Over the last few weeks, Rose Benavides has been crunching number and making calls.
As president of the Starr County Industrial Foundation, her efforts are focused to bring unfavorable U.S. 2010 Census numbers up from their current standing.
“We’ve been collecting data from school enrollments to water heater connections to electricity connections, just to be certain that the growth has transpired here in the last 10 years has been a lot larger than what the census says that it is,” Benavides said.
She said the census numbers came back with just a 7,000 person increase in all of Starr County.
Benavides said in just the few weeks that has been out in the community, she has come up with numbers that far exceed those of the census.
“We can safely say that we were undercounted by at least 20,000 to 25,000 people,” Benavides said.
She said the reported numbers keep much needed funding out of the county.
“You’re talking about almost $200 million dollars,” Benavides said.
She said the low count also hurts potential investments.
“A handful of retail projects that we’ve been working on called, shocked, they couldn’t understand how this was a good move for their business because we couldn’t show that it was a prosperous area and was actually growing,” Benavides said.
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