“A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” Plato
Did you read Burke County’s census numbers, which the federal government announced last week, or did you just read the headline in Thursday’s newspaper, “County grows, city shrinks”?
Burke County’s population grew in the past decade to more than 90,000 people. Burke’s easternmost townships, Lower Fork and Icard, together grew by 1,300 people — the equivalent of adding a town the size of Rutherford College. However, Morganton had a net loss of about 400, slipping below 17,000 in population, and some other central-county towns lost population, too.
For people trying to peer into Burke County’s future through a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet instead of a crystal ball, there was plenty to scrutinize last week. Numbers are unemotional, soulless, inanimate things, but people with a statistical bent could twist them in either positive or negative (and, some might say, imaginary) directions. Some see the falling population and school enrollment numbers as indicators of some failure, as prognostications of inevitable decline and a withered future.
But look again. Not only did eastern Burke County grow, but so did the western townships, Linville and Silver Creek, as well as central Quaker Meadows.
The face of the county clearly is changing — older and grayer, with more Spanish accents and fewer children — and so are the contours of Burke County’s population. Morganton Township remains the largest single population center, but the eastern townships’ (Icard and Lower Fork plus Lovelady) population now clearly outweighs it.
Just as the numbers are forcing changes in the Burke County school district, the census results should prove to decision makers for the municipalities and the county that they, too, have new territory to explore and old assumptions to question.
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