ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 10, 1996 TAG: 9605100015
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
MARCHING toward the millennium, it's interesting to note that some communities in Southwest Virginia are already out in front of it - at least on one score: They've already passed what number-crunchers of the 1970s figured would be their year 2000 populations.
In 1977, the state's Department of Planning and Budget guesstimated, for instance, that Bedford County's population -26,728 in 1970 - would reach 41,100 by the year 2000. Bedford's population is now at 52,335, according to the U.S. Census Bureau 1995 population report. Franklin County, the 1977 state planners projected, would have a population of 38,100 by the turn of the century. Franklin's population hit 42,856 last year.
Indeed, Virginia's total population - 6,618,358 in 1995 - has surpassed the 6,455,000 milestone not supposed to come until the year 2000.
At the same time, with only four years to go, many Virginia localities will have to do a heap of growing to reach the numbers that the '77 planners envisioned for them. Montgomery County, for example, will have to pick up more than 25,000 people to bridge the gap between its current population, 75,756, and the projected 101,100 by 2000. The city of Roanoke needs to grow by almost 10,000 people between now (95,701 population) and then (105,500 projected). Salem seems more closely on track: current population, 24,198; 2000 projection, 25,400.
These disparities in no way suggest that Virginia's number-crunchers should find another line of work. Projections - on revenue collections, vehicular traffic, birth rates - are necessary for governments to plan for budgets, highway-construction programs, schools, etc.
And, overall, the 1995 Census report bears out demographic patterns that Virginia's '77 planners predicted: older cities continuing to lose residents to surrounding counties; population shifting away from Southwest Virginia to the eastern urban corridor. If the planners overstated growth in Montgomery County, they nonetheless recognized the economic potential of universities.
Looking at the Bedford and Franklin figures, though, one failing seems clear: The '77 planners didn't have a clue what a people-magnet Smith Mountain Lake would prove.
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