Look carefully at the vacancy rates for Menlo Park and Atherton and realize that property values and therefore property taxes will continue to be depressed for the foreseeable future. Local jurisdictions that depend on property tax revenues should understand that controlling their expenditures is essential.

This information cries out for a graph -- especially since "Other" is the category that's changed the most.

And, Peter, March 2000, when the last census was taken, was the absolute height of the dot.com boom -- I believe the market crash was the following month -- so it's no wonder our vacancy rates were so low.

Low vacancy rates in 2000 are not the issue, high vacancy rates in 2010 are critical because they are leading predictors of a very slow recovery in real estate prices and, hence, very slow, if any, increases in property tax revenues. Most local jurisdictions have built in cost escalations because of their labor agreements - if tax revenues do not increase then these local jurisdictions will see larger and larger structural deficits.

Census data is very valuable - IF anyone pays attention.

Peter:

It's important? Dang, I didn't fill it out. Michelle told me not to, that it's all an Obama Acorn conspiracy:

"Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's so worried that information from next year's national census will be abused that she will not fill out anything more than the number of people in her household.

In an interview Wednesday with The Washington Times' "America's Morning News," the Minnesota Republican said the questions have become "very intricate, very personal" and that she feared ACORN, the community organizing group that came under fire for its voter registration efforts last year, would be part of the U.S. Census Bureau's door-to-door information collection efforts."

But thanks for your important tidbit: "Census data is very valuable - IF anyone pays attention."

So happy to know....