Chestermere City Council voted to forgo the 2019 city census.
The decision was made based on city administration’s recommendation at the Feb. 5 council meeting.
In making this decision, council will save the $27,000 cost of holding the census.
In order to keep demographic information up to date, an annual census has been conducted during the last several years, however, hosting a census annually is not a legislative requirement.
Growth of a population is only part of a census, the number of houses that are listed, and the number of people per household are also contributing factors.
“A tremendous amount of staff time and resources will be saved,” said Jillian Duraj.
“My preference is I have other things I would like staff to be dedicating their time, energy, and resources for,” said Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Bernie Morton.
He added, $27,000 to conduct a census is on the low side, as the process is quite intensive.
In order for Chestermere to conduct an annual census, software needs to be purchased, census team leads, and enumerators needs to be chosen and then trained accordingly.
As well as having city employees print, cut, prepare and package all of the paper materials.
