Answer:
1.
The equation to model the situation can be written as:

Where:
P represents the town's population
represents the current population
r represents the rate percentage per year
t represents the number of years
substituting value,
is the required equation.
2.
We substitute t = 20 into the equation and solve for p, to predict the population of the town in 20 years.

Therefore, the predicted population of the town in 20 years is approximately 6,011 people.