Workers emphasize importance of census
PALMDALE — As the 2020 Census begins to wind down, Antelope Valley community partners came together to discuss the importance of a strong census count.
With the extended Oct. 5 deadline quickly approaching, Strength Based Community Change hosted a press conference on Thursday morning at the Gazebo in Poncitlán Square, with representatives from the City of Palmdale, Kaiser Permanente, Lancaster and Palmdale School school districts, and other various organizations who talked about how the census will impact those areas in the community.
City of Palmdale Councilmember Juan Carrillo explained that for every person left uncounted, the state could lose up to $1,000 in federal funding each year over the next 10 years until the next census count.
“It is vital to our residents and our businesses that we get an accurate count, as many important funding decisions are made by population and demographic information from census numbers,” he said.
Many of the City’s key programs like SAVES and business grants are funded by federal dollars as a direct result of the census count, Carrillo said.
“The stakes and risks of an undercount in the 2020 Census are too high to be ignored,” he said.
Shana Molt, a health care leader for Kaiser Permanente, said the census count is vital to health care providers so they can allocate resources to areas that need it the most, especially when the pandemic outbreak happened.
The census number was so important that it helped them organize quickly, plan care appropriately, and pivot daily on where the resources were going to be and spread out she said.
“With a future so uncertain, we have strength knowing what our numbers are,” Molt said. “Each one of those numbers counts as a person, a child, a mom.”
Vladimir Gomez, president of the Wilsona School District, emphasized the importance of an accurate census count because of its direct effect on funding for school programs.
“Our students need programs after school especially now that we have COVID,” Gomez said. “For us, it is very critical that we receive funding for after school programs, for lunches,” Gomez said.
He also stressed that an accurate census count would help with funding for teachers, school nurses and psychologists.
Go online at www.2020census.gov/ for details or to complete a census questionnaire.