City of Martin Enters into Agreement with NWTN Development District for Special Census Review & Verification
By Shannon Taylor, Editor
The City of Martin board of mayor and alderman met Monday, Feb. 12 and approved entering into an agreement with the Northwest Tennessee Development District for Special Census Review and Verification at a rate of $0.22 cents per person.
“If we don’t reach our goal, we will not turn it in for verification and it won’t cost us a penny. Our population now is 10,875; if we come up with 11,500, the amount of money from the census to the city is $119,000 that we would be getting extra next year,” Martin Mayor Randy Brundige stated.
When the census was done in 2020, UTM was not in session due to COVID and Brundige said that the students were previously counted because they live in the city nine months out of the year.
“We thought it would be good to go back and try to pick up our population, which was about 11,500 for the past 10 years until this new census brought us down,” Brundige explained.
The amount would come out to be approximately $170.29 per person, according to Brundige.
The census takes approximately three minutes to complete and those with no access to a computer may go to city hall in Martin to complete. This census is only for those living inside Martin city limits.
Brundige said that they were also looking at setting up some spaces for residents to come and fill the census out. An announcement will be made on wcmt radio station at a later date.
The census needs to be turned in by the end of the month so it can be sent to the census bureau. The change would not take effect until next year.
The city also approved brush/bulk truck guidelines. Danny Nanney, Chairman of the Public Works committee stated that the guidelines were basically the same, however, they wanted to deter people from bringing things in from out of the city to Martin’s dumpsters.
The city also approved appointing Todd Sherman to the Parks & Recreation Commission.
The next regularly scheduled board meeting will be on Monday, March 11 at 5:15 in the city courtroom.
