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A theme in this year’s county supervisors election was the true story of local growth. Is it too much? Too little? Just right? Ken Boyd’s campaign for re-election laid it on thick that while Boyd was supervisor, the population growth rate fell below 1 percent, a figure borne out by Weldon Cooper Center estimates. Some critics claimed that the figure was misleading, and pointed out that average annual growth over the decade was 1.3 percent.
C-VILLE said enough talk—let’s see the actual numbers in terms of rates, people and houses. We looked at the local numbers from 2000 to 2006, the last year that the Weldon Cooper Center has published estimates, and found that Albemarle’s growth rate this decade has been far outpaced by Fluvanna, Orange and Louisa—but, in terms of absolute numbers, Albemarle has still seen the most new people per year, averaging about 1,100.
Oddly enough, some localities are seeing more new houses than they are people, including Nelson County and the cities of Charlottesville, Staunton and Waynesboro. Either old housing units are going abandoned, folks are building second homes or the Weldon Cooper Center’s estimation formula—which factors in other data like school enrollment and tax returns—–
is a little off.
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