Travis County Commissioners Court
September 22, 2009,
Item 44
44, revised language.
receive update and take appropriate action on Travis County participation in the census 2010 complete count committee with the city of Austin, including update on planning efforts to date.
good afternoon.
>> good afternoon, judge Biscoe.
i'm delighted to be here today to talk to the court and by extension the general public about the census.
as members of the court know, u.s.
constitution mandates the census every 10 years and they have been doing it since 1790.
the next one is going to be next spring.
i think April 1st, 2010, is the census day, so in order to make sure that everybody participates, and the reason it's so important is because the census is actually very, very important for Travis County and for everywhere.
first of all, it controls the allocation of federal funds to state and local communities.
there are some $300 billion a year of federal moneys that are given out based on census data, based on census formulas.
and if you look at -- pardon me.
yes, so we do have a power point which hopefully you have a copy of in front of you, but we also can look at that on screen.
and the census is so important because of allocation of federal funds, also reapportionment.
as I mentioned to the court earlier this summer, the preliminary data coming into the census indicates that Texas may get as many as three additional congressional seats in this coming census.
reapportionment is reimportant, of course.
and that eventually leads to redistricting when we redraw the lines.
and even from the congressional districts at the state level all the way down to drawing the lines for the Travis County precincts, all that redistricting will follow upon the census data and will depend upon accurate census data.
i want to highlight the importance of the federal funds that are based on census data.
grants to local school districts, particularly title 1, which is for low socioeconomic students and at-risk students.
lots of money comes to the Austin independent school district and other Travis County area school districts based on that.
public transportation and mass transit programs.
we all know how important transportation is to our community and how much the need is for additional resources for that.
emergency food and shelter programs.
the head start program.
the women, infants and children's food assistance program.
programs for the elderly.
these are just examples of the kinds of programs where dollars are allocated based on census data based to need in the community.
in order to get the maximum dollars, we need to have the most accurate data about what the situation is.
so here in Travis County, there should be broad interest in an accurate account particularly among our educators, among our health and human services providers, our business community, transportation agencies and planners, our rural and agricultural community, which also receives money based on census formulas, and, of course, among community organizations and neighborhood groups.
and we have throughout the county a very lively set of community organizations and neighborhood groups, all of whom sometimes are competing for federal dollars in order to help meet the needs of their communities.
and this is -- the census is so important for that.
so it's important that we get an accurate count of everybody in Travis County.
there are particular populations in the county that are what we would call at risk populations for undercount.
that is, they would not be accurately count, in fact would be undercounted in the census.
one we wouldn't normally think of is the higher education population.
there are about 130 thaw people in Travis County who are in some form of higher education.
they are going to university of Texas or they are going to acc or some of the private universities, and that's a very mobile population.
even if they are from the Austin area, the central Texas area, they might be changing dormatories or apartments every year, certainly out of city or out of state students at our different universities and colleges are going to be part of that situation and they are notoriously hard to count.
so part of our interest as a community is make sure we count those people.
we also have the homeless population in Travis County.
nonenglish speaking populations who are established, settled in the community, but for whom english is not a preferred language.
we think sometimes of our vietnamese community, our chinese community or some of our spanish speaking community.
it is not that they are hard to find or hard to reach, but because they don't use english as they are preferred language all the time, it's important that the census materials and the outreach efforts be targeted to them.
and then finally we have an immigrant population including undocumented immigrants who are entitled to be counted by the census and for whom making that count is very important.
so for a lot of reasons it's very important that we do an accurate count, and what the u.s.
census bureau does in order to encourage communities to really promote the idea of the census and an accurate count for the census is create complete count committees.
and we'll be saying that a lot so we can practice complete count committees a lot.
they are basically volunteer committees made up of leaders from the community whose goals are to increase awareness about the census and to motivate residents to participate.
and here in Travis County, what we've decided to do, and by we I mean judge Biscoe and merrilying we will has decided to create a joint Austin-Travis County complete count committee.
that committee will have two groups in it.
one is called a steering committee, which would be a smaller working group, 12 to 15 members with expertise in community outreach, marketing and communications, and then a larger leadership council, which is going to be a broad swath of community leaders in the civic, business, religious, indicational and neighborhood communities of our city -- educational and neighborhood communities who goal is help spread the word.
