Williams and company have nothing but nice things to say about the nation’s people counters. Figures for the 2010 census show Florence with 6,888 more residents than in 2000, a gain of 22.8 percent. Florence’s official population is now 37,056, good for 10th in South Carolina, just behind Hilton Head and just ahead of Spartanburg.
“We had questions about the accuracy of the numbers last time,” Florence Mayor Stephen J. Wukela said, “but this time we think they’re spot on.”
That’s the way it goes with America’s every 10 years count. The winners laud the bureau’s technical expertise, while the losers complain about quirks and anomalies.
Among those on the short end of the 2010 stick in the Pee Dee was Darlington, where the population dipped by 431 to 6,279 — less than Dillon or Lake City. Darlington City Manager Howard Garland said city officials there do not believe the census count for Darlington is accurate. “We’ve discussed that,” he said. “We don’t think it’s accurate. We don’t see how it can be.”
Garland said city officials are planning an appeal.
A few miles up the road at Society Hill, Mayor Valencia Thomas is shaking her head, too. Society Hill’s population plummeted by 19.6 percent, dropping by 137 to 563. Thomas said she was bewildered by the slew of census documents that came her way, some of which asked why she hadn’t answered the call, long after she had.
“And I wasn’t the only one up here who got multiple forms and visits even after we had turned our papers in,” she said. “I’m not completely surprised (by the results), but I do have some concerns.”
Census numbers matter as a point of pride — no one really wants to live in a place that’s getting smaller — and they impact a city’s bottom line, too. Several state and federal funding mechanisms are population dependent. Cities with falling populations lose out while cities that gain cash in.
Florence’s Williams said the differences can be dramatic. Speaking about one population-driven money pool, the state’s Aid to Subdivision Fund, he said, “We (Florence) are going to see a cut there (because the entire state budget is smaller), but because of our numbers it won’t be that bad. I look around at some of the other places in the state and they’re going to get hit hard.”
Florence received $726,426 from that Aid to Subdivision money last year. Projections suggest this year’s grant will be $691,777, a drop of almost $35,000. That’s not good, said Williams, but it is manageable.
Census numbers show that the Pee Dee, as a region, experienced little or no growth. Most of the area’s counties either lost a small number of citizens, or gained a few. The city-and-town picture was much the same. Seventeen of the 32 municipalities on the Morning News list had gains, 15 had losses.
Florence was the Pee Dee’s biggest gainer, both in total population and by percentage. It was followed closely in the second category by little McBee, which jumped by 153 residents to 867 people.
Mayor John B. Campolong said he hasn’t had a chance to really delve into the numbers yet, but welcomed the news of his town’s population growth.
“Twenty-one percent, that’s a pretty good increase,” Campolong said. “Apparently we’re starting to retain more people, which is something we’ve been trying to do.”
Darlington was the area’s biggest loser numerically. Hemingway, which lost 19.8 percent of its population, was on the bottom percentage-wise.
Hemingway Mayor Grady Richardson, who’s now presiding over 459 citizens, 114 fewer than his predecessor in 2000, wasn’t baffled as to what happened. Asked if he could explain the drop, he said, “People leaving and nobody coming in. …
“Hemingway is an old town,” Richardson said. “It’s a town with a lot of elderly people in it that have been here for a long time. We’re working on trying to get some business and industry in, so we can recruit some younger people to come back into the town.”
Society Hill’s Thomas said the picture was much the same in her neck of the woods. “The young people move away because there’s not much opportunity for them, not much to do,” she said. “But I’ll tell you — and I know this from personal experience — when you get a little older, this is just the kind of place you look for. It’s quiet, it’s safe, the cost of living isn’t as high as Florence, and you can make some friends.”
Darlington’s Garland said his town is a nice place to live, too. Maybe too nice.
Garland said the city has seen no significant increase in demand for services such as police or fire protection that might be expected from a significant population increase. Crime incidents and fire calls have both been down in recent years, he said. “We haven’t had a traffic fatality in the city in 10 years, I think,” he said. In fact, in the coming year’s budget the city has opted not to fill two police department positions that are vacant.
Even so, the Darlington census drop just doesn’t feel right to him.
“We’ve added 29 downtown loft apartments over the last couple of years; we’ve opened several new housing developments over the last 10 years,” Garland said. “We feel like that should have offset some losses.”
Garland suspects some of those new addresses were overlooked in the census, even though the census participation rate in the city was up in 2010. “We want to make sure those new addresses are counted,” he said.
In Florence, a much-improved participation rate, helped in part by a city campaign to raise awareness and educate certain populations about the census, apparently paid dividends. Participation rates reflect the number of citizens who actively respond to census surveys. The census uses other methods in an attempt to count non-participants.
Florence’s participation rate was 73 percent, just above the national average of 71 percent, but well above past Florence rates.
“You know that helped,” Williams said. “Now, if we could have gotten it to 100 percent just imagine where we’d be?”