Population and Employment Summary

County-Level Population Projections from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget

Long-range population and employment projections are necessary inputs in order to forecast demand for regional municipal and industrial water and wastewater. In addition to their application in water resource planning, population and employment projections are the foundation for other planning and budgeting activities in which the state is involved. These include economic and community development, transportation, health care, and education. The Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget (OPB) is responsible for preparing demographic data for the state, and therefore has significant interest in creating the technical capability - at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government (CVIOG) at the University of Georgia (UGA) - to produce a definitive and consistent set of population and employment projections for use by all agencies of state government.

Local Government Input

The State Water Plan (SWP) contains a provision for local elected officials to provide recommendations and input on regional population, economic and employment forecasts. EPD, in cooperation with the Association County Commissioners of Georgia and the Georgia Municipal Association shared the population and employment projections and methodologies with locally elected officials, and solicited their input for CVIOG's consideration prior to finalizing the projections. The projections and background information on methodologies, assumptions, and data sources were presented to local government officials via a digital video disc (DVD) that was mailed to each chief elected official in county and municipal government in Georgia. The DVDs included short video modules (done by CVIOG principal staff) and links to the more detailed information on the methodologies, assumptions, and data sources used to produce the projections, as well as a presentation of the projections themselves. The elected officials were asked to have their professional staff submit pertinent comments on the methodologies and projections.

Regional Water Planning Council Members

Regional Water Planning Council Members also received the DVD and were invited to submit comments. In addition, a discussion of the population and employment forecasts took place during Council Meeting 2.

 
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