Mayor's Math Doesn't Add Up For Bolingbrook's Racial Makeup

BOLINGBROOK, IL - Bolingbrook has become a more diverse community in recent years during the mayoral administration of Roger Claar, but one of the key data sets published by the mayor's office on Thursday only leads to head scratching. The key handouts about Bolingbrook were uploaded to the village's website Thursday to coincide with Claar's annual state of the village address that he made Thursday at the Bolingbrook Golf Club. One key report is labeled as the village of Bolingbrook 2017 fact sheet. On that page, the growing village lists its population as 76,272 as of December 2017, Bolingbrook noted. Underneath the estimated population, Mayor Claar's handout listed the "estimated racial make up for Bolingbrook." However, that category included no population estimates and that's where Claar's math does not add up to an even percent of 100.

Mayor Claar's handout addressing Bolingbrook's racial makeup identifies Bolingbrook as being:

• 54.3 percent White
• 20.4 percent African-American
• 24.5 percent Hispanic/Latino
• 11.4 percent Asian

Under Bolingbrook's racial breakdown category for Asian residents, Claar stated that:

• 3.8 percent of Bolingbrook's Asian population is Indian/Pakistanis
• 3.9 percent is Filipino
• 1.8 percent is mixed/other
• 1.1 percent is Chinese
• 0.4 percent is Korean
• 0.4 percent is Vietnamese
• 0.1 percent is Japanese

In any event, using the mayor's data, the percentage of whites and African-Americans total up to be 74.7 percent. If you add the village's estimate of 24.5 percent Hispanics/Latinos, then the total percent climbs to 99.2 percent. When you factor in Bolingbrook's estimated 11.4 percent Asian population, that puts the village's racial make up at 110.6 percent, not an even 100 percent.

If there was a reason why the mayor's data set totaled more than 110 percent, there is no explanation given on the handout published on the village of Bolingbrook's website.

Perhaps contributing to the problem, Claar's handout did not include any population estimates for whites, African-Americans, Hispanics/Latinos and Asians. It's only percentages with no raw numbers.

In other data sets that the village of Bolingbrook published on Thursday, such as the data set that Patch published on Friday morning, dealing with housing totals, Bolingbrook's percentages added up properly. For instance, in the housing data set, Claar included specific numbers for Bolingbrook's single-family detached housing, single-family attached homes and apartment buildings. That data set reflected housing figures from back in 1986 when Claar first became mayor and for 2017, his most recent calendar year as mayor.

Bolingbrook Patch reached out to the mayor's office Friday and left a voicemail message seeking clarification on the data for this article, but no one at the village returned a call. Patch had also left Claar a voicemail message earlier this week seeking comment about his state of the village address, but he did not call back.

Data obtained from village of Bolingbrook 2017 Fact Sheet, main image via Patch, image of Roger Claar via village of Bolingbrook