BROOKHAVEN, Ga. — The City of Brookhaven could get millions more in funding over the next decade after census error during the pandemic.
The 2020 U.S. Census, which was conducted during the pandemic, led to a reported mapping issue in DeKalb County.
City of Brookhaven officials said that after a successful annexation process to add the LaVista Park community into the official bounds of the city, the Census incorrectly included it in the unincorporated portions of the DeKalb County map.
When the Census counts were released in 2021, Brookhaven began the process of correcting the error.
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LaVista Park was added to the City of Brookhaven via an annexation of 264 acres, which officials said might be the largest annexation in Georgia history using what’s known as the “resident-driven 60% method” in December 2019.
Georgia’s U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff appealed to the Census Bureau to fix the count in addition to the Brookhaven appeal, culminating in an officially corrected Census filed in October 2022.
Now, the impact of the correction is translating to more tax revenue and funding for local projects thanks to the larger population. Federal funding is impacted by population sizes.
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When Ossoff wrote to the Census, he said the count correction was needed to “ensure this tax revenue is available to the citizens of Brookhaven to fund critical local priorities.”
Those priorities included transportation and public safety projects.
The count is now adjusted to include the nearly 1,200 LaVista Park residents as citizens in Brookhaven.
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“Multiple federal formula streams, State appropriations, and even the County Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, are based on population formulas. An additional 1,200 people credited to Brookhaven can equate to over $10 million in various funding streams over a 10-year period,” Patty Hansen, Brookhaven’s Director of Strategic Partnerships, said in a statement.
Brookhaven Mayor John Ernst expressed his gratitude to both the Census Bureau’s director, Robert L. Santos, and Sen. Ossoff.
“We are extremely grateful for the intervention of Senator Ossoff, and Director Santos’ swift action in bringing to conclusion an appeal we have been working with the census since the day the count was released. This final action ensures that all of Brookhaven’s residents were indeed counted as our own,” Ernst said.
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