You Count! And we all need to!

We all do better when we are all counted, especially when it comes to the U.S. Census.
    I want to share two important messages: First, fill your census form out as quickly and fully as you can. You can find the form starting March 12 at 2020census.gov. Second, if we fail to get an accurate count, we will lose as a state and a region and our most vulnerable will lose the most.
We at Ramsey County, along with many community partners, have already been working to make sure the census will be a success. A success means we count everybody accurately, and over many years we have observed the challenges that make that hard. Our first goal was to help the census bureau to hire enough census takers to do the job in Ramsey County. We set an ambitious goal of getting more than 4,000 people to apply for the census worker jobs and we just recently achieved that. It is my hope that we will have the workers to serve in their own neighborhoods because they tend to be the most effective.
A complete, accurate census count is necessary for equal political representation, fair distribution of federal and state funding, and sound planning and investment in infrastructure, real estate, business development and public policy. An inaccurate census denies money for schools, roads, and transit to millions of low-income urban and rural households, immigrant communities, people of color and young children.
In the coming weeks, every person will receive a letter from the census bureau inviting them to fill the form out online. If people don’t respond, then they will receive reminder letters and then be visited by the census workers I referred to earlier. The sooner you fill it out, the sooner the census bureau can focus on the hardest-to-reach folks.
Once you have filled out the form, you can still help by spreading the word through your circles that this is easy and that your information is completely confidential. There is also NO citizenship question. I understand worry about leaders who are anti-immigration, but I must assure you that The U.S. Census Bureau never identifies you individually. It combines your responses with information from other households or businesses to produce statistics, which never identify your household, any person in your household, or business.
So, fill out your form, encourage others, and I thank you.