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Population
up only 7%
*
Preliminary count
finds 6,563 residents
By LOU HATTER
and MARK SCOLFORO
Arundel Newepapen Staff Writer*
The population of Rappahannock County increased by only 470 people during the last decade, according to newly-released preliminary 1990 Census figures.
Rappahannock’s 1990 population is 6,563, an increase of seven percent from the 1980 count of 6,093. In 1970, the Census found a total of 5,190 residents in the county.
The preliminary figures were mailed to County Administrator John McCarthy this week, according to Dick Ritter, a public affairs specialist with the Census Bureau. (Mr. Ritter, incidentally, was a reporter with the Fauquier Times-Democrat in Warrenton from 1954 to 1960.)
The governing bodies have 15 working days to either accept the figures or challenge them and have the Census Bureau recount their areas.
Mr. McCarthy expressed skepticism about the accuracy of the figures, citing the increasing number of building permits during the past several years as leading him to believe that the county’s population was undercounted.
“Last year alone we had about 175 building permits” for new houses, he said. “And the year before it was over 200.” Even if the occupancy rate is assumed to be two people per home — a figure Mr. McCarthy called artificially low — in those two years alone the new construction would have added 750 people to the population.
Even factoring in those residents who have left the county, “It’s hard to reconcile the building permit figures over the past 10 years with the census figures to get a net increase of 470 bodies,” Mr. McCarthy said.
See CENSUS, p. 12
93.4%