Keeping count

Census workers in Lubbock will begin following up on unresponsive households in August. [PHOTO PROVIDED BY U.S. CENSUS BUREAU]

There’s still plenty of time to fill out the 2020 Census, and the hope moving forward is that people in harder to reach areas of Lubbock and the South Plains begin to fill it out.

Several media campaigns and advertising blitzes are scheduled to take place in the coming months. Field workers are scheduled to knock on doors in August. There will be a significant effort to target college students when they’re back in Lubbock, and families of K-12 students when classes begin in the fall.

The Census hasn’t been as visible as leaders would like to be the past few months. COVID-19 is a big reason, as it has forced events to be canceled and forced lawmakers to push back the deadline to fill out the form.

Census workers in Lubbock will begin following up on unresponsive households in August. [PHOTO PROVIDED BY U.S. CENSUS BUREAU]

Lubbock’s Complete County Committee also wasn’t given much money to work with, and those funds are nearly dried up.

The City of Lubbock and Lubbock County each gave the LBK Complete Count Committee $10,000 for events and advertising. The committee also received $5,000 from the Community Foundation of West Texas. Events have been canceled, so the total of $25,000 has mostly gone to advertising.

In Abilene, their economic development corporation gave $100,000 to their complete count committee. Midland received $90,000 from their city and county, and at least $155,000 was raised privately by oil companies for Census outreach in Midland and Ector Counties.

A-J Media was told the larger cities in the state invested significantly more than these figures.

Every uncounted person is a loss of about $1,500 per year in federal funds for the area, according to the local committee. These are funds for roads, hospitals, Medicaid and Medicare, housing support, and many other federal programs.

So money spent to remind and encourage people to sign up is seen as an investment.

The LBK Complete Count Committee spent most of their outreach funds right away, and have now been sitting on the leftover funds for when students come back, for one last push. When the deadline to fill out the form was extended several months, more resources weren’t given to the local committee —although A-J Media was told it asked.

The LBK Complete County Committee has a meeting scheduled this upcoming week to further discuss a plan to reach college students. The U.S. Census Bureau has a field office in Lubbock, and next week they say they’re having a big push with local media to remind people it's not too late to complete their 2020 Census questionnaires

“We’re trying to concentrate our resources on underrepresented areas at this time one of which is students,“ said Victoria Whitehead, vice chair of the Complete Count LBK Committee. “We know Tech students and LCU students haven’t filled out the Census yet. We know that’s a population we’re really going to need to target.”

In-person classes were canceled at the beginning of March, before Census forms were sent out. College students, who make up a significant percentage of Lubbock’s population count, were told to fill out the Census from the address they would be staying at if school was still in session.

Whitehead said Lubbock needs as many college kids counted as it can for an accurate representation.

Texas - dent population just on Google is 36,551. I mean, that’s like two Hereford, Texases, right? It’ll really impact our region to not have that student count,” Whitehead said.

Because funds are short, Whitehead said they’ll be relying on leaders at these universities, student organizations, professors and apartment managers to reach students about the Census.

Minority neighborhoods have also historically been harder to reach areas of the city.

Whitehead is asking community leaders across Lubbock to help them reach people. If there’s an event or a gathering or any place or way people can be reminded to fill out the Census , Whitehead said the committee wants to know.

“There are areas of town that have a bad response rate,” Whitehead said. “We need the leaders in those communities to engage with us, so that we can work together to get outreach out... Our neighborhoods are so unique, and those neighborhood leaders know what works in their neighborhood. We want to partner with them.”

Only 57.6% of households in Lubbock County are believed to have responded to the 2020 Census, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Census Bureau began mailing out invitations to complete the census in March. Lubbock County’s 57.6%% response rate so far is higher than the state’s entire response rate of 57%, but lower than the national response rate of 62.1%.

The response rate in the City of Lubbock is 58.4%.

An estimated 67.5% of households in Lubbock County responded to the Census in 2010.

Whitehead said she’s proud of the work the committee has done with the funds they’d been given. When she looks at cities that have spent more on the Census, she said Lubbock’s response rate is about the same, if not better.

The message coming from Lubbock’s Complete Count Committee is it's not too late to respond. The deadline to submit your response to the U.S. Census Bureau has been extended three months because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

You now have until Oct. 31 to respond.

This is the first year the Census can be completed online, and experts say it just takes a few minutes. Surveys ask for the number of people in a household, race and age.

Brenda MacDonald, media specialist at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Lubbock region, said field workers will begin following-up with unresponsive households on Aug. 11. MacDonald said the U.S. Census Bureau has held local questionnaire assistance events at food banks, libraries, schools, apartments, grocery stores and even outside at the Lubbock County courthouse, in an effort to reach people as well.

“We try to have a presence where people will gather and make it easy to respond,” MacDonald said. “Sworn-in U.S. Census Bureau response assistants are on-hand to answer questions and assist people in responding to the census on the spot. If people need help in Spanish, bilingual representatives will be available.”

MacDonald also said community and nonprofit leaders can help get the word out.

Dwight

McDonald, chairman of Complete Count LBK, said if are low it won’t be from a lack of effort by the local committee. McDonald spoke with A-J Media last month about the Census, when there seemed to be a lull in Census activity.

He said the committee is pretty much out of funds except for the final push to reach students in the fall.

McDonald said Lubbock needs more in the community to step up if the Hub City wants an accurate count, because money doesn’t seem to be an option.

On Tuesday, the Lubbock City Council voted to extend the duties of the Complete Count Committee until Dec. 31, 2020. The resolution did not include any extra funds.