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Clock Ticking, City Urges Census Participation With Just 30 Days Remaining for the Count

It’s still not too late to complete survey

Published on Monday, August 31, 2020 | 9:32 pm
 

On Monday, the California Census Campaign held a meeting to provide an update on their progress with 30 days left in the count.

Nationally, the campaign 64.7 percent response, that still isn’t enough for the Census Bureau and their partners.

And in the next 30 days, the battle to reach households that are the hardest to account for will increase.

The campaign hopes to reach 1.1 million households via followup texts by the end of the month and has planned a week of action from Sep. 7 through Sep. 12.

During that time advocates will increase their methods as a last-minute attempt to reach their goal.

Convincing minorities to be counted has been the mission for cities across the state including Pasadena.

California has a 68.7 self-response rate. The state has a 67.2 rate.

“The only positive news is that we’re doing better than the state average and better than the national average,” said Mayor Terry Tornek. “But it’s not good enough. We have not conveyed the sense of urgency to the people who should care the most about the potential of losing out on very substantial federal funding and on congressional representation.”

That funding includes money for education, transportation programs and hundreds of millions of dollars that come to the city based on the formulas generated by the census count.

City officials pushed hard to avoid an undercount.

Last year, Trump officials pushed to include questions about immigration status, many feared that some local residents would not take part in the census to avoid interactions with immigration officials.

In February, the City Council voted unanimously to monitor the upcoming US Census in Pasadena for potential breaches of confidentiality – hoping to reassure immigrants and other traditionally “hard to count” community members that participating in the once-a-decade count is “safe.”

The census consists of nine basic demographic questions: who lives in the household; how they are related; their age, sex, and race; whether they own or rent their house; and their phone number.

Population counts from the 2020 census will be used to determine how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets for the next decade. The data will also be used to help distribute nearly $900 billion in federal funding for such things as schools, roads and other public services.

“It’s a tangible issue that affects how we’re able to run our city and our state,” Tornek said. “We haven’t connected the dots adequately because if people really understood that, they would take the 15 minutes or the 20 minutes, depending on how big their family is to answer the 10 questions.”

In 2010 Census data was used to distribute more than $400 million to support local schools, transportation, housing, and healthcare programs.

Population counts from the 2020 census will be used to determine how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets for the next decade.

The census can be completed at my2020census.gov and complete the form online.

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