Up for the count

Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2000 | 11:25 a.m.

City, county, state and federal employees are gearing up for the big count: Census 2000.

This time, they vow, they will avoid the disastrous undercount of the area's population that lost the region millions in federal tax dollars. The once-a-decade census, mandated by federal law, theoretically provides a nose-by-nose count of every person living in the United States.

The count is critically important to local governments, who use the population numbers when they turn to the federal government for all kinds of assistance, from roadways to day-care centers.

The count this year also is expected to win Southern Nevada another seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and could boost the numbers of state legislators to give the region a veto-proof majority in Carson City.

Unlike other counts, such as the population numbers from the State Demographers Office, the census is not an estimate but is meant to be an actual count of every person living in the country.

Because of that, public officials at all levels are eager to get as many people as possible to respond to the census.

Public officials, including Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, turned out Jan. 14 for the opening of the North Las Vegas Census Bureau regional office. It is one of three bureau offices that will coordinate the count this year; in 1990, there was only one census office.

Among those who turned out to open the Henderson office on Thursday were Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Assembly members Mark Manendo, D-Las Vegas, and Gene Segerblom, D-Boulder City, Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson, Boulder City Mayor Bob Ferraro and Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller.

The central Las Vegas office is scheduled to open Friday and will likely draw a similar number of local officials, all eager to get their communities a slice of the federal funding pie.

"We're getting to crunch time, and it's going to continue to ramp up in the next couple of months," said Thomas Perrigo, a city of Las Vegas planner and chairman of the Southern Nevada Census 2000 Committee, a local group working for a complete and accurate census.

Perrigo said the coming weeks will include outreach to corporations, which his group hopes will sponsor efforts to get the word out that the census is safe, confidential and important to everyone.

"I think we're making good progress and getting good feedback," Perrigo said.

The census forms and the following door-to-door count will get going in earnest in March. Right now the biggest priority for the federal workers at the local bureau offices is to recruit the local workers -- the people in the bureau offices and in the field who will do the counting, said David Byerman, the bureau's chief government liaison for Nevada.

The bureau needs about 10,000 candidates to do the work, he said. Although the bureau is offering $11 to $14 per hour, flexible work hours and other perks, it hasn't been easy finding the temporary workers, Byerman said.

"It's awfully difficult to do an effective recruiting campaign when you have such a competitive employment market," he said.

The focus on this year's census is on minority groups, groups that suffered the worst undercounts in the 1990 census from coast to coast. In Nevada, Indians, Hispanics and other minorities had the worst undercounts.

In 1990 Nevada was dead last in the country for the response to the mail-in census form -- 58 percent versus 85 percent nationally. While some of those folks responded to the follow-up, door-to-door count, the bureau missed an estimated 28,000 people in 1990.

That undercount meant the state lost nearly $200 million over the decade in federal funding for public education, the environment, law enforcement and social programs.

To avoid a similar undercount, the bureau is doing things differently this time.

The bureau is "trying to implement a bottom-up philosophy," Byerman said, "Nevadans counting Nevadans for the sake of Nevada."

He said it is essential that the bureau avoid being seen as "a bunch of federal bureaucrats."

"We have to have a diverse workforce that is representative of all of the communities in the state," he said.

Jose Bolanos, the bureau's recruiting manager for the North Las Vegas office, said the agency has made a concerted effort to bring in ethnic minorities to be census workers. That's important to both be representative of the communities that are being polled and to actually speak the languages of those answering the questions, he said.

He pointed out that the Las Vegas Valley includes a patchwork of communities, many largely speaking languages other than English. It is essential not only to include the adults in those communities but the children as well, Bolanos said.

"People need to understand that their kids count, the littlest children count," he said. The count for children can be particularly important for the return of federal tax money for day-care centers and schools, Bolanos said.

Byerman said community-based organizations and churches also will get the message that the census is important.

The bureau staff is "identifying every religious organization in Southern Nevada and Clark County, every synagogue and church," Byerman said. "We're hoping as part of that process to have messages on the census delivered from the pulpit.

"All of that reflects our philosophy that you have to make this case in ways that are relevant to the people in the community," he said.

Another challenge presented in doing the census in the valley is the sheer speed at which the community is growing. Although many people in older areas of the valley will get the census forms mailed to their homes, people in Summerlin and Henderson, among others, will have the forms dropped off directly at their homes, Bolanos said.

Bolanos echoed other bureau officials and local political leaders who stressed that the information provided to the census is absolutely confidential. It is a federal felony to release personal information to anybody, including other government agencies, Bolanos said.