Growth (still) happens: Bend-Redmond among U.S. tops

(Update: Adding comments from city planner, stats on voter rolls)

Growth happens. And in the Bend-Redmond area, it keeps on happening, at rates among the highest in the nation. Prineville, too.

New U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Wednesday night show the Bend-Redmond Metropolitan Area — designed by the agency years ago to include all of Deschutes County — grew to 186,875 residents as of last July 1, growing by 6,200 people, or 3.4 percent, from a year earlier.

“Most of our growth has been through the number of people moving in exceeding the number of people moving out,” Bend Senior Planner Damian Syrnyk said Thursday. “That’s also called net migration, and that’s accounted for about 88 to 89 percent of our growth for quite some time.”

That puts Bend-Redmond at No. 4 in the country for fast-growing metro areas. That’s down one rung on the growth ladder from last year, when it ranked third-fastest. It swap places with new No. 3 Greeley, Colorado, which grew a smidge faster, at 3.5 percent.

But even the nation’s top-growing metro area for 2017, St. George Utah, only grew by 4 percent over the year, a far cry from the double-digit growth seen in some past, red-hot years.

Syrnyk said the Census Bureau number is quite a bit higher than the estimate issued last fall by the Portland State University Population Research Center, which pegged Deschutes County at 182,930 residents, using different data.

But he noted the two agencies are fairly close on how many more residents moved (or were born) here — less than 100 apart — and on the percentage growth, figured by PSU at a bit higher, 3.6 percent.

“That’s good to see, this far from the 2010 Census,” the once-a-decade physical headcount of the nation’s, cities’ and counties’ population, Syrnyk said.

Syrnyk said Bend is still working now to meet demands in the future.

“One of the things we’ve been able to do as a city is make sure that we’re keeping up with our sewer infrastructure,” he said. “We just finished the southeast interceptor this year, and so we’re positioning ourselves to actually keep up with the growth that we’re seeing. We may not get ahead of it, but at least keep up with it.”

Political trends could also be changing as the population grows. In 2006, there were 83,100 registered voters. Democrats made up 32 percent, with Republicans comprising 42 percent, and nonaffiliated voters came in at 22 percent.

There was a slight uptick of Democratic voters in 2010, to 33 percent, and decline in Republican voters to 39 percent, and nonaffiliated voters fell to 20 percent. This year, out of nearly 130,000 registered voters, the numbers are much closer. Democrats make up 30 percent, Republicans come in at 32 percent and the percentage of nonaffiliated voters has increased to 30 percent.

County Clerk Nancy Blankenship said the increase in nonaffiliated voters is likely due to Oregon’s Motor Voter Law, which registers voters through the DMV, unless they opt out.

Prineville, meanwhile, took a similar one-slot slide in the new rankings of the top 10 fastest-growing “micropolitan” areas — a Census Bureau list that looks at cities of 10,000 to 50,000 population.

And just like Bend, Prineville dropped from No. 3 to No. 4, growing by 779 people, or 3.5 percent from last year, and swapping places with previous No. 4 Bozeman, Montana.

Crook County, meanwhile, grew by 779 people, to 23,123, the Census Bureau estimated, a growth rate of 2.98 percent. Jefferson County added 639 residents, or 2.68 percent, for a total of 23,758.