Pearl Rzeczkowski has lived in the same house on Gough Street for 40 years, but when the Census Bureau did its Baltimore count it somehow missed her.
"Nobody has been around," Rzeczkowski said today.Asked whether she heard that the census was being taken, she said, "I may have heard it but I didn't pay it any mind."
Rzeczkowski apparently is not alone. City officials say she is among an estimated 20,000 Baltimoreans missed during the recent census count. As a result, Baltimore is asking the Census Bureau to adjust preliminary figures showing that the city has lost 66,000 residents -- 8.5 percent of its population -- over the past decade.
The city is among several jurisdictions in the region appealing the preliminary census numbers given to local governments in the past several weeks.
Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said the city is making its appeal because it found more than 1,100 blocks where census-takers missed at least five housing units.
Those omissions could account for about 20,000 city residents, Schmoke said. And if that proves accurate, the inclusion of those residents would raise the city's population from the preliminary count of 720,000 to 740,000.
In 1980, Baltimore's population was pegged at 786,000 -- a figure that city officials contend was 29,000 short. That alleged undercount cost the city $230 million in federal aid during the 1980s, officials said.
The counting of America's population is undertaken every 10 years. Census data are used for a host of governmental tasks from apportioning federal aid to determining where state legislative district lines are drawn.
As a result, an undercount could cost the city more than money. "We expect that we will lose at least one legislative district, maybe two," Schmoke said.
Despite the stakes, Schmoke said the city so far has no plans to join a suit filed by several major cities. The suit, citing the Census Bureau's admitted undercount of blacks and other minorities, is seeking to force the bureau to adjust its figures to compensate for the people missing in the count.
While the city loses population and legislative representation, fast-growing, suburban counties such as Montgomery -- now the largest political subdivision in Maryland -- will gain legislative clout.
In all, the population of the Baltimore region -- which includes the city and Harford, Howard, Baltimore, Carroll and Anne Arundel counties -- has grown by 148,213 to 2.3 million, according to the preliminary census figures.
