Travis County Commissioners Court
January 12, 2010,
Item 23
23 is to consider and take appropriate action on Travis County activities concerning the -- surrounding the 2010 census, including, explanation of the importance of the census to Travis County, b, overview of Austin-Travis County complete county committee activities, and c, summary of activities planned by Travis County departments and independent elected officials.
>> good afternoon, judge and Commissioners.
I am the intergovernment relations coordinator for the county and serving as a point person on our census efforts, I do have a powerpoint presentation for you and would like to just go through some of the highlights of that presentation.
it really has three points I'd like to make.
first is that there is so much -- the census -- there's so much writing on the census.
the census data is safe, easy and important.
that is to say, census data is confidential, cannot be used or shared with anybody.
certainly in its personally identifiable form, and therefore is very safe to use.
secondly, it is easy.
the census form now is down to ten questions, takes about ten minutes to fill out, and will make a huge impact for the next ten years.
and third, the census data is very important because that data is used in order to make all kinds of decisions, particularly about the use of federal and state monies in order to provide some of the services that so many of our citizens depend on and rely upon.
in fact, there is now the estimate that $400 billion a year of federal money gets allocated on the basis of census data.
so $400 billion a year is $4 trillion over the course of a decade, and that money is used for things like education money, title 1 monies that come to the Austin independent school district, the del valle school district and other school districts, job training programs and facilities here in Travis County and elsewhere, healthcare through our healthcare district, transportation infrastructure dollars are part allocated based on -- based on demographic data.
so all of this is very important to having an accurate census count, as well as reapportionment and redistributing, of course, reapportionment being the allocation of the 435 states in the united states congress among the states, as I'm sure the members of the court are aware, the current projections are that the state of Texas, because of population growth in Texas relative to the other states, will gain either three or four congressional seats in the next decade.
that is really going to be finally determined by the accuracy of the census count here in Texas.
we've had talk -- you know, you hear talk on the news channels about sometimes even congressional and other political leaders in other states saying, don't participate in the census, don't participate in the census.
on behalf of the state of Texas and Travis County we want to say that's fine if you want to do that.
we want to count everybody because we want to make sure we have our fair share of representation.
it is particularly a challenge here in Austin and Travis County because we are home to many communities that are hard to count, such as the homeless community.
there is a brief timeline that I've got on pages 3, 4 and 5 of the handout that I've given to you, but I want to just skip through that so I can focus specifically on what's going here in Travis County.
the Austin-Travis County complete count committee, which is a joint venture between the county and the city of Austin, was formed in October of 2009.
its co-chairs are judge eric shepherd and constable bruce elfant, and there are nine subcommittees target targeting key populations, the homeless population, and also to use churches and the media to help get the message out.
the committee met last night, made assignments to the subcommittees and gain a series of -- we're going to begin doing biweekly meetings, every two weeks, on Monday evenings, beginning last night and continuing through census day, which is April 1.
so there is going to be a community-wide effort here in Travis County to make sure we get the word out to all the population and particularly those targeted populations that we know are at risk for an undercount.
Travis County I'm very proud to report will be a big part of that effort, as a governmental institution, we intend to do -- we have four big strategies that the county bureaucracy and the independent elected officials are working on.
first there's outreach and public education through county offices and departments and their physical loaks.
we have more than -- locations.
we have more than 15 county departments or independent elected officials who interact on a daily basis with the public.
I'm talking about people like our tax assessor collector, health and human services people, our justices of the peace.
we have thousands of those kind of interactions every month, at least, and we are now putting together an inventory of all of those, and I'm pleased to report that most of of the independent elected officials, such as the district clerk and the tax assessor/collector as well as our own county departments, have been cooperating very well in helping us put together that inventory.
at each location we hope to have census posters and census information available.
we hope to have brochures that we can hand out to people, and eventually we will establish what are called questionnaire assistance centers at some of these public loaks.
a questionnaire assistance center is a place where anybody who has a question about their census form can come and ask that question and get an answer.
that will require some training of staff, but we think that will be very quick and very easy.
the other type of site that we hope to create at some county offices is what's called a be counted site, and that's simply a site where somebody who believes that he or she has not received a census form and wants the opportunity to complete a census form, will just be able to complete a census form right there, sort of like walking into a bank and being able to fill out a withdrawal form.
of course we don't give you any money if you complete your census form, unlike a withdrawal form.
the second strategy we're working on is the county also communicates a lot with its citizens and its employees through the mails, and so we have gotten cooperation from all those agencies in parts of the county that do communicate a lot through the mail.
we will have fliers that will be prepared and that will be included in envelopes mailed, for instance, with injury summons, with some of the tax notices, Travis County employee payroll envelopes, payments made to vendors by the county, so in a lot of ways we'll be able to reach out not just to our employees but to the public through these insert places in the envelopes.
our third strategy is to use Travis County television channel, channel 17, to promote the senses.
they are going to develop -- they're going to collaborate with us and with the census people developing some psa's and brief announcements that can be part of the rotation on channel 17, as well as maybe even developing a couple longer programs, 15 or 20 minutes long, where people -- you know, to give more information in a little more depth about the census, so there will be a lot of information on our channel.
and then finally we've got what we call our generic strategy or general strategy to support all the community efforts.
I would like to recommend to the court, and we'll provide the backup further on down the road, that we declare a celebrate the census week here in Travis County or celebrate the census day and use that in order to promote the census as we get closer to April 1, which is census day.
and also our community center directors, changes to sherry flemming and health and human services -- veterans services people.
our community centers are all participating in the census outreach effort.
we will use our community centers as a base for getting the information out to all the communities throughout the county.
and finally the people at the tv station have generously agreed to provide whatever resources they can to help us produce psas, which could be used not only by our channel 17 but by other channels as well.
and so we're working with them to develop and produce those psa's.
there's a county-wide effort going on, there's a lot of citizens involved and we're very proud that the county is going to step up and take a leadership role itself.
at this time I'm happy to answer any questions the court has.
>> questions?
>> mr.-- we'd like to hear -- a couple representatives from lou lack were here earlier and they voiced concerns about the community, shies teres posing as census takers.
I would like to request if the committee hasn't already done so to contact them and see what we can do to get the word out to communities who's doing it, who's not doing it.
>> right.
and I will tell you that the complete count committee is looking at the calendar from now.
as I said, April 1 is census day.
the census forms begin arriving in your mailboxes probably around the 17th of March or so, and we have really thought through what the message of the week will be every week to make sure that we're telling people where they can get a copy of the census form in a different language if they want one, what to do in terms of watching out for sheisters.
the actual people coming to your house and asking census questions will not beginning until probably late April, early may at some point, and of course all those people have identification.
the census bureau does a thorough screening process for anybody it hires to work in that capacity, and so -- but I agree with you, and I listened to the dialogue this morning with the representatives of those organizations, and I think that would be a very important message to have out there, to avoid anybody getting taken for a ride by those people.
>> thanks for that.
>> thank you very much.
keep on keeping on.
>> yes, sir.
>> okay?
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 6:37 PM
