Census continued

Remember me geeking out about the Census here? Well, a few weeks ago, I was driving, listening to NPR and about screamed and drove off the road when I heard a story about Salina's efforts to get everyone to return their forms on the NATIONAL affiliate of NPR. Not a local story, but it was picked up by NATIONAL. Seriously cool (you can here the story HERE).

Well, because I'm a geeky-geek, I went to the Census Web site to see how Salina's doing. :) (There are 2 more days to mail them back, people, so DO IT!!!!).

Overall, Kansas is rocking out a 71% rate of return.

Saline County and the City of Salina is holding strong at 81%!!!!

Now, there's a list of the top 50 places with the highest returns. But they limit it to cities with more than a 50,000 population. Salina is SO CLOSE to that number. In fact, if we had a 50,000+ population in the last census, we'd be in the top 7-18 cities in the COUNTRY! How cool is THAT? :)


Here are a few maps of places I live/have lived to see the participation rates (coz I'm a geek like that!).


Good, but we can do better than that! ;)


Ah, Hays ....


Look at Salina! My neighborhood has an 84% return!

So, I know there are some sour pusses out there who want the government to buck off. If you are cranky about the current happenings, and I say "be glad we live in America and you can publically grumble about that!" But to people who say "spending is out of control and I won't participate" ... I say the following to you: "By NOT participating, and NOT returning your form, YOU DIRECTLY are costing the government MORE money. Quoting directly from the Census site now: ' If 100% of households mailed back their forms, taxpayers would save $1.5 BILLION dollars.' " ... SOOOOO, don't be a hater.

More information is available at 2010.census.gov. It looks like they want everything returned by April 17, so there's still time, people! :)

Geeking out, Census style!

I'm probably a big, fat geek, but I have to say, I was rather excited about this whole census thing. Probably because it is the first time I've been considered "head" of household (ok, co "head" of household) to fill one out? Who knows, but I was pretty jazzed.

And when it arrived this week, I ripped it open, elbowed Erik out of the way, and attacked it with a pen. (ok, I gotta be honest. Erik didn't want to fill it out, so there was no war over who would get to do it).

I gotta say, it was a bit anti-climactic. A few quick questions about if we owned or rented, what our racial origin was (Erik, you're not Samoan, so get over it), and our names/ages. It truly took all of 3 minutes, IF that.

The thing that amused me was how many spaces there were for people living in the household. Something like 12. Interesting. Actually, I have some clients with 6 kids, so I certainly won't argue it's unneeded.

Oh, and I feel like I should add a quick blurb about why it's important to participate. One of the biggest reasons is for YOUR city. The numbers from the census help to calculate tax dollars, as well as if your city is eligible for certain types of grants (Salina has a BIG push to get everyone to return their census in hopes of reaching 50,000 residents). As a former city-government reporter, I can see the value in this.

And, one last comment. Someone who is on the Census committee here in Salina told me that if you don't have a mail box, you don't get a census form. They live in a loft downtown, and while they have an address, they don't have a physical mail box. So they might not get a census form! Which led me to wonder about people like my sis ... who is a grownup now, but living in "student" housing. I wonder how many people have a similar situation. But I also suppose the smart people behind this already thought that one through and there's an answer I just don't know about.

Happy Thursday!