New census numbers show which Southern Illinois communities are shrinking

Some of the metro-east's largest communities had population drops in 2017, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Belleville has seen a 6 percent drop since the 2010 official head count.

Granite City saw a 4 percent drop. Alton, East St. Louis, Freeburg and Cahokia also saw population drops, according to census estimates.

Edwardsville, Columbia, Waterloo, O'Fallon and Shiloh, however, all saw population growth.

The Census Bureau estimates annual population changes by using birth and death certificate data as well as address changes on tax returns. The census is used to determine congressional apportionment.

Mitch Bair, the city manager for Collinsville, disagreed with the Census Bureau’s estimates, which had his town dropping below 25,000 residents.

Bair said city officials looked at the building and demolition permits for multifamily and single-family homes since 2010 and came up with its own estimate of about 25,800 people living in town.

“We issued substantially more for construction than for demolition,” Bair said.

Bair said the Census Bureau estimates don’t take into account development conditions of a community.

“It’s an arbitrary number. Quite frankly, we don’t put a lot of stock in those estimates,” Bair said.

Decreasing population can be an issue for communities that fall below 25,000 people, which is the threshold to have home-rule status. Communities may also have home-rule status if they pass a referendum.

Home-rule communities have broader taxing authority, but also may enact crime-free rental housing rules, and have greater bonding authority, said Brad Cole, the executive director of the Illinois Municipal League.

Communities that achieve home-rule status by surpassing the 25,000-person mark would have to put a referendum on the ballot on whether to retain home rule if they drop below the 25,000-person mark after the census, Cole said.

With the state’s dropping population, “there will probably be a number of communities statewide that fall under that are currently close,” Cole said.

Communities that adopted home-rule status via a referendum and later went above 25,000 people, may keep home-rule status if the population drops below the 25,000 mark, and wouldn’t be required to have a referendum, Cole said.

The conservative-leaning Illinois Policy Institute said the population drops, which have been seen across the state, are an indication that working-age people are "fleeing" the state.

The group pointed to how the census data showed both out-migration and a shrinking workforce in 10 out of 12 Illinois metro areas from 2016 to 2017 and that only 15 percent of Illinois communities saw population growth.

“Working-age Illinoisans are fleeing, especially from border towns such as Belleville," said Orphe Divounguy, the Illinois Policy Institute's chief economist. "People move for better opportunities, and in Illinois, income growth has been lagging the rest of the nation. If you look at every single metro area in Illinois except for Chicago, income growth lags the rest of the nation by a significant amount.”

This story was originally published May 24, 2018 at 2:05 PM with the headline "New census numbers show which Southern Illinois communities are shrinking."