By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Val Verde County Commissioners Court members voted unanimously earlier this month to begin work that may result in a formal challenge to the 2020 Census results for Val Verde County and Del Rio.
During its March 4 meeting, the court heard from Sandra Fuentes during the “Citizens’ Comments” portion at the start of the meeting. Fuentes said she was addressing the court as a co-chair of The Border Organization and as an ex-member of the county’s 2020 Census committee.
“I strongly believe that the Val Verde County and the city of Del Rio did not lose 3 percent of its population from 10 years ago. So in doing some research, that just didn’t sit well with me. Ramiro Guzman called me up and said there is a way where counties are challenging the 2020 Census results. So I did a did a little bit of research, contacted the Census. . . ,” Fuentes said.
At this point, County Judge Lewis G. Owens interrupted Fuentes and asked that the court move to Item 20 on its agenda, telling her this would give the commissioners a chance to speak after she made her presentation. Fuentes concurred.
Owens then announced Item 20 – “discussion and possible action on contesting the 2020 Census.”
“And requesting the city of Del Rio to participate with Val Verde County,” Owens said.
Owens again recognized Fuentes.
“I am just here to encourage the court to vote in the positive to at least investigate to see if it would behoove us to challenge it. Hopefully it’s not a lot of money it would take. I think (County Commissioner Pct. 3 Beau Nettleton) is already looking into it, and he has spoken with a representative of the 2020 Census at the federal level, and I think he was given a web site showing what needs to happen, and I know Judge Owens has reached out to the city of Del Rio.
“I am asking the court to please entertain the possibility of at least looking into it, that we might possibly challenge it. We have a lot to gain, a lot to gain if we can prove we’re at 50,000 (population) or more,” Fuentes said.
After Fuentes finished speaking, Owens said he has sent a text message to Del Rio City Manager John Sheedy, asking if the city would participate and said Sheedy sent a text back saying he would bring the issue before city council.
Owens said the city manager also said he believed the census challenge “to be a worthy cause.”
“One of the things we talked about was, I don’t know how you develop 1,500 acres outside the city limits and then go backwards (in population) . . . There’s a lot more development in the last five or six years,” Owens said.
Nettleton also spoke about the issue.
“What I’m proposing is that they (Census officials) said we could do some spot samples, so we would get (County Engineer) Carlos (Velarde) and maybe some of the city people to go in and take the census blocks, figure out the population that they calculated in the census, then count the homes and do the average population per household, which I think is 3.15 or something like that, and check those census blocks against what the census actually showed before we go out and decide if we want to spend the money to hire people to go door-to-door to actually do a census to see how accurate those census blocks are,” Nettleton said.
He said there is an entire protest process the county can follow if it chooses to challenge the census results.
“I would like us to at least look at comparing the census blocks house-by-house with what the 2020 Census said was in that block, and we can just pull up a map and just count the houses in that block, and we should get a pretty good idea of where we’re at,” Nettleton added.
He then made a motion to authorize Owens to work with the county engineer and the city of Del Rio to do a “spot census,” then bring the results back to the court “and we can make the decision if we want to proceed with a full-blown challenge, which would probably require going door-to-door.”
County Commissioner Pct. 2 Juan Carlos Vazquez gave the second.
The court voted unanimously to approve Nettleton’s motion.
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