Again, fast-growing Ankeny asks for special census

Katie Drosieko represents the reason Ankeny will undergo what has become its mid-decade ritual: requesting a special census to determine how many people live in the fast-growing community.

Drosieko, her husband and their twin daughters moved to Ankeny last summer from Pittsburgh. At the time, several of her soon-to-be co-workers at Principal Financial Group told her Ankeny was the place to be. After a year of living there, she agrees.

"We also visited during Summerfest in 2012 and just fell in love with it," said Drosieko, 35. "We have so many friends now on our street. There's always kids playing ball outside or doing sidewalk chalk. And the 90-minute commute I used to have is now 20 minutes.

"Ankeny has exceeded our expectations on every level."

New residents' sentiments alone aren't enough for the city, located north of Des Moines, to capture additional state money. A successful special census — expected to show Ankeny has grown beyond its official 2010 count of 45,582 residents to at least 53,000 — can translate to additional road use revenue, City Manager David Jones said.

Federal law allows government bodies like cities and counties to request a special census once every decade. Twenty-eight Iowa cities have made such a request in the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Ankeny has done so regularly since the 1970s — in 1975, 1985, 1994, 2005 and now 2014.

The city will pay an estimated $865,000 for the survey to be conducted, a figure more than double what it was nine years ago. The count should be completed by the end of the year.

The Census Bureau released updated population estimates in May that showed Ankeny with 51,567 residents. But not only is that figure based on data that are a year old, it also doesn't meet the state requirement of presenting "a hard number" through a structured count to justify receiving extra tax money.

Jones said paying for that census now could bring in an extra $3 million to $4 million in the years until the 2020 census is conducted.

Ankeny could use the money for street lighting, road administration and maintenance, snow and ice control, and traffic safety.

The road use tax fund, established by the Iowa Legislature in 1949, is funded by a tax on fuel. Ankeny has earmarked $4,698,113 in road use tax money for projects in the current fiscal year.

"The price tag for the census got everybody's attention, but the return on investment is significant," Jones said. "We are growing so fast that, but for the law, we might actually do a special census twice this decade."

Many of the communities in the greater Des Moines area face similar situations. West Des Moines, Waukee, Johnston, Urbandale, Grimes and Bondurant have conducted special censuses in past decades, and each will be conducting another one by the end of 2015 as they chase down additional dollars.

Ankeny's history with the special census includes a jump between 1975 and 1985 of little more than 3,000 people. Nine years later, the population had increased by about 5,000 people. But 11 years after that, the growth accelerated, with an increase of almost 15,000 residents.

As the city expects to grow by several thousand yet again, Jones said that "the big component of what you are paying for with the census is the people. It's a labor-intensive process."

Data collection for a special census requires workers to canvass assigned areas and obtain data via a questionnaire that is similar to what is used during regular census counts.

The area they have to cover is marked by a number of trends:

• 687 new-dwelling permits issued from January through June, which is up 27 percent from the same period last year.

• Ankeny school district's certified enrollment, which grew from 5,610 students in the fall of 2000 to 9,901 this year for a 76 percent increase.

• And an expectation that Ankeny will have 90,000 residents by 2035.

While the projection that Ankeny would nearly double in population from 2010 to 2035 is still more than 20 years in the future, Drosieko is already embracing it as a reality she will see as she remains in the community.

"Even after just a year, this is home," she said.

Ankeny's census history

This year will mark the fifth time since 1970 that Ankeny officials have requested a special census at the midpoint between the official U.S. Census Bureau counts each decade. The years of those censuses and the numbers of residents calculated were:

1975: 13,212

1985: 16,565

1994: 21,485

2005: 36,161