Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, community leaders and dozens of census workers marked the Census 2010 deadline countdown at the Centennial Plaza at Long Beach City Hall on Monday.
The rally was a multicultural and multilingual experience. Sara Pol-Lim, executive director for the United Cambodian Community, and Amelia Nieto, executive director of Centro Shalom, offered Khmer and Spanish to non-English participants.
The deadline for the 2010 census count is April 1, 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau website.
“It’s important to make sure that we get everyone counted,” Foster said.
2010 will be the first year 140,000 address canvassers, or workers who collect addresses and mail out census forms, will be employed nationwide, Pendergrass said.
“I’m counting on you, Long Beach residents, to turn in your census forms,” Foster said.
The population per city, town and state determines the number of conessional seats alloted to states, the types of community services provided and how thee $300 billion in federal funds will be distributed to local, state and tribal governments each year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau website.
“It’s important to your city, to your neighborhood; it’s important for the kinds of services you think this city needs to provide,” Foster said.
The U.S. Census Bureau conducts a census of our population every 10 years, according to Bernard Pendergrass, media specialist with the bureau.
The canvassers try to get a complete, accurate count based on addresses and this will be the first year canvassers will use GPS instead of paper maps, according to Pendergrass.
By March 2010, everyone will be getting forms with questions about name, age, race, number of children under the age of 18 and number of household members, according to Pendergrass. The forms take less than 10 minutes to complete, according to the U.S. Census Bureau website.
The same website also mentioned that if any census worker, whether permanent or temporary, discloses any confidential information about anyone in their database, he or she could be punished with a fine of $250,000 and five years in prison.