Census rejects city count appeal

IN A DECISION that could cost the city millions, the Census Bureau has rejected an appeal that argued the official count missed more than 50,000 residents of Brooklyn and Queens.

The Bloomberg administration said that the bureau’s 2010 count overlooked people in Astoria and Jackson Heights in Queens and Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn.

In 2010, the Census Bureau said the city population had increased by 166,855 to 8,175,133 over the past decade. City officials argued the real count was closer to 8.4 million.

City officials blamed the rejection on technical problems with the complicated federal appeals process.

“It is unfortunate no mechanism exists to rectify the errors we identified,” the city’s Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden said in a statement.

City demographers said overcrowded schools, busy stores and illegally converted apartments were all proof the bureau missed thousands of residents.

They noted the bureau tally made no sense because the number of homes and apartments in the city had spiked by 170,000 since 2002 — more than the total Census official resident increase of 160,000. More than money is on the line. New York already lost two of its 29 seats in the House of Representatives based on the low 2.9% population growth tally.