The Census Helps Oskaloosa Receive Most Funding
A press release from the Census Bureau states “The Secretary of Commerce has announced a target date of October 5, 2020, to conclude 2020 Census self-response and field data collection operations.”
Oskaloosa residents have until then to finish their survey’s and help the community achieve a high accuracy count.
Auto-Generated captions
The 2020 census is coming to an end with the October 1 deadline for self-response and field data collection operations. Oskaloosa Development Services Director Shawn Christ has been working with the complete count committee and Mahaska County to help residents fill out and return their census forms. Oskaloosa News recently sat down with Christ to learn more.
All right, and once a decade, we do the census in America. And Census is happening right now. And you’ve been leading the charge here in Oskaloosa. At least Yeah. So tell me a little bit about that. And what kind of timeframe we have for that yet.
Yeah, we’re in the home stretch now. So the census activities have been going on for a period of time, the counts have been going on, I think, at least since April of this year. So in the last few months, residents have had an opportunity to respond to their census in what they call a self-response. Opportunity. This was the first year that the census actually offered new options to respond, which had been frankly, very convenient, I think, due to the pandemic that we’ve been involved in. So this was the first year we could respond online through the Census Bureau’s website. And also the first time that we could respond by phone in the past, it’s been simply by mail, so new convenient options this year. And it’s something that we’ve been promoting for a period of time. And you’re right, so I’m not a census employee. I’m not involved with the Census Bureau but simply trying to promote responses on behalf of the community because it does benefit us. So it’s something I’ve been doing for the city. And I’ve also been involved in the county’s complete count committee. And I think as they call it,
So people might let’s say, well, just whenever the government wants any information from you, many of us balk at that. But this does have implications for our community. So can you give us some, ideas as to how this as important for a community?
Yeah, absolutely. And you’re right. You know, the Census Bureau used to ask a lot more questions than they do nowadays. I think now they’ve got it down to 10 to 12 questions. Depending on the questionnaire. In the past, they would have long forms, and it could take you a period of time to provide all the information they were looking for. So all of that is in the past and is all done separately by a survey. So what they do for the 10-year census, is they ask you 10 basic questions, what they’re really looking for. And what we’re really hoping our residents will provide is a count of the number of people within your household. They would like to know the age of each of those individuals, their gender, and then also their race. I think that’s the basic information we hope our residents will provide. There, I think are a few other questions beyond that, you know, if you’re not comfortable with the questions, you can leave some of that blank, I think the more that residents choose to not respond to, the greater the chance that would be of your household not being counted. Or, you know, in the case that we’ve had the last few weeks having an enumerator, visit your household to collect the rest of the information.
It may mean a difference in funding them for Oskaloosa.
Yeah, great question. It would make us eligible for more funding. And what that is, is the federal government has funding that can be anything from set-asides to funding for roads, or hospitals or a number of public services, emergency services, libraries, even things like grants. So all of that funding that that trickles down from the federal government, state government to local government, is based on population size, and is sometimes a little bit more specific information, depending on the demographics of the community or makeup. So we want our population to be accurate, you know, they estimate, I think the most recent number I’ve heard is 20 $200 per person, per year. So over a 10 year period, that’s $22,000 per person. So for every person in your household that isn’t counted because of a lack of response that adds up real quick. And, you know, we know that you know, we could use all of these services. It’s important to us as a community, we could use better roads, better services, better opportunities, and this is a very easy way to make that money available to us. That’s why we’re encouraging our residents to please respond.
