Sausalito Says Census Takers Missed the Boat

When Sausalito Mayor Annette Rose heard that preliminary census figures showed that her popular bay-side town had lost population over the last decade, she figured the count was wrong.

Squinting across choppy waters toward San Francisco last week, she offered her first piece of evidence: The Census Bureau never mailed a form to the houseboat where she lives with her husband and two children. Rose and city officials figure there are about 1,500 others in the same boat. They blame what they see as a low population estimate on the exclusion of a significant group of residents--people who live on boats.

When the federal government released census figures last week, the tentative tally for Sausalito showed a 7% drop, from 7,338 to 6,857, while the overall ranks of Californians swelled by 24%. With more than hurt pride to regain, city officials said they plan to challenge the figures if they are not revised in time to ensure that the tourist-attracting burg gets its fair share of gasoline taxes, motor vehicle registration fees and other money divvied up according to population.

“If it’s showing that Sausalito has lost 500 people in the last 10 years, that just cannot be the case,” Rose said. About 200 homes have been built in the city over the last 10 years, and just a few houses have been torn down, she said.

Census officials said they knew that counting the area’s more than 1,500 boat dwellers could prove tricky, so they have made a special effort to pick up those they may have missed. Besides, they said, there is plenty of time for local officials to point out and help correct errors before the count is final.

The president of a homeowners association representing 450 floating abodes moored just outside the Sausalito city limits said census takers missed him and most of his neighbors. Rose and her family live on a refurbished 65-foot tugboat, and their pier-side neighborhood went overlooked until mop-up census counters went door to door at Galilee Harbor in late July.

Census officials said last week they were not sure whether those late sweep results arrived in time to be thrown into the preliminary head count. They vowed that they would continue their visits to the area’s harbors until the last seafaring resident has been counted.

The hilly, spread-out geography of Sausalito and surrounding Marin County make the area difficult for census workers, said Dolores Brooks, census district office manager for Marin and two other Northern California counties.

In addition, some of the boat owners may be compounding the problem by avoiding the count, according to veteran live-in owners and census officials. Many boat owners view privacy as a means of preserving their way of life. This has been particularly true since 1986, when state officials and some local residents--concerned about possible sewage pollution in harbors--tried unsuccessfully to outlaw “live-aboards” in Sausalito’s harbors and “anchorouts” who live offshore.

There may be other reasons for the low count. Some said the preliminary population figures probably don’t include many people who, like boat residents, have unusual mail delivery arrangements.

In the town of Ross, where nearly all residents receive mail through post office boxes, census figures show more than 20% fewer homes than state finance officials previously estimated, said Kim Hansen, senior planner in Marin County.

The counting problem seems to extend beyond Sausalito. Countywide, Marin grew by just 2%, according to the preliminary census figures. Census tallies show about 2,000 fewer homes in the 222,568-population county than state officials have estimated, Hansen said.

Meanwhile, Sausalito officials put together their own preliminary estimates of the money they would lose if the 7% population drop is allowed to stand when the census is completed in October. The city would lose $31 a head in motor vehicle registration money, the most costly part of what would be the loss of about 0.33% of a $7.4-million operating budget.