Approval of a higher population estimate could hardly come at a better time for funds-strapped Kansas City.

The city said Friday that the U.S. Census Bureau had accepted its December challenge to the 2007 population estimate of 450,375. The official population of Kansas City has been bumped up by 25,455, to 475,830 residents. Population helps governments make decisions about where they allocate money, though it’s uncertain what the dollar effect will be. Kansas City faces an estimated $85 million budget shortfall.

City Development Specialist Steve Lebofsky said the challenge, which he thinks is a first for Kansas City, was prompted by a method called DrillDown that counts populations using real-time transactional data such as water utility records, building permits and parcel information. That information indicated that the population count was about 15 percent too low, mostly in the urban core. The revised official number remains about 5.7 percent higher than the 2007 estimate.

The challenge was the second stage of a three-year public-private partnership called Project Kansas City Urban Market Assets, coordinated by Dan Melton, CEO and founder of npT Labs LLC, based in Kansas City, Kan. Project KCUMA includes the University of Missouri-Kansas City Bloch School’s Cookingham Institute for Urban Affairs and Center for Economic Information, and nonprofit Social Compact.

Beginning in April, developers, real estate agents and others will be able to use Urbata, a tool developed by npT, to look at updated population estimates. Project KCUMA is a pilot that will help npT roll out the DrillDown service next year to help cities recount their populations and use the information to promote economic development, npT said in a Thursday release.

Kansas City is the 15th city to do a DrillDown.