Bennington prides itself on a storied history running as far back as its American Revolution battle of 1777.
Rutland likes to rewind to the year 1880 when, for one brief shining moment, the city surpassed Burlington as Vermont’s most populous community.
And Barre still celebrates the 20th-century heydays when it billed itself the “granite capital of the world.”
But the newly released 2020 census tells a different story.
Rutland City, the state’s second-most populous municipality throughout the 1900s, has dropped to fifth.
Bennington, in third place until 1990, is now sixth.
Barre City, in the top five until 1970, is now 13th.
Several other longtime census leaders — for example, Brattleboro (once fourth, now seventh), Springfield (once sixth, now 12th) and St. Johnsbury (once fifth, now 18th) — have fallen on the same list.
Declining population is leading all to gain elbow room — and lose political muscle.
“It seems inexorable,” said Tom Little, head of the Vermont Legislative Apportionment Board that will use the counts to decide how to allocate seats in the 150-member House of Representatives and 30-member Senate. “The census only happens every 10 years, but the declines have been going on for decades.”
As Burlington remains the state’s most populous city, it has been joined in the top 10 by the ballooning bedroom boroughs of Essex (now second, up from 11th in 1960), South Burlington (now third, up from 12th in 1960) and Colchester (now fourth, up from 17th in 1960).
In contrast, many established population centers lost residents over the past decade. Rutland City shed the most (down 688 from 2010), followed by Barre City (down 561), Lyndon (down 490), Rockingham (down 450), Bennington (down 431), Poultney (down 412) and Springfield (down 311).
The drops could lead to corresponding dips in state representation when the apportionment board remaps the Vermont Legislature’s House and Senate districts. If a municipality loses population but a neighbor in a multi-community district gains, the numbers even out. It’s only when all areas increase or decrease that change comes.
“We were looking at some of the same things 10 years ago, but we tended to make more incremental tweaks,” Little said. “We’ll soon find out if we’ve gone beyond that point.”
Little has followed such shifts ever since he was a Burlington schoolboy in the 1960s. That’s when his elementary school teacher explained how a court-ordered reapportionment was forcing the state to reduce its number of House seats from 246 (one for each community, regardless of size) to 150, with the latter based on districts of equal population.
“I remember Burlington went from one House member to 11, and the really, really small towns were lamenting they were never going to have anyone from there represent them again.”
Today Little is surprised most by the leaps and bounds of No. 8 Milton, which wasn’t even on the top 20 list 50 years ago.
“That’s remarkable,” he said of a Chittenden County community with 2,022 residents in 1960 and 10,723 today.
The apportionment board, having just received the new numbers, expects to announce its initial recommendations this fall.
“We’re hearing from a small number of residents and towns unhappy with the district they’re in,” Little said, “but most want a better sense at where we may be going before they start lobbying us.”