we want a complete county-wide outreach effort that really goes into the hills and valleys of our county and tries to find the people who are likely to be undercounseled, tart them, make sure they know the census is important and it's easy to participate.
this year they're going to do what we call the easy form.
it's only going to have 10 questions on it.
the answers to the questions are completely confidential so it's really an easy thing to participate in, but it's still very important to get the word out to people to let them know it's okay and easy to participate.
where do we stand with it right now is the city and county are trying to put together these committees.
we have asked the Commissioners court already for some suggestions for members for those committees.
what I would like to do is visit with each of the members of the court individually in the next week or so and just solicit some more names, talk about the backgrounds of the people you have -- you have already recommended.
i want to thank the court for the recommendations they've already made.
visit with you some more about putting together the Travis County recommendations.
of the 15 members of the steering committee, we want the county to appoint half of them.
of the 30 members of the leadership council, we want -- it's going to be joint aappointments between the city and county.
we'll be appointing half of them.
we would like to visit with all the members of the court about nominations and suggestions for people who are real leaders.
our goal is to sometime in early October is to kick off the census with probably some kind of a media event.
probably involving judge Biscoe and mayor leffingwell, remind citizens how important participation is and announce who the co-chairs of the effort are going to be.
in mid-october we want the steering committee to start meeting.
in past censuses, the steering committee has turned into a working group meeting once or twice a month and taking specific assignments about community to reach out to and how to do that and reporting back to the group.
so it's a really work intense effort on the part of those community leaders.
and all of that will set a process in motion that will lead up to a big public rollout early on next year with a focus on getting everybody to participate in April.
i think the census forms -- I think census day is April 1st and during the month of April you will have the opportunity to fill out your census form.
at this point I'm happy to take any questions from the court or answer any questions the court has.
>>
>> [inaudible] who will individually recommend whether they live in -- since it's a joint effort between the city and the county, does that prohibit us, the county, from recommending someone in an unincorporated area or incorporated area of the city of Austin or does it matter as far as where the persons live as far as in an in core rated or unincorporated area of the council.
>> Commissioner, I think that's a wonderful question.
i think what rear looking for is the best people to work hardness to achieve the necessary results.
we know Travis County is a big county and in addition to city of Austin which takes up a significant portion of it, we have other communities, like Pflugerville, like Lakeway, manor, plus, we have a lot of unincorporated areas.
we want to make sure the word is out in all those communities.
i've been impressed so far with the suggestions you and other members of the court have made in terms of leaders who are not necessarily living in the city of Austin but who have -- you know, are very skilled at the kinds of things we're looking for.
i think whether the person lives in Austin or not, we're looking for people willing to work hard and spread the word throughout the county.
i will say without trying to speak for mayor leffingwell, I think the city is just as committed to this being a joint county-wide effort involving both the city and the county as the county is.
>> what would be your recommendations as far as next steps?
should we frame this -- should we look for individuals that could aid us in one of these four starred undercount areas and consider, you know, which one of the two task forces they would be more appropriate for, the steering committee or the leadership council, and get that to you?
>> I think it would be most helpful if you could get suggestions to me.
there is in the backup memo I provided to members of the court on page 3 and top of page 4, I list some of the more specific criteria I suggest for members of respect actively of the steering committee and of the leadership council.
but I would be happy to visit with you about those.
any recommendations you have.
my thought would be to start to put together and form a list, run that by the court and start contacting those people to see if they are willing to serve, and then at some point ask the court, if you will, to ratify a slate of nominees for these two committees.
>> so if we identify folks, should we notate what category they could be particularly helpful in and whether or not they would be most appropriate for steering committee or leadership council?
>> yes, that would be very helpful.
and particularly if you can identify target populations.
the other visit that I want to have with all of you is for you to help me identify in your communities where areas that are likely to be undercounted, whether that's a geographical area or particular segment.
i will be the county's liaison to the steering committee, so I expect to be working with all of you on trying to make sure we do as good a job of out reach as we can.
>> so how do you propose we treat the court's vote in this court to appoint the Travis County community center directors as our leaders in those unincorporated areas?
there was a formal vote, I think.
