NO CENSUS FORMS YET FOR HUNDREDS IN COLUMBIA COUNTY

Mike McCagg

ccSCOOP News

04-02-10 - 5:00 p.m. - Despite the nonstop multimillion dollar media campaign pleading for all U.S. citizens to complete their census forms and return them, a sizable portion of Columbia County residents— and millions more around the country—have yet to receive their census forms. That’s because of a federal policy that does not permit census forms from being mailed to post office boxes. As a consequence, areas such as Philmont in the Town of Claverack and Stottville in the Town of Stockport, where there is no door-to-door mail delivery, and residents who elect to have their mail delivered to a P.O. box instead of their home have not received their forms.

U.S. Census Bureau spokesman Michael Gregorio told ccSCOOP that people with P.O. boxes are automatically placed on a nonresponse follow-up list for the bureau. Asked for a reason why forms aren’t mailed to P.O. boxes, Gregorio was at a loss for an explanation, finally saying that it is simply federal policy and that often times P.O. boxes don’t reflect where people live. For example, a resident of Stockport may have a P.O. box in Chatham if he or she works in Chatham.

Another spokesperson for the agency said the policy is in place as a means of reducing the opportunity for residents to fill out more than one census questionnaire since many people have more than one post office box. In spite of this caution, however, many residents who received their census forms at their homes in March and returned them received a second form in the mail yesterday.

The Census Bureau will soon be announcing a telephone number for people to ensure a form will be hand delivered to their house. Starting in May, workers will be going door to door to try to locate residents who have not completed forms—including those who never received them. An address may be visited by a worker as many as half a dozen times in an effort to find someone home so that a form can be delivered.

Claverack Supervisor Robin Andrews noted that almost 25 percent of her town’s population live in Philmont and consequently have not received census forms yet. This disparity in the means of delivering forms to residents leaves the potential for areas without door-to-door postal delivery service to be under-counted.

The Census Bureau said about 120 million forms were mailed to homes across the country, while 15 million forms are expected to be hand delivered in the coming months.

Philmont resident and village librarian Karen Garafalo said the federal government is wasting a lot of time and money through its current process. "I don't know how they made that initial determination not to do a drop [where the bureau hand-delivers forms to addresses in March], but I think it’s a waste. I heard from the federal government that it costs [an average] of $57 per visit. If they hit everyone on the first shot, it is still 450 houses in the village and that is a lot of wasted money," Garafalo said.

Using those figures, it would cost $25,650 to conduct the census in Philmont if bureau representatives were able to find each resident home on the first attempt next month.

Garafalo said she tried to be proactive and procured last month about 50 questionnaires from the Census Bureau that were handed out quickly. However, she said she was told by the Census Bureau that workers would still have to visit each residence in the village, even those who filled out and mailed in those forms.

Supervisor Robin Andrews said her biggest concerns about the process are the wasted cost and time it will take to make the accurate count in the village and town. "I am sure the Census Bureau will make every effort to make sure everyone is counted. My concerns are that even with their best efforts, it will be expensive and time consuming to count people who are quite willing to be counted and that, beyond the six times stopping at a house, there is not backup for making sure that someone is counted, and therefore some people may be missed," Andrews said. 'It also means that, as a supervisor, I will not know the count success rate until it is almost too late to do anything more about it."