County hopes to make census count

Ten simple census questions could stand between county residents and millions of dollars for services they use.

So, with the census coming up, county and state officials are launching efforts to make sure everyone gets counted.

"For every 1 percent of the population that's undercounted, that means millions of dollars of federal aid we could be missing out on," said Erik Robey, director of community and constituent services. "It's so important."

In the 2000 census, 26 percent of the county population wasn't counted, which was better than the national average but still a large percentage.

Robey is chairman of the Complete Count Committee, which aims to reach parts of the population undercounted in past censuses and beat the 74 percent response rate in the 2000 count.

The committee's 30 members hail from all segments of the population - media, county government, business, nonprofit organizations and community associations.

"What (committee members) have been asked to do is develop and brainstorm promotional, outreach-type events that we can perform in Anne Arundel County, all with the goal of promoting the census locally and (telling people) how important it is for them to fill out that form," Robey said.

Areas of the county the committee is focusing on include Severn, Harundale, Southgate, some areas around the Baltimore City line, and a small pocket in Crownsville. In Annapolis, Harbour House and Easport Terrace in Eastport are two historically undercounted areas.

County Executive John R. Leopold kicked off the county's census awareness campaign yesterday at the Arundel Center in Annapolis with brief remarks from members of the Complete Count Committee and a presentation from a U.S. Census Bureau worker. Census questionnaires go out in March. "We want to make sure Anne Arundel County gets every dollar it can," Leopold said.

According to 2000 census data and 2007 federal allocations, Anne Arundel County lost an estimated $430 million over 10 years due to undercounting. The county received a total of $528.5 million in fiscal 2007 federal allocations, a number determined partly by census data.

Census data are used in a variety of areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition to determining congressional seats, the data are used to allocate funds in Title 1 grants, Head Start programs, Women, Infants and Children food grants, public transportation, road construction, programs for the elderly, emergency food and shelter, and empowerment programs.

"We feel that, just considering the state of the economy, this is one of the most important censuses we've ever had," said Rick Anthony, special assistant to Leopold. "We just can't afford to have everyone not get counted."

Fighting fear

The Complete Count Committee is broken up into four subcommittees: education, business and media, nonprofit organizations, and community and senior centers. They are charged with coming up with ways to reach the hard-to-count areas of the county and recruiting others who can help with the task.

Several committee members spoke at yesterday's event about how the number of respondents can be increased.

Donna Belt, a member of the Severn Improvement Association's board of directors, said she plans to use every resource she has available to reach her neighbors, many of whom are elderly, poor and skeptical of how the census data are used.

"Part of it is opening up, sharing information you don't normally share," she said. "If we do our job to make communities aware of the (census' purpose), I think that fear will be reduced."

Roxanne Umphery Lucas, a senior partner specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau who spoke at yesterday's event, agreed that many hard-to-count areas seem to share a distrust of government. Census data are completely confidential and are not used for anything beyond the census, she said.

Another focus of the census awareness campaign is breaking down language barriers and counting the area's Spanish-speaking population.

"We've seen an influx of people with English as second language," Lucas said. "We also have an influx of undocumented residents. We need to make sure they're counted."

The census questionnaires, which are 10 questions long and should take about 10 minutes to fill out, are available in English and Spanish.