The Rapid City Journal offers an interactive map of the newly released Census 2010 data for South Dakota. Our fair state's population grew 7.9% over the past decade, to 814,180. Unfortunately, Lake County didn't share in that growth: our official population dropped a tick, from 11,276 in 2000 to 11,200 in 2010, a 0.6% drop. The population of the city of Madison dropped a full percentage point, from 6540 in 2000 to 6474 now.
Not to worry: our neighbors in Brookings made up for Madison's laggardly population. Brookings County enjoyed more than 13% growth, from better than 28,000 in 2000 to almost 32,000 now. The city of Brookings proper boomed 19.2% over the decade, breaking the 22,000 mark and surpassing Watertown as the fourth-largest city in South Dakota. (Madison is now 15th.)
Now I've been riding the Lake Area Improvement Corporation for its failure thus far to make any progress on its Forward Madison five-year job creation goals. That criticism is perhaps unfair, given the recession that bent everyone's job-growth curve.
But the Forward Madison folks also set a goal of increasing Madison's population to 7000. Instead, we've lost people, while our neighbors in Brookings and 24 other South Dakota counties managed to grow. I'm having hard time figuring out a recession-based excuse for that local failure.
I keep wishing our economic development director, Dwaine Chapel, would bring some lessons down from his home in Brookings to Madison. If he is bringing those lessons down on his daily commute, the LAIC board appears not to be listening. New leadership, anyone?
How many people were counted in Madison that we actually living in the RV and just used Madison as an address? Could that skew the numbers?
Do you have a link to data for all the individual cities of SD?
People go where the jobs are. Madison lost several big employers in the last 10 years. Roscoe was bought and then moved out of town. Many of those employees had the option of no job or relocation.
Brookings is served by better infrastructure than Madison: rail and I-29. SDSU is enjoying a building boom. They went NCAA D1 and had success in athletics. SDSU has the Jackrabbit Guarantee. Brookings is home to First Bank and Trust, a huge financial player. The cornerstone of their jobs market has been 3M for as long as I can remember.
Madison's declining population is no one's fault. We might be in a far worse position if the Chamber and LAIC did not exist.
Nick, I found the data for the top counties and cities in < ahref="http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb11-cn35.html">the sidebar of this Census page announcing the release of the South Dakota data.
Madison was 12th largest in 2000. Brandon, Sturgis, and Box Elder outgrew us.
Mike, that sounds like the same argument made to defend President Obama's stimulus. I can't wait to hear the Republicans who rule the town make that argument to defend the failing LAIC.
The plain fact is the Forward Madison project diverted over $2 million of local money into a project that has failed to produce the promised results. In the business world, that gets you fired. In our crony capitalist world, it apparently gets you pats on the back.