January 21, 2010
Census counts on all of us to comply
Extra effort made in Ocean County
By KIRK MOORE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
Ocean County is perhaps the most aggressive level of government in New Jersey when it comes to enabling the 2010 U.S. Census, a head count that county officials foresee bringing in more federal dollars for schools, hospitals and highways — and ultimately, their dream of a newly drawn congressional district that would unite all 33 Ocean towns.
"The last time we had the census (in 2000), Ocean County saw population growth of 12 percent," Freeholder Joseph H. Vicari said Thursday, as workers and members of the county's census committee mingled at the census office on Hooper Avenue in Silverton. "New Jersey lost 90,000 people but Ocean County is gaining people. . . . The reapportionment is very important. Ocean County should have its own congressional seat."
Enshrined in the Constitution to guarantee adequate political representation, the census has morphed into the baseline mechanism for determining all kinds of federal funding formulas for local projects, worth at least $300 billion a year nationally. Local leaders are determined to get as much as they can, starting with Lakewood, the county's growing urban center.
With its complex demographics of Hispanics, immigrants, Orthodox Jews and African-Americans, Lakewood's count is a case of how community figures — people that regional census director Fernando A. Armstrong calls "trusted voices" — are enlisted to convince people of the legitimacy and need to answer census questions.
They can talk about the census "in their churches, in the barbershops," Armstrong said, and the census will have assistance tables in community gathering places to help people fill out their forms. "The census does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens," and urban populations benefit from the school and hospital funding that's based on population counts, Armstrong said: "Those things are directly dependent on having a good census."
The census has to tackle the same problem in Freehold. Rita Dentino, coordinator for Casa Freehold, an immigrant advocacy group, said the borough "is approaching possibly having half of its population being immigrants and people of color, groups which are traditionally undercounted.
"For people who are generally more afraid of opening doors when someone is knocking on the door, you have to reach out to them in different ways, perhaps by making central places where they feel safe and where they can bring their questionnaires for help in filling them out," Dentino said. "We want to make it clear to people that the census count in effect pays for public transportation, education and other services. An area's political representation comes from that count."
Confidential data
The national debate over immigration has been "a distraction" to the Census Bureau efforts, Armstrong acknowledged. He stressed that census data is confidential and won't expose immigrants to law enforcement scrutiny, and said people should ignore boycott appeals.
"Those populations that are most affected are the ones that are being lied to," Armstrong said. "It is those communities that will need that (government) assistance."
"The Census Bureau felt it didn't get a good count on Lakewood in 2000. We don't want that to happen again," said Menashe Miller, a Township Committee member and deputy mayor. "We started a complete-count committee" to organize street-level support for the census, and the township has used its reverse 911 emergency calling system to remind its senior population to return census forms, he said.
With 4,000 births reported last year, Lakewood is growing fast.
"We are the second-youngest city in New Jersey today, and that's even with the senior community," Miller said.
And older residents are being urged to list Ocean County as their primary residence. Like Berkeley and Manchester, Lakewood has a substantial senior population that winters in Florida and might encounter census forms there.
In 2000, "Florida was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get people who only live there a few weeks or months out of the year," said Vicari, who still fumes over the census poaching. "They got to keep that (federal) money for the last 10 years."
Educating students
College students are another group commonly undercounted, said Grace Johnson, assistant director of multicultural services at Ocean County College and a member of the county census committee. College officials are planning a number of events such as lunch gatherings and speakers to impress students with the need to return census forms, she said.
With a student body that might approach 15,000 this spring, it's a significant number and Hispanics are now the largest minority segment on campus, Johnson said. When she talks to groups about the importance of the census, she carries a family reminder of the 12th U.S. Census conducted in 1900; it's the census page that lists her great-grandfather, Jaspar Kitchings, who was 3 years old when a census worker found his family in Aiken, S.C.
Those canvassers will be going out again from April to mid-July, to check neighborhoods with higher percentages of non-returned forms, Armstrong said. People can apply for those jobs by calling 866-861-2010, and applicants will be subjected to a security and fingerprint check before they can be hired, he said.
"We want people who will be good representatives of the federal government," and they will be carrying full identification and working with the knowledge of local police departments, Armstrong said.
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