Our community needs the help of residents and businesses in making the 2000 Census in Lee County as accurate and complete as possible. Hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and demographic information that will be used by businesses and planners for the next decade depend on it.
About a week before
Census Day – April 1, 2000 – most households will receive a questionnaire by
mail. Census takers will deliver forms to the remaining households. The Census 2000 questionnaire will be easy
to read and simple to fill out. It is important to respond!
The Census 2000 questionnaire that most people will get will ask about only seven subjects: name, sex, age, relationship, Hispanic origin, race, and housing tenure (whether home is owned or rented). Nationwide, five out of six housing units will receive this short form. The longer form will ask about the same seven subjects plus 27 more, including education, ancestry, employment, disability and house heating fuel. One out of six housing units will receive a long form nationwide.
One problem in the past with getting an accurate count is the public’s fear of privacy invasion. This is unfounded. By law, and subject to criminal penalties, the Census Bureau cannot share an individual’s records with any other government agency, including welfare agencies, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Internal Revenue Service, courts, police and the military. Millions of questionnaires were processed during the 1990s without any breach of trust.
Just a few facts about the 2000 Census:
§ It means money. Every year, more than $100 billion in federal funding and even more in state funds is awarded to localities based on census numbers. The lack of a complete count in other communities has cost them millions of dollars in funding.
§ It means good community planning. Census numbers help local planners pick locations for everything from roads to schools and parks.
§ It means jobs. Businesses use census numbers in locating facilities.
§ It means public safety. Many 911 emergency systems are based on maps developed for the last census. When Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in 1992, census information aided the rescue effort by providing relief workers with estimates of the number of people missing in each block, as well as detailed maps of whole neighborhoods that had been obliterated.
Please let your employees, friends and neighbors know about the importance of responding to the Census. You can also learn more about the Census 2000 by visiting its web site at www.census.gov/dmd/www/2khome.htm.