>> I remember that we adopted -- that the court adopted a resolution I believe on June 23rd.
i can't remember if it specifically said those people.
i remember it identified target audiences, and I can't remember if the vote was on the specific individuals or if it was on -- to assemble a committee of these kinds of people, these representing these groups.
i think, judge, in answer to your question, that the community centerrer directors are the kind of example of the kind of people we want to have on these committees.
>> if my recollection serves me correctly, we actually voted to approve committees because we weren't making much progress up to that point.
and in my view, not only do we have those who really interact with residents, but they all have advisory committees that some are more active than others, but they are out there interacting day to day, and if our strategy is to motivate people to want to complete that 10-question form, then it seems to me that we ought to try to rev up those advisory committees to get people ready to receive the forms.
they ought to be anticipating delivery of the forms so they can complete it and send it back.
and when individual members complete their forms, they ought to help us to get neighbors to do the same thing.
so I'm pretty sure we formally made that decision because I had a conversation with ms.
fleming about notifying the directors to be --
>> that they are on the committee.
>> yeah.
so in my view, by getting the directors, though, I'm thinking that we get the advisories committees and many in those affected areas.
>>
>> [inaudible] throughout the area and they probably have their trust in that they are going to be able to fill out that form and it's going to be all confidential, you know, but it's going to be turned in.
>> absolutely.
and I think Commissioner Gomez, one of the things we're looking for on the leadership council in particular is people who may or may not really have the time to do the week by week meetings, but who have broad networks and who can harness those networks for this effort.
>> right.
>> and I think the community center directors -- I'm sure some of the community center directors who would be great on the steering committee, but it sounds like they would be great -- certainly all of them would be great on the leadership committee.
>> right.
>> anything else?
so really, if we look at the hard to count folk historically, then it seems to me that part of our strategy ought to be to make sure we have somebody working the different groups for us.
>> yes, sir.
yeah, I think there will be an effort to make sure we're targeting -- you know, do we have -- like what is our effort going to look like on the college and university campuses.
there will probably be some effort devoted to a specific tragedy around those groups as well as the homeless population and the other groups that we've identified.
>> yeah, I mean there are several nonprofits that work with homeless folks.
seems to me we ought to go out of the way to include them as well as our veterans office.
>> and I believe at the same time that the court assembled the original complete count committee in June, you named ollie pope as one of the members of the committee who is our veterans services coordinator.
>> I believe your recollection is coming back, same as mine.
>> [laughter] okay.
anything else?
so you'll be contacting us individually for further assistance?
>> yes, sir, for further recommendations.
>> do we have any idea of what the last census that was taken, the probable undercount?
those persons that really were not counted and should have been counted as a result we didn't receive the necessary moneys or the moneys that we would have gotten if folks would have been counted, for whatever reason and were not counted?
do we have any indication --
>> I know that over the decade, Commissioner, I've read news articles and stories about that, but I've never seen the numbers for Travis County.
>> yeah, because if our goal is to not only shorten the questionnaire, which has been done and down to 10 questions, then it just appears to me that may cut into some of the undercount along with the outreach that we are suggesting may even cut into that undercount number even more so.
so I was just trying to make a comparison to what was done in the past and the approach that we're taking now to make sure that we don't -- don't have a significant undercount as we had in the past.
>> I'll see if I can get those numbers, Commissioner.
when you think about it, this county has grown by at least 25% in the last decade.
we were somewhere around 800,000.
we know we're going to be over a million.
we did have an undercount last time, I'm sure.
we want to avoid that this time.
the county is now more diverse both geographically and racially and ethnically and in every demographic category.
so it is going to be more important to count it and more challenging to count it this time around than it was a decade ago.
>> exactly.
>> move that we follow mr.
eckstein's recommendation that Travis County partner with the city of Austin to do our complete count work for the next census.
>> second.
>> that we enthusiastically support the effort and come up with other members for the committee --
>> steering committee taken leadership council.
>> we can expect to be contacted by you within the next couple weeks?
>> yes, sir.
>> okay.
>> second.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
thank you.
>> thank you very much judge and Commissioners.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 1:30 PM
