“There’s not some mass exodus going on,” he said. “I think this is important, because for many years there was a worry that somehow the county was just going to have accelerated loss, but that’s not what we see. People were using the loss of population here … as a hook to hang their favorite issue on. They would say it was because of taxes, or because of this and that. But the numbers don’t really support the idea that we have some kind of dire problem.”