Sheldon, Iowa — In recent days we’re seeing and hearing a lot about the 2020 Census, and how important it is for each of us to fill out the census survey. Sheldon City Manager Sam Kooiker talked to KIWA about why an accurate census is so important.
Kooiker says the first reason is that census figures are used to determine Congressional Representation.
(As above) “One is political and representation reasons. You know, one hundred years ago Iowa had eleven congressional districts. Today Iowa has four. In fact, at one point Sheldon had its own congressman. And over the years that is changed and our population has gone up Iowa’s population has gone down relative to the rest of the country.”
He says the Census also affects LOCAL representation.
(As above) “Local political representation is important too, and our county supervisors and city council members and state legislators all portion based on a local population. Local population also drives community development block grants, road use tax allocations and a number of other grant and loan funding sources including rural development.”
Kooiker says filling out the census survey is quite easy to do.
(As above) “You go to 2020census.gov and fill it out online it’s confidential none of the information is sold out by federal law can be shared with anyone it can’t be shared with the FBI and can’t be shared with law enforcement and can’t be shared with anybody and so several law in a sense this employee who violates that gets a lot of trouble so it’s completely confidential.”
Kooiker says, thus far at least, O’Brien County’s Census response rate is running a bit below normal.
(As above) “Our census responses have been low in O’Brien County, you know Sioux County has a bit higher response rate, but from what I’ve been able to gather on the conference calls that I’m on, the response rates aren’t as good as they have been in the past. With so many people being home, they should be better than in the past and would like to encourage people to fill that out.”
To fill out the 2020 Census survey, visit 2020census.gov.
