Overview

• Eleven small cities in Illinois and Iowa have signed agreements with the U.S. Census Bureau for a second count of their residents in 2024.
• The cities hope to secure more state funding and attract new businesses by showing they have crossed a population threshold.
• The second counts won’t be used for redrawing political districts or determining how many congressional seats each state gets, but to determine how much the communities will get in state funding.
• The cost of the special censuses, which will be footed by the local municipalities, ranges from just over $370,000 to almost $500,000 for the communities.
• Some communities have already forged ahead with their own recounts, unwilling to pay the price tag for a bureau-organized special census.