City officials and other community members came together at city hall last week on Jan. 10 to discuss the upcoming 2020 census. The census occurs nationwide every 10 years, since the government began tracking the nation's population in 1790, according to the Census Bureau's website. The purpose of the census is to see how populations have changed state to state, to make sure that there is fair representation in Congress.
According to the 2010 census, Alaska had a population of 710,231, an increase of 13.3 percent from the 2000 census. This makes Alaska one of the least populated states, just behind Delaware with a 2010 population of almost 900,000.
"It's critically important to the state and the community because, based off the numbers, is how they divvy up money to the state and then it trickles down to the community," Economic Development Director Carol Rushmore said. "From grant agencies, to the WIC program, to Medicare, to social services."
Rushmore invited several community members to discuss ways to encourage higher turnout in Wrangell. Due to some people not understanding the importance of being counted in the census, or just by having a general distrust of the government, she said that Alaska's population was likely undercounted in 2010. Wrangell, itself, also had a low turnout.
"Alaska was undercounted in 2010, and the hard to reach populations in remote Alaska, in fact the census is starting in remote areas this month because of the hard to reach populations," Rushmore said. "In 2010 only 54 percent of Wrangell responded, and then it required a whole bunch of followup to get more people to respond. I don't really know, but I don't think the final count was very high. I don't think it was over 70 percent."
The people invited to be part of this discussion each represented a group that had a lot of interaction with the wider Wrangell community, such as the chamber of commerce, the Wrangell Cooperative Association, the Salvation Army, churches, and others. Rushmore added that Alaska Counts, a group working to encourage turnout among Alaskans for the 2020 census, is offering mini-grants of $250 to organizations to conduct census outreach.
Several of the ideas to encourage turnout for the census revolved around just providing the public with information about what the census is, and what information they need. The census takes less personal information than a PFD application Rushmore said. Another issue that members of Wrangell's native population need to be aware of, pointed out by Esther Ashton with the WCA, is that the head of the household listed in the census has to be native, or the entire household will not be counted as part of the native population in the census.
Among the ideas to spread information and to encourage turnout include setting up a booth at the upcoming health fair and other future events. Another idea was to set up a computer at the library for people to use for the census, as well. Then there was the idea to simply put up posters on bulletin boards and in businesses around town. Another was to get some stickers made, so people can show that they took the census. Another idea brought up was to turn the census into a pseudo-competition with the nearby city of Petersburg, to see which community could get a higher turnout.
To learn more about the census, and how it pertains to Alaska in particular, visit http://www.alaskacounts.org. Online responses to the census will open in March, with Census Day itself on April 1.
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