Jefferson County shrinks from school closure, minor rural decline

Every city in Jefferson County saw populations drop, but almost none by more than 100 people.

Maharishi Vedic City was the exception to that rule: the community dropped from 1,294 residents in 2010 to 277 in 2020, accounting for the overwhelming majority of the county’s population decline.

“We built a couple of campuses on the northwest side of town, and we had over a thousand residents who were Vedic scholars from India residing there,” City Economic Development and Government Relations Director Kent Boyum said. “Since that time, that program has diminished, and the Vedic pundits aren’t here anymore.”

When that campus closed, Boyum said much of the school’s mostly international population returned to India to continue their studies.

The data paints a clear picture of the process. The number of residents identifying as Asian alone in Jefferson County dropped from 1,425 in 2010 to exactly 500 in 2020. For context, the demographic went from representing 8.5% of the population to 3.2% in one decade.

The county’s racial demographics have diversified slower than elsewhere as a result. While Jefferson County added over 1,000 residents identifying as Black or multiracial since the last census, the percentage of residents identifying as people of color grew far slower than other counties, from 12.4% to 13.4% over the decade.

While other communities lost fewer residents, the changes are still noteworthy. Although Fairfield’s population fell by less than 1%, going from 9,464 to 9,416, other communities hovered around 10% population declines, albeit from smaller populations.

The greatest proportional losses were in Libertyville and Batavia, which both shrank by nearly 14%, losing 41 and 69 people, respectively.

Fairfield Chamber of Commerce CEO Darien Sloat said the community held its own at a time when other rural communities across the state showed rapid declines.

“I take that as a modest win, that we have slowed the loss of population here,” he said. “In the last six months, it feels like we’ve seen a lot of people come through the door buying houses … we’re seeing some migration in that respect, people moving because they want to get out of congested cities.”

Sloat said Jefferson County communities took greater measures than most rural areas to attract new residents.

“We are part of a 10-county region defined by Indian Hills (Community College) working for two years on a project called Iowa South,” he said. “That is a project designed to show people who don’t live around here what the benefits are of living in this region. It is the only regional effort I’ve heard of to attract people to a rural set of counties.”