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<br />population data I’ll be talking about is similar to others that I presented to the statewide
<br />Hawaiʻi Reapportionment Commission because much of it is similar information, but in
<br />this presentation, I’ll talk specifically about the County of Hawaiʻi and the population
<br />data for the council district redistricting.
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<br />Starts with the census itself, conducted every 10 years for the purposes of equal
<br />representation. You can see some numbers here, through time, how the population has
<br />grown. What weʻre really interested in here for our purposes for redistricting council
<br />districts. The Census Bureau collects data a lot of different levels for a lot of different
<br />purposes. For our purposes, we needed it at the lowest level, the most detailed level,
<br />those are the census blocks, outlined in green there before, below. Everything else builds
<br />off of census blocks. That’s the data that we need. So, what are census blocks? Statewide,
<br />Hawaiʻi has 14,732 census blocks, that includes the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. Most
<br />census blocks follow street boundaries. I put in a snippet there on the left. Each of those
<br />purple polygons is a census block. In this case on Oʻahu, I have selected one, you can see
<br />it highlighted in blue. Each of these is a census block. On the right hand side, you can see
<br />a snippet from Hilo, and again, I've selected one in blue to show you the lines don’t
<br />always follow the streets. Most of the time they do, but they do follow other natural
<br />features like in this case, streams, also ridges, other features.
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<br />Each one of these census blocks though, will contain population. However, in January,
<br />we did receive the census blocks but it did not have population data. All we got were the
<br />outline, so we knew where they were. We knew each block’s uniquie identifier but we
<br />did not have the population. The population we were waiting for is the P.L. 94-171
<br />resident population base. That is the census reported resident population as of April 1st,
<br />2020. Indeed we did received that, August 12th of 2021, that census block level
<br />information for Hawaiʻi. We received it in what’s called a legacy format. You may have
<br />heard this so I thought I’d put in a couple slide to describe that. As you know, the census
<br />is long delayed in being released. There will be a user-friendly release at the end of
<br />September but the Census Bureau said, we’ll release a legacy format in mid to late
<br />August, most States may lack the capacity to tabulate this but if they do, they can get
<br />started earlier, but we reaffirm we’ll get the user-friendly one by September 30th. Well
<br />we wanted to get ready early so we prepared, and we were able to read that legacy
<br />format. Question did arise, but wait is that going to be the same numbers if we use the
<br />legacy as the final in September? They clarified that on August 5th. The Census Bureau
<br />said, yes, the numbers themselves, will be identical. So with that, we received the data on
<br />August 12th. These are the numbers, both statewide, and by basic island unit. The State
<br />Reapportionment Commission uses basic island units. You can see the breakdown there.
<br />The basic island unit of Hawaiʻi, with a federal population of 200,629 as of April 1st,
<br />2020.
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<br />It’s interesting to compare that with the 2010 federal population. We can see the growth
<br />overall statewide, and within each of the basic island units. So that’s where we see
<br />Hawaiʻi with a growth of 15,550. At the low end Kauaʻi, 6,207. At the high end, Oʻahu’s
<br />63,301. If we look at them as percentages, County of Hawaiʻi is 8.4 percent. Actually
<br />Kauaʻi has the highest percentage, 9.25 percent. But with a smaller population, 9.25
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