Cole's skill for strategy served him well in office. One of his landmark accomplishments, which guaranteed that Mayaguez would receive federal funding on a scale otherwise reserved for major cities, was his handling of the city's status under the US Census. The Census Bureau separates cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants and these are granted higher federal funding as a way to guarantee economic development. In the first census during Cole's tenure, Mayaguez came short by about 7,000 people from reaching that mark. Cole argued, successfully, that the city's population status should be increased by counting the students at the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez campus, who at the time were about 8,000. This kind of creativity allowed the city to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars more for public projects that would not have been given if Cole had not come up with such an argument, which is viewed by some as proof of Cole's entrepreneur spirit for financing his programme. One of the major benefits of this determination came in the form of federal grants which allowed for urban development, most importantly Villa Sultanita, a housing complex created to help middle-class families own a home through municipal subsidies.