Metro Leaders Launch Push to Make Census Numbers Count

By Leon Stafford
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Metro Atlanta/State News
March 3, 2010

Ask DeKalb County Commissioner Connie Stokes about the 2010 census and you're likely to be listening for a while.

Stokes will talk about the work being done to reach an east metro region where 70 different languages are spoken. She'll tell you how county leaders, in an effort to keep costs low, inserted themselves into a U.S. Census Bureau public service announcement promoting the upcoming count.

Given a few more minutes, she'll even list the dates and times a caravan will visit areas that traditionally have had low census response rates.

"I'm very committed to the census," an excited Stokes told a group of census supporters recently at a round-table meeting. "I was an enumerator at the age of 17. They were paying by the form then. I was all over the place."

Metro Atlanta leaders are stepping up the pace to convince residents to fill out the 10-question census survey, which should start arriving in their mailboxes on March 15.

Officials are putting the message in water bills in Gwinnett County, partnering with nonprofits to create awareness in Cobb County and including it in "state of the county" speeches in Rockdale.

The effort is critical. The census is used to distribute $400 billion in federal funding to pay for everything from Head Start programs to bridge construction to law enforcement. It also determines Congressional representation for all 50 states, based on population. (Georgia is widely expected to pick up at least one seat.)

In Fulton County, leaders are training senior citizens on what the enumerators likely will ask and what information should be shared, spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt said. The education is important because seniors, who have been told to jealously safeguard their information to avoid scam artists who prey on the elderly, are now being asked to open up to census workers.

In addition, the county is urging staff at Grady Memorial Hospital to help prepare patients for the census, especially the indigent, who are often hard to reach because of their medical needs or because they are hospitalized.

"The key is what we can do in the form of a unified strategy," said John Eaves, Fulton County Commission chairman and head of the county's complete count committee. Eaves also was an enumerator when he was 18.

If focus is what is needed, then Fayette County hopes to lead by example. The county, which had the state's highest response rate in the 1990 and 2000 census counts at 75 percent and 79 percent respectively, is working under the banner "Keep Fayette First."

Every municipality in the county is trying to get the word out, and a diverse selection of community groups are backing the effort, including the area branch of the NAACP, the Caribbean Association of Georgia and the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce.

Not to be outdone, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is pitching the census to Neighborhood Planning Units throughout the month of March, working with homeless advocates to make sure people without shelter are counted, and looking for financial help from the business community to put dollars -- as much as $200,000 -- behind the effort.

"We need every single person in Atlanta to accurately answer the census form and help shape the future for our city, possibly for generations to come," Reed said Monday in launching the city's campaign.

http://www.ajc.com/news/metro-leaders-launch-push-344863.html?cxntlid=daylf_artr

© 2010 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution