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HUNTINGTON -- Huntington showed another moderate population decline between July 2007 and July 2008, based on estimates released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The city slid from a population of 49,283 on July 1, 2007, to 49,185 on the same date of 2008, a decline of less than 100.

It's the smallest decline in the past 10 years, and as the city looks forward to an official Census count in 2010, it's gearing up to make sure the city gets both an accurate count and a count that will benefit the population the most.

"The most helpful thing we could do right now is put together -- as many cities have -- a census task force, a group whose sole function is to make sure everybody in the city gets counted," said Cal Kent, a former City Council member and vice president for Business and Economic Research at Marshall University.

He cited a number of reasons he believed it was important to get back above that 50,000 mark, a benchmark the city hasn't reached since 2004.

Some studies indicate that cities of 50,000 or fewer people are overlooked by groups that could benefit them, he said. And for many programs, population goes into formulas to determine the amount of money given.

"It's a psychological factor as well as monetary factor," he said. "What's most important now is to get everybody counted."

Huntington remains the second-largest city in the state. Charleston is the largest with 50,302 residents. Parkersburg is the third largest with 31,611, and Morgantown has moved into the fourth-largest spot with 29,642. Wheeling now ranks fifth, at 28,913.

Estimates from 2008 indicate that the state has 1,814,468 people, an increase of 4,632 from July 2007.

Mayor Kim Wolfe said he would certainly like to see Huntington come back and hit the 50,000 mark, "but in reality we want an accurate count, and for people to want to come to the city.

"I'm not driven by that number, but I'm driven by wanting to get people back into the city for the right reasons."

Wolfe said the city will continue to work on lowering its crime rate and cleaning up its streets and abandoned housing.

"I want people to get the concept of a cleaner, safer Huntington," he said. "If you can't envision it, you won't get there."

Huntington's population decline, and the fact that it's below 50,000 people, could play a role in how Huntington is perceived among its citizens and the business world, but it shouldn't have a big impact on state and federal funding, one federal government official has said.

Huntington's largest source of federal funding is the Community Development Block Grant program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Huntington gets those funds as an "entitlement community" because it's the central city of the Huntington-Ashland, Ky. metropolitan statistical area.

Once a city is an entitlement community for two years in a row, it can never lose its entitlement status, a CDBG official told The Herald-Dispatch last year.

But 50,000 is still a good number to try to reach, Kent said. Besides drawing businesses and people to Huntington, another way to try to reach it in 2010 is to encourage Marshall students who have apartments here to mark down Huntington as their permanent address, he said.

"The only way to do that is to have boots on the ground -- have people going around and knocking on apartment doors. We have not done that yet in Huntington," Kent said.

"It needs to be done. The census is right upon us," he said. "We need to get into this race to make sure every student here is counted."

It should be the responsibility of the city working with Student Affairs at Marshall, he said.

Other groups that could be overlooked, but who also benefit from city services, are those in nursing homes, as well as the homeless, he said.

Aside from making sure all are counted in 2010, Huntington of course needs to continue its efforts to grow, he said.

"Our long-range strategy is to just grow more jobs in the community to get more people here," he said.

The Herald-Dispatch