Because the 2010 census will determine just how much government money St. Charles Parish will receive in the future, the parish is calling on representatives from education, media, business and the community to serve on a committee to help raise awareness.
And the way that awareness is raised this year could mean anything from the committee reserving a booth at the upcoming business expo to having school teachers present a lesson on the history and importance of the census.
St. Charles Parish was asked to form a Complete Count Committee by census representatives in Southeast Louisiana in conjunction with the Regional Planning Commission, which is assisting the Census Bureau in preparing for Census Day in March 2010.
“The main goal of the committee will be to use events and/or programs that already exist to raise awareness about the census in our community,” Parish spokeswoman Renee Allemand-Simpson said. “There are many different ways to accomplish this task, and so a good part of what the committee will do is brainstorm to come up with creative ideas about how to get the message across.”
Along with representatives from education, media, business and community groups, there will also be government representatives on the committee. Because the census is handled by the federal government, there won’t be much for local governments to do as far as the nuts-and-bolts of gathering and reporting census data. But with the committee, the parish can at least get the word out to make sure the numbers are reported accurately.
And that can make all the difference.
“The census is vitally important to St. Charles Parish’s interests in this post-Katrina landscape,” Allemand-Simpson said. “A complete and accurate count ensures local governments receive their fair share of $300 billion annually in government funding for critical community services.
“The census also affects local, state and federal redistricting and determines how many seats Louisiana will have in Congress.”
The census is used to record information about the members of a given population and is performed every 10 years. In the 2000 census, St. Charles Parish had a population of 48,072 and that number has risen in each of the past nine years. In fact, in 2007, which was the last census estimate for St. Charles Parish, there were 52,044 residents, which was a 8.3 percent increase from 2000.
The estimate for 2010 is 54,059 residents (male – 26,450 ; female – 27,600).
The median household income has also continued to rise, according to the US Census Bureau, increasing from $44,812 in 2002 to $54,998 in 2007.
Be the first to comment