Travis County Commissioners Court
February 9, 2010,
Item 17
17, revised language, consider and take appropriate action on Travis County activities surrounding the 2010 census including, a, explanation of the importance of the census to Travis County, b, overview of Austin-Travis County complete count committee activities; c, summary of activities planned by Travis County departments and independent elected officials; and d, license agreement between Travis County and the u.s.
census bureau for use of county facilities.
>> good morning, judge Biscoe and members of the court.
deeckstein, coordinator and census go to guy for Travis County at least this week.
i wanted to just give a brief update to the court to status of the census.
there is a power point presentation that we've put into your backup and which I'm now trying to open up the laptop to get on to there, but may not be able to do that.
that may be technology logically beyond me.
we just wanted to make a few major points about the census.
really for the benefited of the court and for the benefit of the citizenry of Travis County.
the first is that this is the most user friendly census ever done.
the census materials will be mailed to 136 million households in mid-march.
even before that is correct sometime later this more nor early March, people are going to get letters at their homes.
if they are in neighborhood or community where the census people have reason to suspect that a large percentage of the population does not speak english as a first language, they will get a letter written probably in spanish or in a couple other languages telling them that if they wish to get a census form in a different language, that they may do that from the census.
so they will already have communication from the census and an opportunity to see if they can get the census document in language they prefer.
but then the census documents themselves go out in mid-march.
the census is only 10 questions and only takes 10 minutes to fill out.
if you mail it back by April 1st, you will have the thanks of a grateful nation and the census will be done with you.
if there is help thaw need, there will be questionnaire assistance centers open including some in our county facilities as well as many other facilities around the area.
and the census even has a call center that you can call if you have questions, and that number is 800-923-8282.
so the point is this is really an easy census for people to complete and participate in.
the census data is confidential and cannot be shared.
the census does not ask about your social security number or what bank you bank at or what your bank account numbers are.
it doesn't even ask your citizenship status.
so the questions that the census asks are intended to give us broad demographic information about the people in our country and are not intended to be personally intrusive.
and that data once gathered by the census is kept strictly confidential and is never shared outside theson sus.
so the aggregate at a time take, population data, economic data, educational data and so forth may be shared outside the census, but the individual data about that person is never again going to be shared.
that census data makes so many -- helps us make so many decisions here at the county level, at the federal state and at the state level.
for instance, we now estimate that the frugal indicates $400 billion of federal benefits on the basis of census population data every year.
that's $4 trillion over the course of a decade.
so if we have an accurate count, we improve our opportunity to get as much of that money that is needed and should be allocated to the people of Travis County.
we estimate in Travis County on the basis of the undercountless decade in 2000 we have left over $200 million on the table in Travis County just because we did not count all the people in the county during the 2000 census.
so the Commissioners court and the city council have created an Austin Travis County complete count committee.
they've been working for several months and are now working on almost a daily basis with meetings every two weeks to review progress and to move forward with the strategies that we're working on.
the big push is going to come in March, particularly the last half of March.
the census forms will hit your mailboxes four our citizens on or about the 20th of March and we're hoping that people will have heard about the census, will know that it's foreign participate, will know that it's safe and easy and confidential to participate, and will quickly do so and send their census forms in.
last time, Travis County had about a 67% mail-in response rate.
that means two out of three households sent back their census form in the mail without any further visits or prompting by the census department.
we want to get that number up to 75% this go round.
after that, with respect to that 25% that did not respond to the original census questionnaire, then the census will send out another questionnaire in late April, and then we'll do follow-up visits throughout the may, June, July period.
so I know a lot of people say oh, I don't want to have a census taker come to my door.
you will get the census form, fill it out, stick it in the mail and you are done.
>> so if you are the kind who doesn't want to be bothered or messed with, the simplest solution is go ahead and complete the 10 questions, get them in in a timely manner and you won't be messed with for 10 years.
>> absolutely, judge.
that's right.
and we will -- and then the federal government will start making decisions about allocating transportation money, education money, health care money, job training money, and a bunch of other, you know, so many of the other programs that our citizens depend on, those allocation decisions will be made on that more accurate census.
so you are exactly right.
>> one more question.
a couple of individuals I guess saw one of the press conferences and we had a lot of elected officials there and they were all democrats.
but we welcome independents, republicans, whatever your party, political party affiliation, it doesn't really matter.
we would like your hope, right?
>> absolutely correct.
that's absolutely correct.
the census is about being an american.
it's about being counted as part of this country.
and that transcends all the different classifications.
and we certainly would welcome participation by people who are interested in politics of all political persuasions in helping get the word out about the census.
>> okay.
>> so we are making an unprecedent outreach.
in addition to the community-wide outreach, we have 30 people on the complete count committee, representatives of the business community, the civil rights community, representatives of the different neighborhood groups in Austin, representatives of the media community.
so we're trying to get a broad cross-section of leaders.
i will tell you with some pride that our department managers and some of our independent elected officials have really stepped up and said we're going to distribute fliers and posters through the tax office.
we're going to distribute fliers and posters through our community centers.
we are now looking at, and I tried to come up with some numbers there, more than 15 of our various county departments and offices who interact with over 10,000 -- I think it's numbers up to 12,000 people every month, they've asked for over 100 census posters and they've asked for over 20,000 fliers and brochures.
so there's going to be an effort through Travis County to help spread that word.
in addition to the wonderful people at tctv, our media department, have volunteered to work on creating psas and ads and short programs about the census that we can run on tctv or even offer to other television stations or to time warner as a way of helping to spread the word.
so I'm very proud of the effort the county is making so far and expect that to increase even more as we head into this last month.
the census day is April 1st.
that's 50 days from today.
so we're very -- we know we're closing in on it and we're very exited about the work we're doing and we're trying to spread the word as best we can throughout the community.
item d, judge, on your -- on the agenda had to do with an agreement between us and the census so that the census could operate a series of questionnaire assistance centers in some of our county facilities.
we have got a draft contract that those -- that those census people are reviewing now.
we've not heard back from them yet so I would ask the court's indulgence on putting off item d at least for a week.
>> when do we learn what facilities they would like to use?
>> judge, the draft agreement that you have in front of you names, I believe it's six facilities and the census has indicated to us they would like to use all of them.
there was originally a list of a dozen -- of about 10 or 12 facilities we were talking to the census people about, but as they have refined their business plan for the opening of these community assistance centers, we've narrowed it down to these six centers.
>> these six will be sufficient.
>> yes, sir.
>> and we have that draft agreement in our backup?
>> yes, sir.
>> some of us do?
>> and we have a copyright here for anybody that doesn't.
>> I'll get it between now and next week.
>> yes, sir.
>> what action, if any, would you like today?
>> I think at this point, judge, there's no particular action that we want the court to take other than to continue to express its support for the census efforts, both of the county and of the larger community.
>> well, we eagerly anticipate receipt of our census forms.
and we wish that all of our residents feel the same way and we certainly encourage each and every Travis County resident to complete the form and send it back in immediately after receipt.
>> that's right.
>> and we will say that many, many times between now and March 20th, right?
>> yes, sir.
>> okay.
>> thank you so much, judge.
>> thank you.
>> anything else, court?
comments, questions?
thank you for taking on this very critical government service, mr.
eckstein.
>> thank you, judge.
thank you, members.
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, February 9, 2010 2:15 PM
