ROWLAND — The Rowland Board of Commissioners was told Tuesday the 2020 census will be more difficult to participate in than in the past for some and that could cost the town a lot of money.
During a presentation at a board meeting, Lumber River Council of Government Director David Richards told the board that the census count, which will be next year, will be completely online.
“What we have been told is there will not be a paper form mailed out to people like what has been done in the past,” Richards said. “My expectation is since it’s all online this time, it’s going to be a much higher non-response rate.”
He said residents will receive a code in the mail to go online and fill out their census form. Another hurdle is that the code will not be sent to post office boxes, which is how many Rowland residents receive their mail.
Mayor Pro Tem M.C. Shooter, who acted as mayor in the absence of Michelle Shooter, said that about 90% of the town’s residents rent boxes at the post office.
“Our mail carriers deliver to about 100 of our residents,” he said.
According to the American Community Survey, a branch of the U.S. Census Bureau, Rowland’s 2010 population was 1,039. The survey projected the 2018 population to be at 1,006.
Some government funding is based on census numbers.
“For every person not counted in the census is about $1,600 per year, so that’s $16,000 over 10 years,” Richards said. “For that 33 people that the Census Bureau is projecting the town of Rowland lost from 2010 to 2018, that counts out to about $528,000.”
Richards said Rowland had a 25% non-response rate during the 2010 census. He said that if that holds, that would equate to 250 people over 10 years and a loss of $4 million in state and federal funding.
“All of the work that COG does, all of the work that local agencies do is somehow tied to the census,” Richards said. “The education dollars, to workforce development dollars to dollars for social service programs are somehow tied to the census.
“Those are dollars that are being lost to the community.”
Richards said that he will be going to several municipalities encouraging them to develop count committees to brainstorm ways to get the word out. He suggested setting up a public access computer at Town Hall.
“We know we’re an area that’s losing population. We know we’re an area where groups of population have historically been harder to count. We also know that we have faced two major hurricanes and we’ve got lots of people that are displaced,” Richards said. “That trifecta is really going to affect our census numbers that we’re going to be stuck with for the next 10 years.
“This will be a challenge.”
Tomeka Sinclair can be reached at tsinclair@robesonian.com or 910-416-5865.