For census dawdlers, 1 more month
Area suburbs near 2010 response rates, cities lag
It appears $5 is still the going rate for paying someone in the Capital Region to do what should be a civic duty.
Decades ago, it was the Albany County Democratic machine paying five bucks for a vote cast on Election Day. Now, it’s a $5 gift card to a Stewart ’s Shop for someone to fill out their 2020 census questionnaire at the Troy Public Library.
“This was an idea that came from the Friends of the Library. Let ’s do this,” Paul Hicok, the librar y ’s executive director, said. Troy and the Capital Region’s other cities are trailing far behind their 2010 self-response rate. The cities are the center of hard-to
count census tracts with high poverty rates, high residential turnover and lower access to computers and the internet. A federal court ruling late Thursday in California may have given them a chance to get more residents counted.
“It ’s dismal,” Hicok said about 53.1 percent of households having completed the questionnaire as of Sept. 23, compared to 61.8 percent for the 2010 census.
The coronavirus pandemic wiped out all of the carefully crafted plans to get high compliance for the census, which determines how federal money is distributed. With libraries and other community centers closed and their computers inaccessible for residents who lack internet access, the low completion rates aren’t a surprise.
The U.S. Census Bureau has been conducting its follow up door-to-door reach out to the households that haven’t completed the form. But local municipalities have no reports from the census bureau on what percentage of their households have been counted. The bureau says 97.1 percent of New York households have been counted as of Sept. 23 compared to the nationwide response of 96.6 percent.
Unlike the cities, most Capital Region suburban towns are near their 2010 response rates and in a few instances have surpassed them.
The result is a push to get residents to fill out their forms online, via smartphone, mailing the questionnaire or over the telephone. Each community does it a bit differently. Menands has plastered Broadway with signs to build on the 67.7 percent return rate so far, compared to 74.3 percent in 2010.
Schenectady leaders mobilized Friday to promote the census. Schenectady as of Sept. 23 had a 52.7 percent households self-return rate, compared to the final 60.6 rate for 2010.
“This is the final countdown to get your census completed online or on your phone if you haven’t done so already. Funding for so many of our essential community services is inf luenced by our census results, and will be for the next 10 years,” said Robert Carreau, executive director of The Schenectady Foundation.
The city of Albany is organizing additional events to get residents to complete the census forms on the spot, said David Galin, chief of staff for Mayor Kathy Sheehan and one of the officials leading the city ’s census efforts. Albany has seen just 54.4 percent of its households complete the questionnaire as of Sept. 23, compared to 61.5 percent in 2010.
“We’re putting city resources toward a final social media push and we’ve sent postcards to the census tracts with the lowest response rates in the city encouraging residents to fill out their census (questionnaires),” Galin said.
Cohoes launched its latest Thursday with telephone calls and emails. It also will have outreach efforts at grocery stores and other stores. Its household return rate was 56.3 percent as of Sept. 23, compared to 68.9 percent in 2010.
There was a recommendation that the census be extended to Oct. 31, but that was rejected in August by the Census Bureau in an announcement from bureau director Steven Dillingham. But Thursday, a federal judge in California issued a ruling that scrapped the Sept. 30 deadline and restored the Oct. 31 as the final date for the census to be completed. The 2020 census has been subject to questions and battles with President Donald Trump’s administration over how the census would be conducted.
“Once again, the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempts to undermine the census and manipulate the population count to the president ’s liking have been stopped,” said state Attorney General Letitia James about the court decision in which New York state had joined in supporting the Oct. 31 extension.