Don’t forget to mail those Census forms back

Time is winding down with only 6-days left to mail back those 2010 U.S. Census Forms.

If Apalachicola is going to receive its fair share of over $400 billion dollars in Federal funding, then the residents of our community must stand and be counted.

When we fill out and mail back the forms, we’ll be making a statement about what resources Apalachicola needs going forward.

Accurate data reflecting changes in the community is crucial in apportioning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and deciding how the Federal government allocates more than $400 billion dollars per year in our area for projects like new hospitals and schools. Over a 10-year period, that’s more than $4 trillion dollars for things like new roads and services like job training centers.

At present, the residents of Apalachicola are doing okay mailing the forms back, but we can and must do better. As of Friday, April 9, the city as a whole surpassed the 47 percent participation rate achieved during the 2000 count. As of this post, the rate stands at 57 percent, 10 percent higher than a decade ago.

Although the rate is better, the percentage only equals to slightly half of the city’s 3,000 or so population, and if at all possible, all residents of the city need to be counted.

Census workers may still visit households that send in their forms after the Friday, April 16, deadline when they start going door-to-door to obtain census information next month. In fact, the Census Bureau is currently training more than 600,000 temporary workers and identifying households around the country to visit from May to July.

If you hadn’t already done so, just remember there are only 6-days left to mail the forms back.