Subject: Census 2000!
Date: Mon, Apr 10 2000 00:00:03 EDT

Lenore Pellegrino has friends in the Federal Government.

With the April 1 deadline for returning Census 2000 forms finally passed, the Bureau of the Census announced Monday that the U.S. population stands at 13,462.

"We at the Census Bureau are shocked by the incredible decrease in the population that apparently took place in the 10 years since the last Census in 1990," Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt said. "A 1999 projection estimated the U.S. population at 274 million and set the annual growth rate at .95 percent. Yet from this latest Census count, we find that this projection overestimates the population by a multiple of 20,000."

Despite the sharp population dip, some data remains consistent with previous censuses. New York remains the nation's largest city, with a population of 664. Los Angeles is a close second with 657, and Chicago a distant third with 329. Surprisingly, the nation's fourth largest city is now Elkhart, IN, with a population of 256. Some suspect that the rise is the result of a citywide "Hey, Elkhart, Come To Your Census!" campaign. The most precipitous decline in urban population was in Houston, TX, formerly America's fourth largest city. In 1990, Houston boasted a population of 1,630,553. In 2000, it is 12.

No one lives in St. Louis.