If you live in Boston and felt like you had a bit more personal space yesterday morning, Secretary of Sate William Galvin is sorry.
You actually have less personal space.
At a morning news conference to announce local level census numbers, Galvin said Boston had lost population over the past decade. The first numbers indicated the Hub lost more than 14,400 people.
That number didn’t sound right to many folks and it’s not something city officials expected or wanted to hear. Fewer people, at the least, would have meant reduced government funding and other support.
But at a second chance news conference in the afternoon, Galvin corrected the numbers.
Boston actually gained 28,453 people since 2000.
“In the interest of haste always check your math,” Galvin said of the rare flub.
The mistake was made when Galvin’s office, in an effort to get the data out quickly, used a filtering system that inadvertently left out census tracks that were believed to have no population. Instead, those filtered tracks left out more than 87,000 people.
Mayor Thomas Menino’s office said they were “surprised” by the initial numbers, but also had no doubt that they were wrong.
The numbers also have an impact on redistricting as the state will lose a congressional seat, which is part of the reason Galvin said his office hurried to get the information out.
“The urgency of the numbers is that we have to get the political process going,” he said.
