Residents urged to return 10-question form promptly
If the year ends in a zero, there is one thing that can be counted on within the borders of the U.S.: it’s census time.
Across the nation, census questionnaires have started arriving in mailboxes, and officials both locally and nationally are urging Americans to return their forms quickly.
The 2010 census form has been pared down to one of the shortest surveys in the history of the institution. 10 questions long, it forgoes questions about income, occupation or level of education, questions that used to be on the now-eliminated long form. That information is still collected through the American Community Survey, said Mary Ruth Sweet, an area manager for upstate New York for the Census Bureau.
`We collect that information in another way now, so no one has to be troubled by spending 40 minutes filling out their census,` she said. `It’s back to being abut as short as it was in 1790.`
Population data is of great importance to government operations, however. Information from the census will be used to figure districts for state and federal representation and in the distribution of about $400 billion in annual federal funding. These funds go to programs ranging from education to healthcare to road repair.
Supervisor Sam Messina said he’d like to offer a challenge to Bethlehem to have as high a response rate as possible, which will hopefully translate into the federal support for area needs.
`It’s a challenge to ourselves in terms of how well we can do,` Messina said. `We want to maximize benefits for Bethlehem in those considerations. Being accurate does that.`
In 2000 Bethlehem’s final response rate was 84 percent, well above the national rate of 67 percent and also an improvement over 1990’s return rate of 78 percent.
Mail-in return rates are not measured below the county level, but in 2000 Albany County saw a 76 percent mail-in return versus the national average of 72 percent.
This year, the Census Bureau will be updating regional returns as they come in at www.2010.census.gov.
For every one percent of the population that returns a mail-in form, the government will save $85 million by avoiding having workers going door-to-door, according to the Census Bureau. The bureau expects to hire 635,000 temporary workers to conduct these follow-up interviews, which will begin in May.
The Census Bureau is also trying to increase return rates through an aggressive advertising campaign. While some might view this as wasteful, Sweet said mailing out a notice before sending the questionnaire increases the mail-in return rate by 6 to 12 percent.
`Research has definitely shown that it’s effective,` she said. `The biggest cost is in chasing down the households we don’t get a questionnaire back from.`
Improving local returns might seem like a difficult task, but Messina said he’s taking every opportunity to speak about the census in the media and will be making information about the census and help filling it out available through the Town Clerk’s office.
`It’s just the sort of thing that can’t be taken any way other than very seriously,` Messina said. `These things all have a direct impact on us.`
Census figures show the population of Bethlehem growing from 1990 to 2000, and the official estimated town population for 2008 was 33,095.
Those figures show the town’s population to be older than the national average and (according to the 2000 census) 95 percent white, and fairly affluent in terms of average income and poverty levels.
Messina said he is not expecting significant growth in this year’s population figures.
`I think things have been very stable, and they’ve been stable because the economy has been as such that there hasn’t been a lot of new homes,` he said.
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