Mayor Bloomberg was awfully polite yesterday in his formal request for a re-count from the Census Bureau.
In a letter to Census chief Robert Groves, the mayor pointed to four crowded neighborhoods where the undercount seemed especially strange — Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, and Astoria and Jackson Heights in Queens.
“Likely processing errors may have hindered the proper reporting, compilation and tabulation of census results,” wrote the mayor.
Sen. Charles Schumer wasn’t as discreet: “In all my years as a legislator, I have never seen a census as poorly conducted. To say there are abandoned buildings in growing, bustling neighborhoods is on its face absurd.”
The official count for the city came in at 8,175,133, which was 216,748 below estimates.
Census officials had pointed to large numbers of vacant housing in the neighborhoods, which city officials say have been among the biggest growth areas.