News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Overton County will conduct a special census to determine its population growth since the pandemic.
County Executive Steven Barlow said the last census concluded that some 22,800 people lived in the county. Barlow said counties become eligible for more state shared revenue once their population exceeds 23,000 and he is confident they have grown well past that number since 2020.
“This will come in to help try to settle down that burden that all the counties are having,” Barlow said. “Most are busting at the seams because the infrastructure that they have is built for so much and then you get a lot more people moving in. And so that kind of helps with that.”
Many leaders believed the 2020 census under counted, because of the COVID restrictions in place and the overall fears at that time. Barlow said the extra revenue would make a big difference for the county’s schools, road systems, and public safety departments. Barlow said they will be sending out census paperwork for local citizens to complete starting in October.
“We’re asking everybody to fill these out and to be honest because that brings in more money to our county,” Barlow said. “And we need it.”
Barlow said he is working with Livingston Mayor Lori Elder Burnett so they can conduct the census together.
“If we do this joint project, the Livingston government, we will be the first county and city that would do a joint (census) working together in the state of Tennessee,” Barlow said. “And we would love to celebrate this partnership and that would bring in more for their infrastructures, their road systems, their water systems, the gas department and that would help them out tremendously as well.”
Barlow said they are funding the census themselves but it is expected to pay for itself within a few months.
“We’ve partnered with a group and had them to come in and kind of do a soft audit,” Barlow said. “And they said we’re going to blow this out of the park.”
Barlow said the last census got an imperfect picture of many local populations because pandemic restrictions caused the numbers to be reported lower than they actually were.
