By Katie Pirolt and Debra DeHaney-Howard
July 4, 2011

The Membership Standing Committee met on June 18 during The U.S. Conference of Mayors 79th Annual Meeting. Piscataway (NJ) Mayor Brian Wahler, Chair of the Conference of Mayors Membership Committee, provided a quick overview of the 50'state Membership Campaign and announced the new member mayors that have joined as a result. He explained, “I’m pleased to say, the membership momentum has continued as we approached this Annual Meeting as there are over 25 first time attendee mayors here today. Some of these are newly elected, like Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago; some are new members, like Mayor Teresa Tomlinson of Columbus (GA); some are non-members — and from states we don’t see much participation, like Alaska.”

Wahler also gave a brief update of the grant programs offered to member mayors, including “a new grant program has just been announced for childhood obesity prevention and will be awarding more than $400,000 in grants.” For more information online on all Conference of Mayors award programs, go to the website usmayors.org/about/membership.asp.

Conference of Mayors Assistant Executive Director Larry Jones also briefed the committee on the 2010 census results, giving a preview to Census Director Robert Groves’ meeting with the mayors on June 20. Larry Jones explained, “It’s such an important thing that happens every ten years, naturally we are concerned about apportionment and redistricting, but what we are mostly concerned about is the $400 billion plus that the federal government gives out to state and local government.” Money distributed, in most instances, to state and local governments based on data collected by the census.

 Jones pointed out the methods of which to appeal your census data; representatives from the Census Bureau were available at the Annual Meeting. Committee members also shared best practices and their own methods for maintaining accurate population numbers, which becomes very useful in the appeals process. Wahler shared an example of his city, explaining that as a college town, the census only counted each door of the dormitory, instead of counting by bed. He explained “we were able to get a report from the university including the number of beds on campus, in turn increasing our population by 5,500.”

 The membership committee meeting concluded with further discussion on membership benefits and methods for recruiting new mayors.